Women in positions of service: The politicized body

Abstract

This essay offers an insider's view of a specific service organization. By integrating the models known as autobiographical enthnography (Goodall, 1989, 1991) and critical ethnography (Conquergood, 1991; Mumby, 1988; Thomas, 1993), I am able to reflect on and critique a specific work experience. I elaborate on each scene of this experience with a critical commentary based on ideas from various critical and postmodern theories. I offer this critical ethnography to demonstrate how some women who work in the service industry are made powerless by the discourse, interactions, relationships, and tasks that they are expected to participate in. What is it in the service work environment that causes women to be made political bodies? What strips them of their true sense of personal and social identity? What are the explicit and implicit rules that produce and reproduce the politicized body? In attempting to answer these questions, I show how women service workers are often disempowered by double binds within double binds—no‐win situations that keep many female workers politically ineffective, alienated, and dehumanized.

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