Gefühle und Gefühlsarbeit

Emotions are a rather young field of research for sociology. therefore in a first step i discuss theoretical concepts which have been developed up to now. an integrativ view which combines symbolic interactionist and social constructionistapproaches to emotion is presented. the second part suggests a definition of emotional labour which encompasses the relevance of emotions as a part of work conduct. the object of labour and the form of organization are used to distinguish between various possibilities of utilizing emotions in the labour process. a third section is devoted to a quantitative empirical analysis: by regrouping the categories of the austrian occupation system into personal-orientated and material-orientated professions and the examination of the austrian census from 1951 to 1981 the growing importance of emotional labour and the gender segregation involved in it is demonstrated.;