Managing Stress: Emotion and Power at Work

For Sociology cataloguesThis book provides a thought-provoking and timely alternative to prevailing approaches to stress at work which invariably adopt a highly individualistic model of its causes and appropriate management. Stress is deemed a `fact of modern life' and it is the individual who must take primary responsibility for his or her capacity - or incapacity - to cope, outside or inside the workplace.Stress at work in addressed in this book in the context of wider debates about emotion, subjectivity and power in organizations. The book analyzes the historical development of the dominant `stress discourse' in modern psychology and elsewhere. Alternatively possibilities for understanding stress at work are then presented, drawing on a range of perspectives including the work of Foucault and Elias. A cogent critique of typical stress management interventions in organizations is outlined, and finally the authors explore various ways of `rewriting' stress at work, including recognition of its gendered nature, and that stressful work experiences can be collectively produced and reproduced.Through its exploration of Foucauldian and Eliasian perspectives on stress and emotion, the book is of particular relevance to current debates concerned with the sociology of the body.