Baristas: The artisan precariat
type: CreativeWork
description: My research on the work identit(ies) of baristas demonstrates that different workplaces, in conjunction with individual biographies, produce different kinds of work identities. Connected to these differences are the actual and perceived levels of skill and/or social status ascribed to workers within the service work triadic relationship (customers, coworkers/managers and workers). The higher the level of skill or social status, the greater the capacity of workers to experience more autonomy in their work and/or access improved working conditions. These findings are informed by my research approach, which incorporates three key methods: key informant interviews; observation/participant observation; life history interviews; all of which is underpinned by the mystory approach and autoethnography. My findings from the case study research on the barista work identity are expressed in the following. (1) The different work identities within a specific occupation contribute to the heterogeneity of service workers and service work. This heterogeneity, in turn, obscures the range of skills utilised in the technical and presentational labour mobilised in service work. The skills are obscured by the social and practice-based nature of knowledge transmission in service work like that of baristas, as well as by the dynamic and shifting alliances that may occur in the triadic relationship of customer, workers and employer/manager. (2) Interactive service workers are involved in providing labour or work that is more complex than is socially understood and recognised. This complexity stems from the ways in which presentational labour is commodified, appropriated and mobilised in the workplace within the spaces of the organisational context, internal practices, and the service encounter. (3) I further argue that service workers are also dehumanised as part of the service encounter through the structure of capitalism, specifically the application of commodity fetishism to workers by c…
abstract: My research on the work identit(ies) of baristas demonstrates that different workplaces, in conjunction with individual biographies, produce different kinds of work identities. Connected to these differences are the actual and perceived levels of skill and/or social status ascribed to workers within the service work triadic relationship (customers, coworkers/managers and workers). The higher the level of skill or social status, the greater the capacity of workers to experience more autonomy in their work and/or access improved working conditions. These findings are informed by my research approach, which incorporates three key methods: key informant interviews; observation/participant observation; life history interviews; all of which is underpinned by the mystory approach and autoethnography. My findings from the case study research on the barista work identity are expressed in the following. (1) The different work identities within a specific occupation contribute to the heterogeneity of service workers and service work. This heterogeneity, in turn, obscures the range of skills utilised in the technical and presentational labour mobilised in service work. The skills are obscured by the social and practice-based nature of knowledge transmission in service work like that of baristas, as well as by the dynamic and shifting alliances that may occur in the triadic relationship of customer, workers and employer/manager. (2) Interactive service workers are involved in providing labour or work that is more complex than is socially understood and recognised. This complexity stems from the ways in which presentational labour is commodified, appropriated and mobilised in the workplace within the spaces of the organisational context, internal practices, and the service encounter. (3) I further argue that service workers are also dehumanised as part of the service encounter through the structure of capitalism, specifically the application of commodity fetishism to workers by c…
author: Piercy, Gemma Louise
keywords: interactive service work, consumption, third wave of coffee, identity, precariat, craft-washing, commodity fetishism
license: https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstreams/5a473b63-6dea-4342-972d-4d6322aa00c4/download
date published: 2018
date modified: 2026-07-24T05:57:52Z
provider: University Waikato
publisher: Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations
type: WebPage
source organization: The University of Waikato