In many ethnographic contexts, how people present themselves—through clothing, posture, speech, online profiles, or interior décor—is far from superficial. These acts of self-styling often involve careful, strategic labor aimed at navigating power, gaining recognition, or imagining alternative futures. This lesson explores the concept of aesthetic labor: the effort people put into crafting appearances, affect, and spaces in ways that signal competence, belonging, or aspiration.
In the setting of a high-end retail store, Witz et al. (2003) show that employees don’t just sell clothes—they embody a branded ideal. Their bodies and behaviors are meticulously scripted: workers are instructed on where to stand, how to greet customers, and even how to modulate their voices. Managers operate like directors, enforcing what they call a “map of manoeuvre.” Even minor acts of self-expression, such as changing one's hairstyle, require approval. In this retail store, gendered “model” archetypes prescribe specific modes of dress, movement, and affect. Though this may appear extreme, in many similar workplaces people routinely toggle between performances. On the “frontstage,” they smile, glide, and gesture according to the script; on the “backstage,” they slouch, curse, or joke with colleagues—what Goffman (1959) famously called the performance of everyday life.
Aesthetic labor, however, is not confined to retail or other formal service settings. It happens all the time and is entangled with broader structures of race, class, gender, and geography, which shape what kinds of selves are legible, desirable, or even possible. Choosing the right shoes for a job interview, curating a social media feed, or preparing a room for visiting elders are all everyday acts that reveal how belonging and aspiration are lived through material and embodied practice. These performances are also shaped by constraint: the limits of financial resources, the pressures of local norms, or the weight of inherited expectations.
Absence, too, matters. What is not worn, not shown, not said, or not owned can be just as revealing as what is. Aesthetic labor frequently unfolds under conditions of lack—of means, access, recognition, or time. These absences are not just structural but affective: they are experienced, managed, and sometimes concealed. In ethnographic writing, attending to absence is not a sign of analytical failure but a source of insight. Gaps in narrative, silences in interviews, or the conspicuous absence of certain objects or styles can signal exclusion, stigma, or unarticulated longing. Writing such absences requires sensitivity to the politics of visibility, and a recognition that what is invisible may still be doing consequential social work.
Horst and Miller (2006: 62–63), for instance, show that in early 2000s Jamaica, cell phones became potent tools for aesthetic labor. For schoolgirls, an outdated or bulky phone could threaten their social standing, compelling them to hide rather than display it. A sleek, high-end phone, by contrast, became a marker of status, desirability, and symbolic capital. Ringtones served as another site of self-curation: classical music or Christian tones distanced users from the “immoral” associations of dancehall, while personalized tones signaled affective hierarchies—a sour tune for an ex, a dancehall beat for a close friend. These examples illustrate how everyday technologies become sites for gendered and classed performances, revealing how social navigation is aesthetic as much as strategic.
To capture aesthetic labor ethnographically, descriptive writing must attend closely to visual, material, and affective cues. This includes not only what people wear or display but how they move, sit, speak, and arrange their environments. Instead of writing, “She dressed professionally,” consider: “Her stiff-collared white blouse was buttoned to the throat, but the frayed hem of her sleeve—chewed in private stress—hinted at hours unpaid.” Here, the surface is not just decorative; it carries narrative weight.
Another useful technique is to write through objects. Attending to how things are cleaned, maintained, or positioned can evoke the labor embedded in aspiration. A gold-plated watch—fake but meticulously polished—might be a “dignity prop,” expressing not deception but defiance. Similarly, writing the mundane as meaningful—how someone folds a shirt, styles hair, or sets a dinner table—can surface the emotional and political stakes of everyday self-presentation.
Writing aesthetic labor also demands reflexive awareness. The risk of overinterpreting symbols is real, especially when certain styles or choices are read solely through the lens of lack or deviance. Preparation work is often invisible: the time spent ironing clothes, editing a selfie, or selecting a ringtone may go unspoken but should not go unnoticed. Ethical challenges also arise. Aesthetic choices may reflect stigmatized identities or contested affiliations. Writing about them demands care: not aestheticizing poverty or romanticizing resilience, but tracing the conditions and costs of performance.
Ultimately, writing aesthetic labor ethnographically is about making visible the work of becoming visible. It asks us to attend to surfaces not as shallow, but as dense sites of meaning, where social hierarchies are negotiated, aspirations take form, and dignity is both performed and at stake.
- Witz, A., Warhurst, C., & Nickson, D. (2003). The labour of aesthetics and the aesthetics of organization. Organization, 10(1), 33–54.
- Goffman, E. (1959). The presentation of self in everyday life. Anchor Books.
- Horst, H. A., & Miller, D. (2006). The cell phone: An anthropology of communication. Berg.
Focus
Represent how people curate selves, objects, and spaces.
Learning Goals
- Recognize aesthetic labor as socially and economically meaningful.
- Reflect on how images, clothing, or style convey aspiration and constraint.
Activities
- Analyze an ethnographic account for how aesthetic details (clothing, posture, visual presentation) signal aspiration or negotiation.
- Write a short vignette describing a moment in which someone prepared themselves or a space for an audience. What was at stake?
- Discussion: How can you write about appearance without flattening it into stereotype or spectacle?