Producing the superior self

Strategic comparison and symbolic boundaries among luxury hotel workers

Bibliographic Data

ID2402241
AuthorsRachel Sherman (0000-0002-2241-4277, Yale University, corresponding author)
Year2005
Volume6
Issue2
Pages131-158
Publication date2005-06-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueEthnography (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1466-1381 • E-ISSN: 1741-2714
PublisherSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1466138105057546
OpenAlexW1966502411
LanguageEN
Citations received53
References cited16

In the luxury hotel, unequal entitlements between workers and guests - both to human attention and labor and to social and material resources generally - are prominent. Participant observation in two hotels shows that one of the myriad ways interactive workers respond to their subordinate position is to establish themselves as superior to others. They use comparative strategies of self to situate themselves as privileged on a range of symbolic hierarchies, including those of competence, authority, status, need, morality, intelligence, and cultural capital. Comparative ethnographic data on these judgments shows that they are not fixed categories in people's heads but rather contradictory, context-dependent orientations. The article further argues that even as they establish workers as symbolically superior, these strategies also constitute some people as legitimately entitled to workers' labor, thereby normalizing inequality between workers and guests

Competence (human resources · Cultural capital · Ethnography · Inequality · Morality · Political science · Social science · Sociology · Anthropology · Emotional Labor in Professions · Law · Management and Organizational Studies · Psychology · Psychology of Social Influence · Social Psychology