New Twists in the Gendered Globalization of Labor

As part of "Knowledge Production in Today's Changing Societies (Wissensproduction in den heutigen sich verändernden Gesellschaften)" seminar series organized in cooperation between the Turkish-German University, University of Bielefeld, DAAD and the Goethe-Institut Istanbul, Carla Freeman will give a talk about her work on emotional labor as the nexus that binds “labor” and “life” in persistently gendered ways, and in so doing, both reflects and refashions the shape and feeling of global capitalism, puzzles that become even more vexing as we consider the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence. Anlam Filiz will act as discussant for the talk.

Speaker: Prof. Dr. Carla Freeman, Emory University, Atlanta, USA
Discussant & Moderator: Dr. Anlam Filiz, Turkish-German University, Istanbul

More than 30 years ago social scientists began to analyze the accelerating processes of globalization – the growing interconnectedness of economic, political, cultural, and social systems across nation states, fostered by rapidly expanding markets and technologies, the ‘time-space compression’ marking a new world order. The methodological power of ethnography highlighted the gendered cultural specificities and the local manifestations of these global processes, while other fields proffered macro-universalist theses. On the labor front, early feminist ethnographers traced the stunning mobilization of female workers around the world and the imposition of gendered labor regimes by multinational corporations’ newly configured ‘global assembly line’. These accounts made plain that despite the seemingly ubiquitous and unstoppable drive of capitalist accumulation the particulars of culture and history frame, limit, and give different expression and meaning to these processes. This paper traces subsequent twists in the global economy as they relate to the growth of the service sector and its gendered and culturally specific configurations. At the heart of this discussion is the growing role of affect and emotion as integral dimensions of the labor exchange. In particular, I examine emotional labor as the nexus that binds “labor” and “life” in persistently gendered ways, and in so doing, both reflects and refashions the shape and feeling of global capitalism, puzzles that become even more vexing as we consider the rapid expansion of artificial intelligence.

© Carla Freeman

Carla Freeman is the Goodrich C. White Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies and associated faculty in Anthropology and Latin American and Caribbean Studies at Emory University, Atlanta, USA. She is currently the Interim Dean of Emory College of Arts and Sciences, having served as the College's Executive Associate Dean 2020-2022 and as the Senior Associate Dean of Faculty 2014-2020. Freeman earned her AB in Anthropology from Bryn Mawr College in 1983 and Ph.D. in Anthropology from Temple University in 1993.
Freeman's research examines the culture, gender, and political economy of labor and globalization, the changing nature of work/life in the 20th and 21st centuries, and the growing role of affect and affective labor across market and non-market economies. A feminist anthropologist with over thirty years of fieldwork experience in the Caribbean, her publications include three books: High Tech and High Heels in the Global Economy (Duke University Press, 2000), Entrepreneurial Selves (Duke University Press, 2014) and Global Middle Classes (with Rachel Heiman and Mark Liechty, SAR Press). She has published in such journals as American Ethnologist, Cultural Anthropology, Feminist Anthropology, Signs: Journal of Women, Culture and Society, Feminist Studies, and Critique of Anthropology. Freeman’s research has been supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, Fulbright, and the OAS. She is the past President of the Association for Feminist Anthropology and the editor (with Li Zhang, UC-Davis) of Oxford University Press’ series of contemporary ethnography, "Issues of Globalization."

© Anlam Filiz

Anlam Filiz is Assistant Professor and Chair of Sociology at the Turkish-German University in Istanbul. She received her Ph.D. in Anthropology in 2018 from Emory University, Atlanta, USA with a dissertation titled “The Corner at the Center: Migrant Labor, Difference, Relationality and the Making of Berlin.” She holds an M.A. in Anthropology from Emory University, an M.A. in Comparative Studies in History and Society from Koç University as well as B.A. degrees in Sociology and Business Administration from Istanbul Bilgi University. She conducted her dissertation research through a PhD exchange fellowship at Freie Universität Berlin and DAAD (German Academic Exchange Service) research grant at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. After completing her Ph.D. studies, she worked as a Visiting Assistant Professor in Anthropology at Emory University. She has taught courses on a variety of subjects including migration, globalization, culture, labor, and gender.
Her research addresses questions of migration, globalization, work, and social and cultural change in urban contexts. Most recently, she conducted research on highly qualified migration from Turkey to Germany as a DAAD visiting researcher at the Technical University of Berlin.