Y. Gunaratnam et G. Lewis, Racialising emotional labour and emotionalising racialised labour: anger, fear and shame in social welfare, J SOC WOR P, 15(2), 2001, pp. 131-148
This paper brings together the empirical work of Yasmin Gunaratnam with hos
pice social workers and that of Gail Lewis with local authority social work
ers. It uses a conceptually expanded notion of 'emotional labour' to explor
e and theorise links between different forms of emotion management and raci
alised subject positions and practices in social care for both those catego
rised as 'ethnic minorities' and as 'white'. The analytic framework draws u
pon the political scholarship of Audre Lorde and Thandeka and the psychoana
lytic work of Melanie Klein to explore talk about the production of anger,
fear and shame. A common focus in the writing of these different authors is
the self/other relation and the attention given to personal, interpersonal
, inter-group and intra-group dynamics. The paper argues that the irrationa
l and unconscious aspects of racial dynamics cannot simply be countered by
appeals to the rational. There is a need to recognise and integrate rather
than 'split' positive and negative emotions about the self and 'others'. Su
ch integration is seen as a source of internal strength and psychic health
making for the possibility of caring and constructive relationships in soci
al care organisations through which the complexities of difference can be r
ecognised and valued.