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Cover of The Managed Heart

How long does it take to read The Managed Heart?

Arlie Russell Hochschild

The Managed Heart by Arlie Russell Hochschild takes about 6 hours 3 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.

About 6 hours 3 minutes

A weekend read

First published 1983. 330 pages, about 90,750 words.

13 days at 30 minutes a day

Estimate based on 275 words per page.

At other speeds

Slow, 150 words a minute 10 hours 5 minutes
Average, 250 words a minute 6 hours 3 minutes
Fast, 400 words a minute 3 hours 47 minutes

The page count is the median across 9 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.

About the book

Arlie Hochschild examines two groups of public-contact workers: flight attendants and bill collectors. The flight attendant's job is to deliver a service and create further demand for it, to enhance the status of the customer and be "nicer than natural." The bill collector's job is to collect on the service, and if necessary, to deflate the status of the customer by being "nastier than natural." Between these extremes, roughly one-third of American men and one-half of American women hold jobs that call for substantial emotional labor. In many of these jobs, they are trained to accept feeling rules and techniques of emotion management that serve the company's commercial purpose. Like a physical laborer who becomes estranged from what he or she makes, an emotional laborer, such as a flight attendant, can become estranged not only from her own expressions of feeling (her smile is not "her" smile), but also from what she actually feels (her managed friendliness). This estrangement, though a valuable defense against stress, is also an important occupational hazard, because it is through our feelings that we are connected with those around us.

Subjects: Economic aspects, Economic aspects of Emotions, Emotions, Employee motivation, Psychological aspects, Psychological aspects of Work

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