Service and Surveillance: Infrapolitics at Work among Casino Cocktail Waitresses
Abstract
With its surveillance mechanisms, tipping system, and sexualized environment, the casino industry is an intriguing site for a gendered diagnostics of workplace politics. Drawing on 18 months of participant observation at three casinos, I argue that managers, coworkers, and customers attempt to control waitress appearance and behavior through surveillance, gendered hegemony, and financial incentives. Cocktail waitresses resist in subtle forms—“infrapolitics” and occasionally collective action. Feminist research, to consider women such as cocktail waitresses as multidimensional actors, must both avoid a common binary between sexual and nonsexual gendered work and take into consideration women's own subjectivities. Feminist workplace ethnography is particularly well suited to help us understand women workers' experiences of power and modes of resistance.
... For example, Bayard de Volo (2003) found that sexual harassment of casino waitresses by customers was not a regular part of the job, that overtly sexualized comments and behavior were more likely to come from upper-level management, and that most staff felt empowered to call security if customers violated their bodily integrity (Bayard de Volo, 2003). Nevertheless, other studies show that the sexual harassment of wait staff is quite routine (Huebner, 2008;Matulewicz, 2016;Murray, 2015;Szymanski & Mikorski, 2016) and most cases of harassment by customers are never reported (ROC United, 2014), leaving staff to cope with the problem on their own or informally with their colleagues (Good & Cooper, 2016). ...
... For example, Bayard de Volo (2003) found that sexual harassment of casino waitresses by customers was not a regular part of the job, that overtly sexualized comments and behavior were more likely to come from upper-level management, and that most staff felt empowered to call security if customers violated their bodily integrity (Bayard de Volo, 2003). Nevertheless, other studies show that the sexual harassment of wait staff is quite routine (Huebner, 2008;Matulewicz, 2016;Murray, 2015;Szymanski & Mikorski, 2016) and most cases of harassment by customers are never reported (ROC United, 2014), leaving staff to cope with the problem on their own or informally with their colleagues (Good & Cooper, 2016). ...
... For example, although the work of serving and bartending can be very physically demanding, in many workplace environments, female waitstaff are encouraged to wear outfits that are designed to invite the male gaze. Sometimes this is overt, as exemplified in sexualized dress codes and requirements to wear revealing uniforms (including heels) at some establishments (Bayard de Volo, 2003;Matulewicz, 2015). In these contexts, organizations benefit financially from the sexualization of their employees and expect them to endure at least some sexualized customer interactions as part of the job (Warhurst & Nickson, 2009). ...
Recent high‐profile cases of unwanted sexual attention in the workplace and the vibrancy of the associated #MeToo movement have drawn attention to the need to continue to explore workplace sexual harassment. In this article, we review existing literature on workplace sexual harassment, with an emphasis on the roles of power and structural vulnerability—key factors underlying sexual harassment. We argue for the need to contextualize structural vulnerabilities, with an eye towards uncovering how dimensions of power and vulnerability vary across workplaces, creating different mechanisms contributing to sexual harassment in specific contexts. With this backdrop, we then use the restaurant service industry as an example to illustrate the unique structural vulnerabilities workers are exposed to in this environment. We conclude with a discussion of the importance of continuing to investigate the dynamics of sexual harassment, especially with work that takes an intersectional approach.
... Physically, workers suffer from heavy workload due to long and inhumane hours (Chan, Wan, & Kuok, 2015;Wong & Lam, 2013). Most casinos also require workers to stand for long periods, some even include lifting heavy items such as carrying a tray loaded with free drinks for gamblers (Bayard de Volo, 2003;Tate, 2001). Workers also have to deal with stress from training and career development issues (Chuang & Lei, 2011). ...
Although numerous studies focus on the effects of COVID-19 on various industries such as hospitality and
tourism, only a few studies have focused on its effects on the gaming industry at large. The study uses stress and
coping theories to evaluate the mental health of casino managers and the organizational health of the gaming
industry in Macau. 24 casino managers from six casino groups in Macau were interviewed in depth. Results
demonstrate that economic difficulties, policy restrictions, operational stress, and uncertainty are factors causing
stress in the industry. Both problem-focused and emotional-focused coping strategies were adopted by casino
managers to maintain their wellbeing. Subsequent analyses on these results provide theoretical insights and
practical implications for the industry.
... While Scott's work originally considered such power relations in an agrarian setting in South East Asia, he subsequently expanded this analysis to modern and urban settings. Other scholars have built on this framework to apply infrapolitics to topics as diverse as the gendered aspects of the Italian entertainment industry (Martinez Tagliavia, 2018), a study of an Aboriginal-owned heritage tourism company (Darby, 2008), the working conditions of casino cocktail waitresses in the U.S. (De Volo, 2003), the place of humour and jokes as infrapolitics in Nigeria (Obadare, 2009), scatological tropes on China's internet (Yang et al., 2015), urban gardening as a form of resistance (Baudry, 2012), protest tactics in contemporary Russia (Fr€ ohlich and Jacobsson, 2019). ...
Starting in 1969, the Irish Defence Forces began to send its officers to attend civilian university in University College Galway as part of their professional formation, through the University Service Administrative Complement (USAC) scheme. Using a conceptual framework that combines role theory with James C. Scott’s concept of ‘infrapolitics’, this paper interrogates how or whether full time, commissioned officers negotiate role tensions while attending civilian higher education as part of their professional military formation. Role theory would suggest that those who are expected to maintain two roles simultaneously, i.e. as student and military officer, would be expected to experience ‘role strain’. This paper illustrates instead that student officers deploy a variety of infrapolitical tactics and strategies, thus creating an alternative route to negotiating role tensions and anxiety.
In the United States, work is a central institution that reflects and reproduces gender hierarchies that organize social institutions, interactions, and ideologies across social life. Through an ethnographic study of New Orleans‐area bartenders, this paper analyzes the everyday/every‐night experiences of women bartenders to understand how gender relations map onto women’s identity construction projects through their occupational role. I argue that women’s identity negotiation is constructed in relationship to gender hegemonies that produce female bartenders as pariah femininities outside the protections of respectable femininity. Sexual harassment, fetishization, and double standards are systematic forms of heteronormative punishment that ensure women bartenders remain feminized workers in masculinized workplaces. While women actively refashion retaliatory punishment into an affirmative self‐identity: the rebel barmaid, this study finds that through gender essentialist and individualist frames, the rebel barmaid falls short of revolutionary potential.
This chapter takes a spatial approach to urban surveillance of women’s clothing in Iran through a historical overview of hijab regulations after the 1979 revolution and the threat of automating such controlling measures. The research defines the forceful implementation of compulsory hijab as a case of spatial injustice, since it regulates, bars, and controls women’s access to public spaces. It applies the theory of abnormal justice to analyze the intersection of spatial justice with other forms of injustice such as gender-based injustice and, consequently, locates the discussion on spatial justice in a broader political framework. This critical intersectional approach to spatial justice is reflected in two examples of resistance against compulsory hijab. The first example, Gershad, is an application that uses collective mapping to locate moral police patrols, and the second is a campaign that encourages women to reclaim the public space by strolling without hijab, recording possible reactions and confrontations, and sharing the footage on social media. A thematic analysis of the social media posts by both projects demonstrates not only a strong interconnection with other forms of activism but also a manifest stance against spatial injustices of everyday life. Confronting social control through small data projects also highlights that it is not only control mechanisms that have extended their domain to virtual spaces but also resistance and opposition against such oppressive measures.
Cities in the global South are being “datafied”, with increasing presence of digital data of all kinds: from mobile phones, remote sensing, ground-level sensors, community mapping, etc. This has created growing interest in “data justice” in urban locations: the way in which data intersects with questions of social justice – who wins and who loses from the new digital datasets and data flows, and the relationship of data to power and inequality; particularly for those already marginalised in the physical city.
This collection presents ten case studies of urban data justice; analysing from a data justice/rights or critical data perspective an initiative or phenomenon relating to growing availability and use of data in urban areas in the global South. These case studies – covering Latin America, Africa and Asia – highlight themes of increasing resistance to datafication among marginalised urban communities; of the way in which social processes and structures shape datafication and its impacts; and of the need for longer-term, qualitative actions that truly listen to the concerns and priorities of these communities.
The collection also outlines a future research agenda on urban data justice in the global South.
Employers are increasingly using information and communication technologies to monitor employees. Such workplace surveillance is extensive in the United States, but its experience and potential consequences differ across groups based on gender. We thus sought to identify whether self‐reported male and female employees differ in the extent to which they find the use of workplace cameras equipped with facial recognition technology (FRT) acceptable, and examine the role of privacy attitudes more generally in mediating views on workplace surveillance. Using data from a nationally representative survey conducted by the Pew Research Center, we find that women are much less likely than men to approve of the use of cameras using FRT in the workplace. We then further explore whether men and women think differently about privacy, and if perceptions of privacy moderate the relationship between gender and approval of workplace surveillance. Finally, we consider the implications of these findings for privacy and surveillance via embedded technologies, and how the consequences of surveillance and technologies like FRT may be gendered. Note: We recognize evaluations based on a binary definition of gender are invariably partial and exclusionary. As we note in our discussion of the study's limitations, we were constrained by the survey categories provided by Pew.
It is well known that players’ engagements are often long-lived and important to their sense of self, but political agency is normally not a central theme in leisure studies. In this chapter, three case illustrations demonstrate how specialized players, if they feel called upon, are able to transform their activity into a political instrument. Their involvements are contingent but not negligible. It occurs as contentious politics, infra-politics, or micro-politics. The political voices coming from leisure worlds may not be very different from those coming from social movements. Both dispatch values, information, knowledge, and loyalties across territorial borders, and practical activity and ideology amplify each other within both worlds, although activity usually comes first and has the highest priority when people play.
Kitchens takes us into the robust, overheated, backstage world of the contemporary restaurant. In this rich, often surprising portrait of the real lives of kitchen workers, Gary Alan Fine brings their experiences, challenges, and satisfactions to colorful life. A new preface updates this riveting exploration of how restaurants actually work, both individually and as part of a larger culinary culture.
The agenda of contemporary western feminism focuses on equal participation in work and education, reproductive rights, and sexual freedom. But what does feminism mean to the women of rural India who work someone else's fields, young Thai girls in the sex industry in Bangkok, or Filipino maids working for wealthy women in Hong Kong? In this 1998 book, Chilla Bulbeck presents a bold challenge to the hegemony of white, western feminism in this incisive and wide-ranging exploration of the lived experiences of 'women of colour'. She examines debates on human rights, family relationships, sexuality, and notions of the individual and community to show how their meanings and significance in different parts of the world contest the issues which preoccupy contemporary Anglophone feminists. She then turns the focus back on Anglo culture to illustrate how the theories and politics of western feminism are viewed by non-western women.