Research On The Emotional Labor Of Community Workers

Entering the 21 st century,with the transformation from social management to social governance concepts,China’s urban and rural social management system has also undergone drastic changes.The community has taken on the responsibility of social management and public services as a substitute for the unit,gradually becoming a key intermediary link connecting the country and society.Community governance is becoming more and more fundamental and important in the grass-roots social governance system.In particular,as a front-line position in the fight against the COVID-19,communities have played an active role in both emergency prevention and control and normalization prevention and control,and have also become the basis and guarantee for promoting the modernization of the national governance system and governance capacity.So far,the academic research on community governance has mainly focused on the organizational structure,institutional system and governance model of the community,while the research on emotional labor of community workers as “actors” of grass-roots governance is insufficient.In fact,in the practice of community governance,community workers play multiple roles,such as administrative executors,public service providers and autonomous organizers,and play an important role in maintaining the benign operation of social order,improving residents’ happiness in daily life and promoting social solidarity.However,the complex emotional experience and vivid emotional labor process of community workers in governance practice have been ignored.Therefore,the research on emotional labor of community workers is not only a practical concern for the“human” level of grass-roots social governance,but also a positive response to the proposition of modernization of community governance capacity.This paper uses sociological qualitative research methods to obtain a large number of experience materials by conducting Field research in many communities in C city,and conducting in-depth interviews with 66 community workers.Based on the Sociological theory of community governance and emotional labor,this paper conducts an empirical study on the emotional labor of community workers.This paper puts the “structure action” analytical framework under the background of the modernization of community governance,and takes the emotional labor process of community workers as the intermediary between the macro national governance system and the micro residents’ daily life experience.This paper conducts a holistic study on the connotation and nature of emotional labor of community workers,the rules of perception and internalization mechanisms guiding their actions,and the interaction process and impact of the structural conditions of community governance and emotional labor practice.First,the connotation and mechanism of emotional labor of community workers.Compared with workers in the business field,Community practice has professional characteristics in the public service field,such as social benefits first,emotional resources advantage,relationship orientation and interactive role contextualization.These characteristics determine that the emotional labor of community workers focuses on the emotional value input,the establishment of multi subject interaction relationship,and the production of specific significance.In certain work and interaction situations,the concept of emotional governance and emotional labor strategies are integrated into the existing institutional framework.Through the dual practice process of community workers’ spiritual decoration and emotional production,Translate national macro governance goals into emotional practices that are close to residents’ daily lives.Specifically,first,community workers independently inhibit and transform negative emotions through immediate negative emotion transformation,delayed emotional self healing and group stress response.The second is to achieve the connection of community relationships and the construction of positive significance through the emotional accumulation in mass work,the connection between social forces and resources,and the cultivation of community spirit.Second,the feeling rules and internalization mechanism that guide the emotional labor practice of community workers.Feeling rules are an important mechanism and internal driving force to regulate the emotional and behavioral expression of community workers.It plays a positive role in encouraging community workers to overcome work pressure and negative emotions and carry out emotional labor independently.Through a series of process mechanisms such as professional and professional personnel selection,political education to strengthen service awareness and image orientation,vocational training to transfer skills and establish values,group mutual assistance to foster feelings and transfer skills,as well as individual experience refining and feelings internalization,community workers are helped to transform the abstract work concept of “satisfying the masses” into the content of services to promote residents Specific emotional labor practices that satisfy the process and results.However,it should be noted that the current construction of the internalization mechanism of sensory rules is not yet perfect,and its narrative content and expression form need to be improved.Thirdly,research on the mutual construction process between the structural conditions of community governance and emotional labor practices.On the one hand,the emotional labor of community workers is shaped by the complex governance environment and the “dual dependence” structure of community governance in the transition period.In order to obtain survival and development resources provided by the government,communities need to bear various top-down work tasks.As a mass autonomous organization,community workers also need to gain emotional recognition and action support from community residents by building trust relationships with residents and providing quality services to residents.The community’s dependence on the Survivability of the government is more urgent than its dependence on the legitimacy of the society.This dual dependence structure of“strong administration weak autonomy” has also led to community administration and marginalization of autonomy.It is in the contradiction between the limited power and resources and the constantly developing social needs that the appearance of emotional labor of community workers is inevitable and reasonable.On the other hand,through the practical actions of emotional decoration and emotional production,the community workers have maintained the image of the people friendly service providers,established good community relations,completed various tasks assigned by the superior,obtained the substantive legitimacy of the residents’ autonomous organizations,and achieved the goal of community governance.In this process,community workers seek balance between administrative and autonomous roles,maintain the effective operation of existing governance structures,and promote the continuous adjustment and improvement of community governance structures.This governance achievement is at the cost of emotional energy consumption of community workers,which is more obvious during the epidemic prevention and control period,while the value of emotional labor of community workers has not been fully recognized by the government and academia.The lack of relevant protection and incentive systems for positive emotional labor has resulted in the community workers’ “vulnerable” subjective perception and “marginalized” social status.Therefore,this paper believes that the multiple results of emotional labor of community workers should be viewed from a dialectical perspective,that is,the loss of individual emotions and value incentives,the development and constraints of professional groups,and the dual social consequences of good governance or emotional alienation.Re examine the development opportunities and potential problems faced by community workers as professional communities in the context of the modernization of community governance capacity,and propose institutional support for emotional labor in terms of system design,concept cultivation,skill improvement and environmental improvement.Finally,this article attempts to localize and extend the theory of emotional labor that originated in Western commercial societies.The theoretical connotation has been enriched and expanded from the perspectives of analysis,emotional turn,functional evaluation,and governance technology.