Physical Labor Book Review

The Human Cost of Emotional and Physical Labor and The Impact on Workers
The relationship between labor, humans, and alienation is a complex one. Typically, labor is viewed as a physical action, such as typical tasks one may engage in during the work day. However, along with physical labor is the conjunction of emotional labor. This is the inducement or suppressant of emotions and feelings in order to sustain a positive exterior. In the American society today, most jobs require interpersonal skills and require workers to communicate with others. Consequently, almost all workers will be subject to emotional labor in their working career. Karl Marx and Arlie Russell Hochschild both create works that deal with the complexity of labor and alienation. Marx focuses more on the consequences on the worker due to alienation. Hochschilds also focuses on the impact of the …show more content…
Digital Labour and Karl Marx by Christian Fuchs discusses how labor changes in the world of social media. In combination with the works of Marx and Hochschild, this book provides an entirely different perspective on labor. This book is particularly interesting because currently social media and the digital world play a vital role in the lives of many. Just like factory workers and flight attendants, digital media comes at a cost to human emotion and human value. Digital labor is defined as “a part of a collective work force that is required for the existence, usage and application of digital media” (Fuchs, 2014, p. 4). This applicable to many different fields. Whether it is an employee using digital media or the factory working creating certain technologies. This piece interconnects with the other two articles examined above because they all discuss the exploitation of the worker in sacrifice for their