A Touching Story: The Body and the Enchanting Myth of Customer Sovereignty

1. A Touching Story:The Body and the Enchanting Myth of Customer Sovereignty Prof. Marek Korczynski Loughborough University

2. My background as exploring the sociology of service work and sociology of consumption within service interactions Here, main focus upon analysing consumption in body work interactions, with body work seen as a specific form of service work

3. Structure Consumption in service interactions - service interactions as points of cultural contradiction; - m�gt promotes enchanting myth of customer sovereignty to manage this contradiction - But consumption is a fragile process, and what is actually consumed can be different; Applying this analysis to consider consumption in body work interactions

4. Consumption in service interactions(Korczynski and Ott, 2004; Korczynski 2005) Focus upon the nature of what is consumed during the service interaction itself � particularly on what form of consumption is promoted by management Key problem facing m�gt implied by Bell (1976): The service interaction is where rationalised, controlled production meets consumption, the sphere of freedom, and hedonism So how can this tension be managed?

5. By promoting the consumption of the enchanting myth of customer sovereignty, i.e. m�gt seeks to structure the service interaction in such a way that the front line worker can guide the customer through the constraints of production while at the same time encouraging the customer to experience a sense of being sovereign. Some key modes of promoting this form of consumption: The menu and its presentation Empathetic emotional labour Aesthetic labour Naming

6. The dialectics and fragility of consumption While the enchanting myth of sovereignty may be what m�gt promotes, what is consumed in practice can be very different: Consumption is a fragile process, and dialectically the promotion of the myth of sovereignty also creates the conditions for its negation: Enchantment can and systematically will slip into disillusionment The �unmanageable consumer� (Gabriel and Lang, 2007) can reappropriate consumption, with or against the front line worker

7. Body work and the enchanting myth of customer sovereignty To apply the above argument to body work, need to consider the specifcs of body work cf. service work more generally. To do this usefully, need to disaggregate forms of body work into 2 broad types: Body aestheticising work, eg. manicurists Body maintenance work, eg. health care

8. Body work and the enchanting myth of customer sovereignty Each has specific and differing implications for the playing out of the enchanting myth of sovereignty: For body aestheticising work, the process of enchantment is likely to be played out relatively smoothly in that the substance of this body work implies a sense of being special or superior in the customer � although concomitantly the fall to disillusionment may be experienced in a heightened sense. Key implication for workers here is the ability to allow this playing out, without surrendering sense of dignity, without moving to overt deference � tendency to reframe interaction as a socially embedded one, eg hairdressing.

9. Body work and the enchanting myth of customer sovereignty For body maintenance work, there are likely to be profound problems in the playing out of the myth of sovereignty The body as carrier and symbol of autonomy is intruded upon The materiality of body work disrupts the process of enchantment at the level of imagined ideas. Although, m�gt may seek to counter these factors, cracks of disillusionment are more likely to be systematically present in this form of body work interaction. Key implication for worker is that they tend to become experts at the management of disillusionment.

10. Conclusion The usefulness of the concept of body work (disaggregated) has been supported Need to explore further the nature of consumption in body work interactions � to apply other theoretical lenses to draw out the specifics of body work cf. other types of service work.