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1 Introduction an eye on emotion in the study of families and work Anita Ilta Garey and Karen V. Hansen “Well,” said Mrs. Zuckerman, “it seems to me you’re a little off. It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.” In E. B. White’s classic children’s story, Charlotte’s Web, Charlotte, a spider, spends all night spinning a web with the words “some pig” in the center. Charlotte hopes her web will save the life of her friend Wilbur, a pig whom farmer Zuckerman plans to butcher. Charlotte’s plan works, and in the morning when the farmer sees the magnificent web, he is amazed and runs to tell his wife: “We’ve received a sign, Edith—a mysterious sign. A miracle has happened on this farm. . . . There can be no mistake about it. A miracle has happened and a sign has occurred here on earth, right on our farm, and we have no ordinary pig” (White 1952, 80). To which Mrs. Zuckerman, a woman who recognizes the labor and the laborer behind the “miracle,” replies, “It seems to me we have no ordinary spider.” Edith Zuckerman’s keen observation is one that is shared by many work-family scholars who point out, and thus “make visible,” the activities , experiences, and dynamics that are often obscured by a taken-for-granted perspective that ignores how, where, or by whom things are made. For more than three decades, Arlie Russell Hochschild has been a sociological Mrs. Zuckerman, pointing out social facts that had gone unnoticed because they were rendered invisible by taken-for-granted perspectives. Hochschild also shares Charlotte’s talents for addressing conundrums with erudition and creativity . Her concepts and analyses have shaped the way an entire generation of scholars understands work and family. The chapters in At the Heart of Work and Family bring together work by authors who use Hochschild’s concepts as they v explore work and family issues. These selections not only make visible the effort involved in what people do, but they also encompass a “sociology of emotion” perspective. The sociology of emotion focuses attention on how people manage their feelings in order to negotiate tensions that arise within and between the linked spheres of work and family. Research and writing is best thought of as a conversation between scholars. Each new contribution to the field must address that which came before while providing new insights and moving the conversation forward. Inevitably, the rich scholarship on work and family is the product of many sociologists, historians , family studies scholars, anthropologists, social psychologists, and economists . However, regardless of where one enters the conversation, it is necessary to engage Hochschild’s work and the concepts and theories she developed in order to participate fully in the scholarly conversation on families and work. Hochschild’s place in sociological theory in general is well established (Adams and Sydie 2001; Farganis 2007; Stones 1998).1 Her theoretical contributions reach far beyond sociology. Her books and articles have been translated into many languages, and her work is cited prolifically by scholars and practitioners in a wide range of fields, including business, economics, psychology, family studies, gender studies, political science, and anthropology (Jacobs 2007). In the area of work and family, Hochschild’s theories and concepts permeate the field, and her books, The Managed Heart (1983), The Second Shift (1989), and The Time Bind (1997), have become standard required reading in college courses. The most recent of these books was published in the 1990s, and students in our classes often ask, “Haven’t things changed?” or “Are these concepts still useful?” In other words, they wonder if the situations described and the concepts proposed at an earlier time still apply to the contemporary world.2 Their questions were anticipated fifty years earlier by the sociologist Herbert Blumer, who noted that concepts, even when arrived at by close empirical observation, must be continually linked to the “world of experience” (Blumer 1969, 168). Blumer wrote that concepts develop and gain precision “as observation becomes grounded in fuller experience and in new perspectives” (183). The chapters in At the Heart of Work and Family apply Hochschild’s concepts to the twenty- first-century environment and ask whether and how, as descriptions of ongoing social processes, these concepts continue to be useful to the examination of social settings and structural dynamics. Making Work Visible: History, Structure, and Meaning Although “work, employment, and careers” as well as “families, marriage, and parenting...

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