Embodied Acting, Belonging and Gender Inequalities in Service Work

Abstract

This article proposes the concept of ‘embodied acting’ to understand workers’ transformations of their appearances (clothes, makeup) and related behaviours (English speaking, eating out, dating) to create belonging in new service work in Global South contexts characterised by continuing social inequalities amidst rapid socio-economic change. The concepts aesthetic labour, emotion work, and acting at work theorised from the Global North, do not account for the aspirational and contested nature of these transformations. Through ethnographic research with young women and men in Delhi, India, the article highlights the role of peer disciplining in translating embodied acting into belonging. While men have patriarchal peer support to realise body rules of service work, women’s embodied acting is intensely scrutinised, rendered hyper visible, and delegitimised. This peer disciplining reproduces gender inequalities, negatively impacting women’s belonging at work. Through ethnographic insights into service work in the Global South, the article advances global sociologies of work.