The fragility of symbolic taylorism: between consent and transgression to affective control in Call Centers

Abstract

Call Centers are paradigmatic of neo-colonials trends of current capitalism. The way in which control is exercised in informational maquilas notes the existence of mechanisms of affective regulation and manipulation aimed to achieve a permanent friendliness attitude with customers. The mass production of smiles arranged to please and take pleasure to users forms part of symbolic compensation strategies implemented in the frame of subcontracting policies that leave customers defenseless. Retrieving the findings of a configurationist research carried out in Call Centers in Mexico City, this article analyzes the ways in which labor consent is produced and recreated in order to discuss the effects that affective standardization has on telephone operators, and the forms in which the tensions that emerge in daily life are solved as a consequence of the control exerted. As a conclusion, we emphasize how the dissents and multiple individual and collective transgressions combine in a contradictory way with the omission and compliance to imposed rules, what contributes to the reproduction and maintenance of subordination and an extractive management logic at emotional field.