Housekeeping Agents Transformed by "Desire": From Small Town Women to Pursuing a Million-Dollar Annual Salary - Huxiu#
#Omnivore
Highlights#
Commission system, experience system, and recognition system ⤴️ ^99bd7299
The transformation of housekeeping agents by "desire" shifts them from a "realistic desire" based on earning a living and their identity as small-town women to an "ideal desire" centered on a million-dollar annual salary and middle-class life in big cities. In this process, housekeeping agents actively work and form a cultural explanation to rationalize the gap between reality and ideals, achieving self-exploitation. ⤴️ ^c81539ae
This is what most companies need
Another form of labor control characterized by "consent" not only does not reduce the autonomy of workers but also grants them a certain degree of work autonomy, even basing it on the autonomy of workers as a foundation for capital appreciation. ⤴️ ^a630961a
"Desire" becomes a form of labor control, meaning that workers' "desires" are utilized by capital, leading them to "engage in unpaid or low-paid work in the present, hoping for job opportunities or substantial returns in the future." ⤴️ ^0eb2affe
Another way to say "drawing a pie"?
The institutional transformation of desire ⤴️ ^642cbb5a
First, the company transforms the "desire" formed by housekeeping agents outside the workplace into another "desire" that benefits the company's capital accumulation through a series of institutional designs. ⤴️ ^122f3475
Second, during the "institutional transformation of desire," influenced by the company's institutional arrangements, housekeeping agents construct a set of cultural explanations. ⤴️ ^d5bf9026
The leadership of JH Company often provides agents with free experience opportunities, mainly including issuing experience vouchers, discount coupons, cash vouchers, or directly inviting them to participate in certain consumption activities favored by Shanghai's middle class, such as free visits to the most popular music bars, cinemas, billiard rooms, massage parlors, and beauty salons in Shanghai. These free experience opportunities provided by the company are novel and unprecedented for housekeeping agents from small towns. ⤴️ ^9871846c
This is similar to Ma Hongliang taking new employees to a high-end restaurant costing 2000 per person
First, the company guides agents to use trendy and fun apps like Xiaohongshu that they had never used in their small towns, recommending that agents follow popular users on these apps who teach makeup and daily dressing. The company manager also intentionally discusses related content with them in daily life, guiding agents to use the brand-name cosmetics and clothing recommended by these users. Second, the company organizes group purchases of brand-name cosmetics, offering slightly lower prices than department stores to stimulate agents' purchasing desires. Housekeeping agent Jessica mentioned that these experience systems from the company had a significant impact on her. ⤴️ ^157a5af2
Awesome, isn't this just like enticing someone to do drugs? It's hard to go from luxury to frugality; once you're hooked, you can't change, and those who can't get hooked are eliminated. This logic is incredible.
The company has specifically set up a class to cultivate agents' new lifestyles. The trainer, Kate, said in this class:
"To truly become the master of this city and the master of your salary, you should try new lifestyles and integrate into the city. What is a good lifestyle? It is learning to be exquisite, buying some 'useless' things that can make you happy... Only by truly changing your lifestyle does earning money become meaningful." ⤴️ ^24597823
Housekeeping Agents Transformed by "Desire": From Small Town Women to Pursuing a Million-Dollar Annual Salary#
, Editor: Huang Yanhua, Original Title: "Creating 'Desire': The Autonomy of Agents and Labor Control - A Case Study of JH Housekeeping Company in Shanghai," Cover Image from: Visual China
This article studies the issue of labor control among housekeeping agents. Through an examination of Shanghai's JH Housekeeping Company, the author finds that the company transforms the "desire" of housekeeping agents from a "realistic desire" based on earning a living and their identity as small-town women into an "ideal desire" centered on a million-dollar annual salary and middle-class life in big cities through the commission system, experience system, and recognition system. In this process, housekeeping agents actively work and form a cultural explanation to rationalize the gap between reality and ideals, achieving self-exploitation.
• 💼 The labor control of housekeeping agents has been overlooked; this article reveals how agents are transformed into pursuing million-dollar salaries as housekeeping white-collar workers.
• 🏢 The company transforms the "desire" of housekeeping agents through the commission system, experience system, and recognition system to achieve labor control.
• 🌟 Agents connect their hard work with an ideal future through cultural explanations, actively working and achieving self-exploitation.
Through an examination of Shanghai's JH Housekeeping Company, this article proposes the "institutional transformation of desire," analyzing how housekeeping companies transform the "realistic desire" of housekeeping agents based on earning a living, being content with a modest life, and their identity as small-town women into an "ideal desire" centered on a million-dollar annual salary, middle-class life in big cities, and the identity of housekeeping white-collar workers, thus achieving labor control. In this process, agents endure the hardships of current labor, work actively, and form a cultural explanation to rationalize the gap between reality and ideals, achieving self-exploitation.
I. The Problem: The Mystery of Labor Among Housekeeping Agents
Since the reform and opening up, with the development of markets in various industries and the continuous refinement of labor division, the profession of "agent" has emerged as an "intermediary" to reduce transaction costs between buyers and sellers. Industries such as real estate, insurance, entertainment, and housekeeping have gradually established work models based on agents. Especially in the housekeeping service industry, where the number of practitioners is continuously increasing, a "brokerage system" organizational structure has formed in recent years.
In 2018, the operating scale of China's housekeeping service industry reached 576.2 billion yuan, with a total workforce exceeding 30 million. Most housekeeping companies operate in the form of service intermediaries, using the brokerage system, where housekeeping agents connect clients with housekeeping workers, sign contracts, and manage after-sales services based on specific orders.
In the housekeeping labor market, housekeeping workers sign tripartite service agreements with clients and housekeeping companies, but due to the high mobility of housekeeping workers who often register with multiple companies, coupled with a lack of trust and information asymmetry between clients and housekeeping workers, matching often fails. To facilitate matching, housekeeping companies of various sizes have employed "housekeeping agents" to connect clients and housekeeping workers, and both clients and housekeeping workers increasingly rely on the work of agents. However, the labor of housekeeping agents, who play an important role in the housekeeping labor market, has not received sufficient attention from academia.
Regarding the labor of housekeeping agents, the author has noticed a mystery, namely, the stark contrast between agents' desire for a better future and their arduous working conditions. On one hand, there is a prevalent beautiful imagination among housekeeping agents that "as long as you work hard, you can achieve a million-dollar salary and a middle-class life in a big city"; on the other hand, they often describe the hardships of reality, reflected in five aspects:
(1) Long working hours.
(2) High emotional pressure, having to be both "sales" and "after-sales service," while also bearing emotional pressure from both housekeeping workers and clients.
(3) High labor intensity, responsible for multiple orders simultaneously.
(4) Ambiguous career development paths.
(5) Unstable income, with the same agent's monthly income fluctuating unpredictably; there are also significant differences in income between different agents.
This inevitably raises the author's question: faced with the gap between the arduous working conditions and the beautiful future "desire," why do most housekeeping agents work actively instead of choosing to give up?
To answer the above questions, this article starts from the management system of Shanghai's JH Housekeeping Company and its impact on housekeeping agents, analyzing the reasons behind agents' active work through the framework of "institutional transformation of desire." First, it analyzes how the company transforms agents' "desires" through a series of institutional arrangements. Second, it analyzes the effects of the "institutional transformation of desire." Under the influence of the company's transformation, housekeeping agents construct a set of cultural explanations that connect the hardships of their work situation with their ideal future, thus continuously generating work motivation and creating surplus value for the company, achieving control over their own labor.
II. Literature Review and Theoretical Framework
(A) The Autonomy of Agents and Overlooked Labor Control
In labor sociology research, labor control is an important perspective for analyzing work motivation, but the issue of labor control among agents is often overlooked. Agents are seen as "intermediaries" that facilitate the establishment of contracts between buyers and sellers in the market, accelerating the matching speed between them, thus saving transaction costs and increasing market transaction frequency, characterized by emotionality, intermediary nature, and high autonomy. While emotionality has received widespread attention in academia, the intermediary nature and high autonomy have received less attention, leading to neglect of the control issues in agents' labor.
Intermediary nature refers to agents' income coming from both buyers and sellers of goods or services, consisting of a base salary plus commission. This blurs the labor-capital relationship between the company and agents, making the company's control over agents' labor invisible. Research on real estate and insurance agents has found that their work also possesses high autonomy. This high autonomy often leads people to forget the existence of labor control.
However, Braverman argues that all labor power has uncertainty, and companies adopt various labor control strategies to ensure the production of surplus value, facilitating the smooth transfer of labor power into products or services. Therefore, even in the highly autonomous labor of agents, there exist hidden labor control strategies.
(B) "Desire" and Labor Control in Agents' Work
Regarding the relationship between autonomy and labor control, traditional labor research has two views: labor control characterized by "coercion" sees workers' autonomy as an uncertain factor in production, using various management and techniques to reduce workers' autonomy. ==Another form of labor control characterized by "consent" not only does not reduce workers' autonomy but also grants them a certain degree of work autonomy, even basing it on workers' autonomy as a foundation for capital appreciation.== These two forms of labor control, which have different relationships with work autonomy, have long existed in workplaces.
However, the above two views cannot fully explain the forms of labor control in agents' work. First, the high autonomy and intermediary nature of agents' labor blur the labor-capital relationship between companies and agents, rendering capital authority invisible. Second, the emotionality of agents' labor blurs the boundaries between labor and non-labor contexts. The dual ambiguity of labor-capital relationships and workplace boundaries makes the "consent" that originally focused on internal workplace labor control unable to accurately explain the work motivation behind agents' arduous conditions and beautiful expectations.
Scholars have pointed out that Braverman's concept of "consent" overlooks factors outside the workplace, making it difficult to explain labor control forms with blurred workplace boundaries. In today's internet age, where labor boundaries are increasingly blurred, more high-autonomy labor is no longer subordinate to or limited by specific workplaces. For these cross-workplace, high-autonomy labor control issues, Duffy proposed a new form of labor control - "desire."
"Desire" refers to an urgent wish, a vision and pursuit of a future state, a set of concepts about future states that individuals possess, characterized by five aspects:
First, it reflects individuals' tendencies, preferences, needs, and cravings, forming an important part of the self;
Second, it focuses on the future, representing individuals' imagination and expectations for the future, often being unrealistic or even irrational or fantastical;
Third, it includes both material aspects such as income and lifestyle, as well as non-material aspects such as identity recognition and moral imagination of "what is good/happy";
Fourth, it points to the future but influences individuals' current behavior, guiding individuals to take corresponding actions toward the envisioned future;
Fifth, it changes with shifts in social environment and social experiences.
==When "desire" becomes a form of labor control,== ==it means that workers' "desires" are utilized by capital, leading them to "engage in unpaid or low-paid work in the present, hoping for job opportunities or substantial returns in the future."== Duffy calls this "desire labor," emphasizing that capital manipulates workers' imaginations of future material and non-material lives, driving them to invest their time as a form of investment in the future, enduring present pain through imagined future returns.
As a form of labor control, "desire" contrasts with "coercion" and "consent" in five aspects.
First, it emphasizes that workers' innermost "cravings" are utilized and transformed by capital, rather than being forced to obey or actively recognize capital authority.
Second, it emphasizes labor control based on work autonomy.
Third, unlike "coercion" and "consent" occurring within the workplace, "desire" emphasizes that labor control does not necessarily form within the workplace; it can arise and function outside of it.
Fourth, unlike "coercion" and "consent," which emphasize workers' perception of current labor conditions, "desire" emphasizes workers' unrealistic imaginations and expectations of future labor and living conditions.
Fifth, "consent" emphasizes workers' clear awareness of authority and rational recognition of domination, while "desire" can detach from reality, becoming a future imagination that lacks a realistic basis, is irrational, and lacks clear awareness.
(C) Analytical Framework of This Article: Institutional Transformation of Desire
Although "desire" is more suitable than "coercion" or "consent" for analyzing the labor control of agents with blurred work boundaries, Duffy's analytical framework still has limitations for analyzing this labor control mechanism. Duffy overlooks that workers' "desires" can change with social environments. Agents may have different "desires" before and after entering the company, and capital may also transform agents' "desires" through a series of systems to meet its needs.
To better analyze how capital implements labor control by transforming workers' "desires," this article integrates Haller and Miller's distinction between "realistic desire" and "ideal desire" into Duffy's framework, proposing the "institutional transformation of desire."
The "institutional transformation of desire" includes two aspects. ==First, the company transforms the "desire" formed by housekeeping agents outside the workplace into another "desire" that benefits the company's capital accumulation through a series of institutional designs.== This article draws on Haller and Miller's classification of "realistic desire/ideal desire" to distinguish between the different "desires" of housekeeping agents inside and outside the workplace. The distinction is reflected in aspects such as source, cause, rationality, and the gap with reality.
The cause of realistic desire is that individuals' needs are unmet due to a lack of economic resources, thus relying on the future; it is often a rational plan made by individuals after careful consideration, with a small gap from reality. The cause of ideal desire, on the other hand, is that individuals' desires or cravings are stimulated by capital or other social factors after their economic resources are sufficient and basic living needs are met; it results from external stimuli rather than rational calculations, possessing irrational characteristics, and is an imagination detached from reality with a significant gap from it. This article analyzes how the "realistic desire" of housekeeping agents before entering the company is transformed into an "ideal desire" beneficial for the company's capital accumulation through a series of institutional designs.
==Second, during the "institutional transformation of desire," influenced by the company's institutional arrangements, housekeeping agents construct a set of cultural explanations.== This set of explanations provides rationality for the significant gap between the harsh reality of housekeeping agents and their beautiful future, becoming an important source of motivation for their work.
III. Research Methods and Data Sources
The materials for this article mainly come from the authors' 19-month field study of a medium-sized housekeeping company, JH, in Shanghai. JH Housekeeping Company, established in 2012, operates mainly in Shanghai, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, with 12 stores and 100,000 registered housekeeping workers. The company primarily provides services such as infant care, postpartum care, early childhood education, live-in nannies, and housekeeping assistants, and offers ten types of training programs for housekeeping services, including advanced infant care, maternal and infant care, and Montessori early education.
Although it is of medium size, JH Company has a high level of client recognition and significant influence in the Shanghai Family Service Industry Association. The headquarters of JH Company has eight departments, including the General Office, Enrollment Department, Training Department, Agent Department, Marketing Department, Finance Department, Administrative Personnel Department, and Quality Management Department, with a total of 50 employees. Among them, the Agent Department has the largest number of employees, totaling 20.
All 20 housekeeping agents at JH Company are formal employees who have signed labor contracts. Their ages range from 30 to 42, with an average age of 35; 1 is unmarried, 19 are married, and 17 have children. Among them, 4 have rural household registration but have long lived in towns or county-level cities due to their husbands' non-agricultural household registration; the other 16 have non-agricultural household registration and live in county towns or county-level cities in second and third-tier cities.
Since they have lived and worked in county towns or towns for a long time before becoming agents, they exhibit characteristics of small-town women. 90% of them own houses in towns or county cities but come to Shanghai to work for their families. Unlike housekeeping workers, they have a higher proportion of non-agricultural household registration, are younger, and have higher educational levels. All housekeeping agents in this study have at least a high school diploma, with more than half holding a college degree. Before becoming housekeeping agents, 60% of them worked in sales in their hometowns, while 40% worked as civil servants or clerks.
From November 2020 to June 2022, the second author entered JH Housekeeping Company for field research through a friend's introduction, collecting the company's rules and regulations, work content materials, new employee training materials, and writing extensive field notes. Additionally, the authors interviewed 35 staff members from the company, including 3 managers, 2 trainers, all 20 housekeeping agents, and 10 housekeeping workers.
During the field research at JH Housekeeping Company, the second author observed the work processes of housekeeping agents daily, including obtaining and assessing client needs, recruiting, screening, and matching housekeeping workers, arranging interviews for housekeeping workers, assisting in contract signing, and coordinating conflicts between housekeeping workers and clients after entering homes, among other tasks. In addition to observations, the authors collected extensive materials from agents' social circles and daily living spaces, conducting interviews of no less than one hour with each of them. Furthermore, the two authors participated in various gatherings with the agents after obtaining their consent, collecting various types of materials.
IV. Becoming a Housekeeping Agent: The Realistic Desires of Small Town Women
As mentioned above, the housekeeping agents at JH Company are all small-town women who have long lived in towns or county-level cities. They often describe their lives in small towns using terms related to resource scarcity, such as "too poor" and "unable to live a good life," and express their "desire" to come to Shanghai as "earning a living for the family" and "being content with a modest life."
32-year-old Lili and her husband are both small civil servants in their hometown, but she believes that their combined monthly salary of 2000 yuan makes her "never see the end of life... really too poor, just want to make money." After getting married and having children, the family's expenses increased, and the small house they bought in the town was no longer enough for her, her child, and her parents to live together. Lili heard from friends and relatives that the housekeeping industry in Shanghai "can make money," so she thought of trying her luck in Shanghai, just to earn money for her child and parents, "to earn a big house in her hometown."
35-year-old Xiaomei used to sell cosmetics in her town, but with two young children in kindergarten, the expenses were too high, and she was losing money. Hearing friends say that the housekeeping industry in Shanghai "makes a lot of money," Xiaomei came to Shanghai to become an agent, hoping to improve her family's realistic life in her hometown and live a "modestly comfortable" life. She described her "desire" to come to Shanghai:
"I used to sell cosmetics (in my hometown), which looked glamorous, working in a high-end store every day, but it was not at all; the salary was low and exhausting. I have two children and need to make money; things for kids are very expensive now, and the bilingual kindergarten in my hometown costs ten thousand yuan a year. Without money, you really can't live a better life, and I still need to save for my children's tuition and buy a house. I heard that the housekeeping industry is particularly profitable, so I came to give it a try."
Yangzi, Jenny, and Mary also cited earning a living for their families as their reason for coming to Shanghai, claiming that their imagination of the future was "modestly comfortable." Their stories showcase the realistic characteristics of small-town women's "desires." First, the relatively scarce economic resources and unmet reproductive needs related to housing, childcare, medical care, and elderly care among small-town women have stimulated their "desire" to leave their hometowns to earn a living in big cities. In an overly marketized society, goods or services that meet all reproductive needs of workers are no longer provided as state welfare but must be purchased with money. The only way for workers to obtain reproductive security is through individual labor, ensuring survival for themselves and their families through "earning money."
Second, the desire to leave home is closely linked to their real-life experiences as small-town women and is a consideration they have made after careful thought. Third, this imagination of a "modestly comfortable" future does not differ significantly from their realistic lives in small towns, aiming to meet their reproductive needs stimulated by their social status as "small-town women."
The above three points indicate that the "desire" that motivates small-town women to become housekeeping agents has the characteristics of realistic desire. It can be seen that the realistic desire of small-town women consists of earning a living for the family, being content with a modest life, and the identity of small-town women, all closely linked to the moral imagination of working to earn money and meeting the reproductive needs of small-town families.
However, the realistic desires of small-town women before becoming housekeeping agents are insufficient to meet the needs of the company's infinite capital accumulation. To gain more profit, the company needs housekeeping agents to bring in as much income as possible. Fearing that agents would become complacent after satisfying these desires, the company designed a series of systems to transform their realistic desires into "ideal desires" detached from small-town life and the reproductive needs of small-town families, thus making them work more actively and endure the endless work of excessive hours and emotional burdens to create more profits for the company.
V. From "Realistic" to "Ideal": The Institutional Transformation of Desire
(A) Commission System and Income Instability
One of the systems the company uses to transform the realistic desires of small-town women is the commission wage system. The commission system causes agents' wages to fluctuate monthly, and the company utilizes this instability to romanticize and idealize the possibilities of a beautiful future, convincing agents of this possibility. The commission system is determined by the intermediary nature of agents' work.
The income of housekeeping agents consists of two parts: a base salary and a commission. This compensation method causes agents' wages to fluctuate significantly. Sometimes agents work hard for a month without securing any business, only receiving a base salary of 3000 yuan; at other times, they suddenly secure a good deal, earning a monthly income of 50,000 yuan.
According to the author's statistical analysis of the income of 20 agents, their monthly wages fluctuate between 3000 and 30,000 yuan. The annual income of agents varies greatly, with no regular pattern; based on statistical data and estimates, annual income ranges from 80,000 to 300,000 yuan. The monthly and annual income of the same agent can vary significantly, and there is also a considerable income disparity among different agents. Among the 20 housekeeping agents observed by the author, one had an annual income of 300,000 yuan, one had 200,000 yuan, six had 90,000 yuan, and the remaining 12 had annual incomes ranging from 110,000 to 150,000 yuan.
The income instability brought about by the commission system makes it difficult to predict earnings, leading to potential discrepancies in income expectations. This has a dual aspect: from a negative perspective, it signifies risk; from a positive perspective, it also signifies opportunity.
The housekeeping company avoids discussing the "unstable" risk aspect, instead highlighting the positive aspects of instability through various positive narratives, encouraging agents to form optimistic expectations detached from reality. Manager Sofina constantly emphasizes in daily morning meetings that "striving," "dreams," and "hard work" will bring "opportunities," always leading agents to shout, "If there are no conditions, create conditions... Only through hard work can we seize the first place, seize opportunities, and achieve a million-dollar salary!"
These slogans establish a simple causal relationship between personal effort and unlimited wage growth, encouraging agents to work hard to realize their infinite possibilities for the future. Due to the monthly fluctuations in income, with no upper limit, it creates the illusion that income can rise indefinitely. Sofina builds a relationship between personal ability and high income expectations through these optimistic narratives, stimulating agents' work motivation and transforming their "desire" from "earning a living for the family" to "a million-dollar salary."
The company also utilizes various symbols to highlight the positive aspects of instability, encouraging agents to rely on "luck" and seize "opportunities" for wealth. For example, the company creates a strong atmosphere for wealth through decorative items, uniform computer desktop backgrounds, and video recordings of slogans, creating an omnipresent "good luck" aura to help agents believe that with luck, they can achieve their ideal of a million-dollar salary.
The workspace of JH Company agents is filled with various wealth-attracting decorations. From the 50cm tall golden lucky cat at the front desk to the corridor and the long table where agents work, golden lucky cats beckon from every corner, and each employee's workstation has small lucky cats, the God of Wealth, and other decorations like "money will come soon." In total, the company has 25 lucky cats of various shapes. Additionally, the company hangs three "wealth and treasure" Chinese knots. The company also standardizes employees' computer desktop backgrounds, all featuring the phrase "wealth and treasure" accompanied by images of ingots, subtly reinforcing employees' optimistic expectations for high income. Manager Xiao Xu explains that these setups are meant to persuade agents to rely on "luck" and seize "opportunities" to work hard.
"This decoration was bought when we first set up the company; placing it at everyone's position is meant to motivate everyone to create wealth with their own hands, reminding them at all times to attract wealth like the lucky cat."
Under the influence of the wealth-attracting atmosphere and "good luck" aura, agents also tend to use these symbols for self-suggestion, forming unrealistic income expectations. They often pray for "good luck" during chats or daily work. Agent Xiaomai specifically sought a God of Wealth from Putuo Mountain to place next to her computer, and she wipes it with a tissue when she has nothing to do.
"God of Wealth bless me to close high deals... I brought back the God of Wealth to bless me with wealth; this one was blessed by a master from Putuo Mountain, costing hundreds, and I also donated a few hundred as incense money, spending almost six hundred in total, hoping to close a high-priced deal."
In addition to Xiaomai, other agents also coincidentally purchased various "fortune-turning" items, using these symbols to construct positive explanations for their unstable income. They interpret income instability as "luck" and believe that within this instability lies the opportunity to earn a million-dollar salary. Relying on luck is a positive coping strategy people form when facing instability, while optimistic expectations for income detach from reality.
From the above, it can be seen that the commission system makes it difficult for agents to form a clear and accurate understanding of their actual income. The fluctuating income, combined with the company's optimistic narratives, makes it easy for agents to make optimistic predictions about the future and develop speculative mindsets, believing that as long as they work hard and with a bit of luck, they can secure big deals and high income. Under the influence of the commission system and income instability, the realistic desires of housekeeping agents characterized by earning a living for the family gradually shift toward ideal desires characterized by a million-dollar salary.
(B) Experience System and Cultivation of Middle-Class Lifestyles
The second important system through which the company transforms the realistic desires of small-town women into ideal desires is the employee experience system. The employee experience system at JH Company aims to allow agents to experience the consumption culture and lifestyle of the middle class in big cities, thereby stimulating their "desire" for this consumption culture and lifestyle, replacing the consumption culture and lifestyle rooted in small towns. At the same time, the company uses the discourse of "becoming the master" and "pleasing oneself" to change agents' definitions of "a good life," transforming their realistic desires based on small-town consumption culture and lifestyle into ideal desires that detach from their original experiences as small-town women, leaning toward the consumption culture and lifestyle of the middle class in big cities.
==The leadership of JH Company often provides agents with free experience opportunities, mainly including issuing experience vouchers, discount coupons, cash vouchers, or directly inviting them to participate in certain consumption activities favored by Shanghai's middle class, such as free visits to the most popular music bars, cinemas, billiard rooms, massage parlors, and beauty salons in Shanghai. These free experience opportunities provided by the company are novel and unprecedented for housekeeping agents from small towns.==
Agents like Tina, Coco, and Xiaoya mentioned that if it weren't for the free experience opportunities provided by the company, they wouldn't normally participate in these activities. These experiences act like a key, opening the Pandora's box of their "desires," igniting their longing for the consumption and lifestyle of big cities. 30-year-old agent Sophia described how she began to adopt the consumption culture and lifestyle of Shanghai's middle class as her desired lifestyle under the company's employee experience system.
"The vice president invited us for a massage for the first time, saying she would treat us, and I thought: wow, the boss is so nice. I wouldn't go for a massage on my own during my breaks; it felt unnecessary, but I went because she invited me. She told us that money should be used to expose ourselves to new things; money doesn't disappear; it just changes its form to accompany you... Previously, the manager invited me to play billiards with her, and there was a two-person voucher. I felt a bit shy, but I had a lot of fun; I had never played before and plan to go again next time."
The company not only stimulates agents' desires for Shanghai's middle-class lifestyle through the experience system but also cultivates their consumption habits in various ways, inducing them to purchase some consumer goods favored by Shanghai's middle class, reinforcing their desire for middle-class life in Shanghai.
==First, the company guides agents to use trendy and fun apps like Xiaohongshu that they had never used in their small towns, recommending that agents follow popular users on these apps who teach makeup and daily dressing. The company manager also intentionally discusses related content with them in daily life, guiding agents to use the brand-name cosmetics and clothing recommended by these users. Second, the company organizes group purchases of brand-name cosmetics, offering slightly lower prices than department stores to stimulate agents' purchasing desires. Housekeeping agent Jessica mentioned that these experience systems from the company had a significant impact on her.==
"I never paid attention to any users on Xiaohongshu back in my hometown, let alone buy luxury cosmetics like Lancôme, Guerlain, and Dior, but due to the company's recommendations and organized group purchases, I tried them and couldn't stop; I basically spend my entire salary on these brand-name cosmetics every month, always telling myself to earn more money to buy these products."
Finally, the company continuously beautifies the consumption culture and lifestyle of Shanghai's middle class in agent training, encouraging agents to pursue these consumption cultures and lifestyles. The company uses the discourse of "becoming the master" and "pleasing oneself" to legitimize these lifestyles, repeatedly emphasizing their positive significance and value in training. In the training class for agents, ==the company has specifically set up a class to cultivate agents' new lifestyles. The trainer, Kate, said in this class:==
==“To truly become the master of this city and the master of your salary, you should try new lifestyles and integrate into the city. What is a good lifestyle? It is learning to be exquisite, buying some 'useless' things that can make you happy... Only by truly changing your lifestyle does earning money become meaningful.”==
Under the influence of the company's systems, housekeeping agents gradually abandon the lifestyles they had as small-town women, instead planting the seeds of desire for the consumption culture and lifestyle of the middle class in big cities in their hearts. This desire is disconnected from their realistic lives, as their salaries are only enough to occasionally experience these consumption and lifestyles, and cannot support them in truly living the life of a middle-class person in a big city. As an important component of ideal desire, the longing for middle-class life in big cities becomes a significant motivation for their work, encouraging them to work harder and more firmly entangling them in excessive and high-intensity work.
(C) Recognition System and Role Model Narratives
The third important system through which the company transforms the realistic desires of small-town women into ideal desires is the recognition system. Before small-town women become housekeeping agents, the foundation of their realistic desires is their social status and identity as small-town women. Once they become agents, the housekeeping company utilizes various role model narratives and recognition systems to shape their new identity as housekeeping white-collar workers, thereby maintaining their motivation in the face of hard work.
The first type of role model narrative used by the company is drawn from the company's general manager, Ms. Wang. JH Company always has agents learn from Ms. Wang's entrepreneurial story during training, recognition meetings, and daily meetings. The company carefully designs Ms. Wang's story, emphasizing two aspects. First, it highlights Ms. Wang's background as a small-town woman to evoke empathy and identification among agents; second, it emphasizes how Ms. Wang ambitiously achieved class mobility through personal effort, becoming part of Shanghai's upper-middle class, inspiring agents' aspirations and imitation.
Trainer Xiaoya specifically emphasizes Ms. Wang's personal ambitions and the role of her strong desire for wealth and middle-class life, concealing the fact that Ms. Wang gained wealth and class mobility through marriage.
The trainer attempts to convince agents that hard work is the only way for them to achieve class mobility in the future. Additionally, the trainer continuously belittles agents' identities as small-town women, describing their investment in family affairs as traditional and backward, while labeling small-town women's realistic desires for earning a living and being content with a modest life as "small-minded." While belittling the moral imagination and identity recognition of small-town women, the trainer constantly emphasizes how high aspirations and hard work are virtues of urban middle-class white-collar workers, thereby strengthening agents' desires for wealth and class mobility.
The second type of role model narrative utilized by the company is drawn from "performance stars" among agents. This type of role model narrative is also closely linked to the company's recognition system. JH Company ranks agents' performance monthly, selecting the highest-performing agents and allowing them to enjoy star-like treatment through grand recognition ceremonies. The company also selects some performance stars' stories for re-creation, recording videos that are repeatedly played in the training of housekeeping agents. These include Teacher Xiaotian proudly narrating how she became a "housekeeping white-collar worker" in "The Rise of the Working Girl to Housekeeping White-Collar" and Teacher Xiaomai denying her old experiences while looking forward to the new hope of "earning a million a year" in "Agent Stories."
"I am Teacher Xiaomai, from Fuyang, Anhui. I used to run a small shop, worked as a salesperson, and at the front desk, but due to the economic downturn, my husband was aimless, and we couldn't make money, living a tasteless life. Until I came to JH Company and became a housekeeping agent, the professional teachers guided my career, and the continuously increasing salary gave me new hope. Come to JH Company and become a housekeeping agent. I am a housekeeping agent, and I want to earn a million a year!"
In addition to producing videos of "housekeeping white-collar workers," the company also creates the illusion that "everyone can achieve a performance of 70,000 yuan per month" through comparisons and competition among agents during recognition ceremonies. If agents consistently achieve a performance of 70,000 yuan per month, their annual income can reach about 200,000 yuan. However, according to the author's observations, the probability of agents consistently achieving the same high income each month is extremely low. Due to the commission system, agents' incomes are highly unstable, fluctuating significantly, making it nearly impossible to maintain a consistent monthly performance of 70,000 yuan.
However, the recognition ceremony provides performance stars with a temporary sense of superiority and achievement, stimulating their optimistic expectations for their future monthly income, while simultaneously showcasing the achievements of performance stars to other agents, triggering mutual comparison and imitation among agents, and stimulating everyone's optimistic expectations for future income. Every month at the end-of-month award ceremony, such scenes are repeated—managers call on agents to learn from performance stars.
"Congcong achieved a performance of 70,000 yuan this month, completing 15 deals. She hasn't been with the company long, and achieving such results is commendable and serves as a role model for all of us."
At the award ceremony, agent Congcong is invited to speak, encouraging other agents to strive for "a million-dollar salary" and to join her in becoming "housekeeping white-collar workers." Performance stars receive cash bonuses of 500 to 1000 yuan personally awarded by the general manager, taking photos with the general manager under the envious gazes of all agents, and scattering a basket of company-prepared red envelopes worth 50 to 200 yuan among other agents. This continuous and climactic celebration resembles a ritual that reinforces the notion that "everyone can achieve a performance of 70,000 yuan per month," repeatedly persuading all agents present.
In the midst of comparisons, other agents' competitive spirits are stirred, "I only achieved a performance of over 30,000 this month, and she managed 70,000; people really scare me." "I also want such bonuses; I’ll work hard during Double Eleven." Coco expressed that she originally lacked confidence in achieving a monthly income of 20,000 yuan and doubted whether she could earn a million a year, but under the stimulation of performance stars, she began to believe she could achieve the same performance. "When I feel tired, I tell myself to earn money, complete this deal, and the high performance will come; in our line of work, as long as you are willing to put in the effort, you can earn more! If others can earn 100,000, so can I!"
She mentioned that although Qingqing, who could earn 100,000, had already left, she is a legend passed down among agents. However, after interviewing the company's management, the author learned that Qingqing earned 100,000 yuan in her first month by closing several big deals, but her income dropped to only 3,000 yuan in the fourth month, and she subsequently applied for resignation due to excessive psychological pressure. However, the management is unwilling to disclose the full truth to agents, allowing the story of "earning 100,000 a month" to circulate, stimulating agents' optimistic expectations for their monthly income.
Through the role model narratives of Ms. Wang and performance stars, the company alters the moral imagination and identity recognition formed by small-town women's social status and life experiences in their realistic desires, creating a new identity of housekeeping white-collar workers that is detached from small-town life; this new identity is related to the moral imagination of class mobility, reflecting the non-material aspect of ideal desire.
Through the ritual-like recognition ceremonies, the company stimulates performance stars' confidence by providing them with a temporary sense of superiority and achievement, fostering their optimistic expectations for their monthly income, while using comparisons and competition among agents to persuade other agents of the feasibility of achieving a million-dollar salary, accepting the material aspects of ideal desire, and motivating them to work hard like performance stars to achieve a million-dollar salary.
VI. The Subjectivity of Agents in the "Institutional Transformation of Desire"
Through the commission system, experience system, and recognition system, the company transforms agents' original realistic desires characterized by earning a living for the family, being content with a modest life, and their identity as small-town women into ideal desires characterized by a million-dollar salary, middle-class life in big cities, and the identity of housekeeping white-collar workers. The effect of this transformation is that agents actively work, enduring the hardships of their current jobs, thus achieving control over their own labor.
Throughout this process, agents are not passive participants but actively engage in their own transformation, with their subjectivity reflected in two aspects: first, they actively work for their ideal desires, enduring hardships; second, they construct a set of cultural explanations that connect their ideal future with their harsh reality, rationalizing the company's control over their labor.
(A) Ideal Desire and Endurance of "Hardship"
When housekeeping agents are filled with ideal desires, they actively endure the hardships of current labor to realize their "desires," continuously generating income for the company. First, agents need to endure excessively long working hours of 16 to 18 hours daily. There are no boundaries between their work and life; even during the 30-minute lunch break, they must respond to clients on the computer, and all time outside of sleep is occupied by work. They often receive calls from clients or housekeeping workers before sleeping and while showering. Even on days off, they must check their phones and respond to client calls at any time. Most housekeeping agents work continuously for 1 to 3 months without taking breaks. Agent Xiaoke expressed her reason for not taking breaks:
"To achieve more performance, how can I afford to rest? I have never taken a day off since I started working here; even when resting in the dormitory, I keep thinking about my clients and my performance this month, so I simply don't take breaks."
Second, agents endure high emotional and psychological pressure. They are both salespeople and after-sales service providers, needing to provide a significant amount of emotional labor for clients and housekeeping workers. "Comforting the aunt and the client" and "worrying excessively" are how they describe their sales labor. In after-sales service labor, agents become intermediaries between clients and housekeeping workers, coordinating their relationships and resolving disputes. Especially when conflicts arise between housekeeping workers and clients, agents must provide emotional support for both sides. They often become scapegoats, the targets of negative emotions from both sides. In their own words, they feel like "sandwich cookies, poked from both sides."
Additionally, due to the commission and recognition systems, agents constantly bear the psychological pressure of performance expectations and the instability of income. If their performance ranking is low, they tend to blame themselves, feeling guilt and shame. Agent Jenny had a low performance ranking in May, but she did not complain about the company; instead, she motivated herself to work harder. She actively worked until 11 PM every day, reasoning that "sometimes it's not others pushing you, but when you see your colleagues achieving so much, you feel ashamed to go back and sleep."
Third, agents endure a high-intensity work rhythm. To secure as many orders as possible, housekeeping agents must simultaneously act as sales and after-sales service for different orders within a single day, requiring them to quickly switch identities in a short time, resulting in high labor intensity. Under the conditions of excessive hours and high intensity, their physical health is at risk. 80% of agents report having chronic illnesses, such as high blood pressure, eye diseases, cervical spondylosis, and sleep issues. However, agent Mary stated that she continues to work even when ill.
"Recently, I have been feeling pain all over; sitting for too long is uncomfortable... I haven't taken a break... Even when the manager suggests resting, I still don't."
Fourth, agents face ambiguous career development paths. In housekeeping companies, no one can clearly outline the career development path for housekeeping agents, nor is there any relevant training. Housekeeping company managers rarely promote from among agents. The term "housekeeping white-collar worker" is merely an abstract concept created by the company, suggesting the eternal identity of agents as workers.
Fifth, faced with unstable income, agents actively accept positive narratives and optimistically anticipate their future income. As mentioned earlier, their monthly income typically ranges from 3,000 to 30,000 yuan, with occasional instances of earning 50,000 or 100,000 yuan. Agents' monthly income fluctuates significantly, often experiencing situations where last month's income was 30,000 yuan, and the next month it drops to 3,000 yuan. Annual income also varies greatly among individuals, with no regular pattern. This disparity makes it difficult for agents to rationally calculate their income.
Many agents hope to achieve high performance in the following month during low performance periods, and under the company's positive narratives and recognition system, they optimistically believe they can do so. Agent Linda's income over the past three months was 3,000 yuan, 8,000 yuan, and 3,000 yuan, but she attributed these low incomes to "bad luck," believing that as long as she works hard, when luck comes, she will achieve high income.
"Earn money, earn money, complete this deal, and high performance will come; in this line of work, as long as you are willing to put in the effort, you can earn more! Every day I tell myself to keep going... persist."
In reality, if we divide agents' annual income by their estimated fluctuating range and their working hours, we find that their hourly wage ranges from 15 to 45 yuan. Moreover, if they receive complaints from clients, 20% of their income for that month may be deducted. Additionally, the time and emotional labor they invest in after-sales service are unpaid labor. A series of statistical analyses and rational calculations reveal that agents' income is not as rosy as they expect. However, agents do not calculate their income this way; under the influence of the company's systems, they hope for high income from the next deal, maintaining optimistic expectations for their future.
From the above five points, it is evident that agents' ideal desires are the motivation for them to endure current hardships. As a value system different from rational calculations, the unrealistic ideal desires run through agents' sales and after-sales service labor, playing an important role. It allows agents to form a perspective of enduring current hardships while shifting their focus to a beautiful future, and the company utilizes this perspective to implement labor control over agents, ensuring that agents actively participate in the control of their own labor.
(B) Cultural Explanations Connecting Ideal and Reality
Another manifestation of agents actively participating in the transformation of desire is the formation of a cultural explanation that connects the harsh reality with beautiful ideals. In this explanation, elements such as role models, continuous effort, positive thinking, and optimistic expectations work together to help agents build confidence in realizing their ideal desires. Agents use this explanation to persuade themselves to choose active work rather than giving up when faced with the significant gap between ideals and reality. Those agents who cannot form these cultural explanations are filtered out by the company's systems.
According to JH Company's regulations, agents who fail to achieve a minimum monthly performance of 45,000 yuan for three consecutive months will be advised to leave. The company also encourages agents who cannot adapt to this management system to "voluntarily resign." During the author's year of field observation, a few agents were advised to leave or "voluntarily resigned," while most found rationality in the gap between ideals and reality through this cultural explanation.
The first element of the cultural explanation is role models. The company's recognition system and role model narratives have already established "target role models" for agents. Agents see the possibility of rising from small-town women to middle-class individuals in big cities in Ms. Wang's story, and they see the path of reversal from "working girls" to housekeeping white-collar workers in the stories of outstanding agents. At the recognition ceremonies, agents witness the glory and achievements of performance stars, as well as the illusion that "everyone can achieve a performance of 70,000 yuan per month." This series of role model narratives allows agents to see the possibility of achieving future goals amidst harsh realities.
The second element is "continuous effort." Guiding current behavior is one of the connotations of "desire," and the influence of ideal desire on agents' current behavior is reflected not only in their endurance of fluctuating income, excessive working hours, heavy emotional burdens, and labor intensity but also in stimulating their potential, enabling them to find strategies to adapt to harsh realities at work, including finding effective communication templates, obscuring the focal points of conflicts between clients and housekeeping workers, and hiding some information to expedite the matching process, among others. These strategies belong to the "continuous effort" that agents make in reality.
The third element is "positive thinking." In the face of harsh realities, agents draw resources from moral culture, seeking "positive meanings," concluding that "the cruelty of reality is a necessary path to future happiness." They often use famous sayings like "Only by enduring hardships can one rise above others" and "When heaven is about to assign a great responsibility to a person, it must first temper their will" to describe the relationship between their harsh working conditions and ideal desires. Agents believe that harsh realities can enhance their abilities, and these abilities are necessary for helping them reach their ideals.
For example, regarding the communication dilemmas mentioned earlier, agents believe that the communication templates they find during the process of overcoming difficulties reflect their emotional intelligence and communication skills; while the strategies they find to obscure the focal points of conflicts during the resolution of multiple identity conflicts reflect their improvement in interpersonal relationship management skills. Additionally, they believe that they have also enhanced their time management skills during the adjustment process. In summary, agents use "positive thinking" to adjust the gap between ideals and reality, believing that all adjustments bring positive results—such as their "growth" and "enhancement of abilities"—and firmly believing that these positive results will lead them to rewards in the future. Agent Tina's explanation reflects this logic.
"I can't say exactly what it is, but I feel that my abilities have improved compared to before, in terms of thinking and dealing with people. This job really helps people mature and grow. There are all kinds of people; housekeeping workers are at the bottom, while clients are wealthy people, and mutual understanding is essential. The high work intensity also pushes one to improve, which is beneficial. Now, I plan my work and think things through instead of doing things haphazardly; that would be too immature."
The fourth element is "optimistic expectations." In the commission system, the company highlights the positive aspects of instability through positive narratives and symbolic slogans, leading agents to form optimistic expectations for income that are detached from reality. This optimistic expectation is accepted by agents and used to explain various aspects of their lives. They use the satisfaction and sense of achievement gained from "changes that have already occurred" to compensate for the efforts and costs they pay for future happiness. In other words, they establish confidence in "the future will be even better" based on the sweetness they gain from the changes that have already occurred.
These changes that have already occurred are precisely the manifestations of the consumption habits and lifestyles of the middle class in big cities cultivated in them through the company's employee experience system. The satisfaction and sense of achievement agents gain also stem from the temporary superiority they experience from the identity of "housekeeping white-collar workers." When the company's employee experience system and lifestyle cultivation take effect, they also briefly feel the happiness brought by crossing regions and classes. Agent Xiaowu stated that although the work is hard, every time she returns home for the New Year, the compliments from relatives and friends about her appearance bring her immense satisfaction. This satisfaction also reinforces the desire for the consumption and lifestyle of the middle class that the company has instilled in her, making her believe that as long as she works hard, this lifestyle has the potential to be realized in the future.
"The new coat I wore last time I went home made everyone envious; they said I looked very fashionable, which means stylish, something they hadn't seen in my hometown. They said I looked like a Shanghai person, not like a Hubei person. 'Looking like a Shanghai person' is great; who wouldn't want to be a Shanghai person? My sister even asked where I got my hair done, and I said it was done by a stylist in Shanghai, very professional, and this stylist was recommended by the manager. She said Shanghai is great; one should work in Shanghai."
The combination of these four elements creates agents' confidence in realizing their ideal desires for a million-dollar salary, middle-class life in big cities, and the identity of housekeeping white-collar workers, also establishing a connection between agents' harsh working realities and beautiful future imaginations. This cultural explanation reflects agents' active participation in the "institutional transformation of desire" and is also an expression of their subjectivity in connecting harsh realities with beautiful ideals. Through this cultural explanation, the ideal desires transformed by the company's series of institutional designs internalize into their values regarding labor and life. It is based on this value system that agents still choose to work actively in the face of the gap between reality and ideals, helping the company achieve control over their labor.
VII. Conclusion
This article uses the theoretical framework of "institutional transformation of desire" to explore how the realistic desires formed by housekeeping agents around small-town life are transformed by the company's commission system, experience system, and recognition system into ideal desires detached from real life, thus placing them under labor control. The process of transforming desire is also a process of change for agents' "desires," shifting from realistic desires characterized by earning a living for the family, being content with a modest life, and their identity as small-town women to ideal desires characterized by a million-dollar salary, middle-class life in big cities, and the identity of housekeeping white-collar workers.
The distinction between these two "desires" lies in the fact that realistic desire is formed by small-town women before becoming housekeeping agents due to unmet reproductive needs and relative scarcity of economic resources. Whether it is earning a living for the family or being content with a modest life, both are very close to the reality faced by small-town women and are future plans made by them after rational analysis of reality. However, realistic desire aims to meet agents' "needs" before entering the housekeeping company and cannot maximally serve capital appreciation.
To gain more profit, housekeeping companies transform these desires into ideal desires through a series of systems. Ideal desire is an irrational imagination detached from agents' real lives, stimulated by carefully designed systems from the company. Among them, the commission system utilizes income instability, guiding agents' optimistic expectations and speculative mindsets through positive narratives and cultural symbols, forming a desire for a million-dollar salary; the experience system stimulates their longing for this lifestyle by encouraging agents to consume and experience the middle-class life in big cities; the recognition system and role model narratives not only establish target role models for them but also create their identification with the identity of housekeeping white-collar workers through mutual comparison.
These three systems stimulate agents' work motivation, allowing them to invest more enthusiasm in their work under the guidance of ideal desires, thereby better serving capital accumulation. This article also demonstrates how housekeeping agents participate in this transformation process, how they endure the current hardships of work under the guidance of ideal desires, and how they form a cultural explanation to rationalize the gap between reality and ideals, achieving self-exploitation.
As a form of labor control, "desire" is prevalent in agents' labor. Due to the intermediary nature of agents' labor, their dependence on the commission system differs from other laborers using piece-rate and hourly wage systems, while their high autonomy means that their labor control often relies more on manipulating individuals' internal "cravings."
However, compared to real estate and insurance agents, housekeeping agents have two particularities. First, their work includes unpaid after-sales service labor. Real estate and insurance agents sell "goods," and once a property or insurance is sold, their work ends. In contrast, housekeeping agents sell care labor that cannot be separated from housekeeping workers; even after signing contracts, agents must coordinate conflicts between housekeeping workers and clients during the service process, resulting in high work intensity and emotional pressure without compensation. This makes housekeeping agents feel more "mentally exhausted" than real estate and insurance agents, leading companies to rely more on transforming agents' internal "desires" for control.
Second, the housekeeping industry is highly feminized. The proportion of small-town women among housekeeping agents is relatively high. The company's process of creating "desire" utilizes the influence of women's consumption on their lifestyles and identity recognition, cultivating their longing for middle-class life in big cities by allowing them to experience new consumption methods and implementing labor control through the narrative of class ascension associated with the identity of "housekeeping white-collar workers."
Creating "desire" is different from "boss games," "turning hands into heads," and "self-as-enterprise" labor. The premise of entrepreneurial myths is economic take-off and the existence of numerous upward mobility opportunities in society; some workers may indeed become "bosses"; the possibility for "self-as-enterprise" laborers like engineers to realize their aspirations is also high. However, agents find it challenging to truly achieve a million-dollar salary and live a middle-class life in big cities.
The ideal desires created by the company are unrealistic, existing only in the imaginative visions of the future, aimed at making agents endure current hardships. The creation of "desire" leverages the cravings and moral imaginations of beauty/happiness within people, functioning even in declining economic and social environments.
Finally, the "institutional transformation of desire" reflects a common labor phenomenon faced by people today: the values and concepts about future states that reflect individual tendencies, preferences, and needs are unconsciously utilized or reshaped by capital, thus serving the proliferation of capital. In today's society, capital widely influences all aspects of social life and shapes people's labor ethics and moral imaginations regarding beauty/happiness.
Duffy argues that "desire" is significantly related to the ideology of the entire social capital accumulation logic; under the influence of this logic, the costs and risks in reality are transferred to workers, with few succeeding, and most workers becoming cheap labor. By utilizing the uncertainty between the present and the future, capital can continuously obtain cheap labor and surplus value by reshaping people's cognition. Furthermore, this consciousness logic of capital accumulation also continuously erodes people's daily lives.
Belant proposes that in Western societies, the new neoliberal principles of the market have gradually infiltrated all aspects of people's social lives, leading to a form of "cruel optimism" in people's work and lives, where individuals alleviate current pain in work or life through aspirations for future self-development, responding to current instability and uncertainty by investing in their human capital.
This way of enduring current work or life pain through longing for a beautiful future may not effectively improve people's current living conditions and the inequalities in social realities; rather, it may provide legitimacy for the harsh conditions of the present and the inequalities in reality, leading people to accept capital control in market society. The "institutionalized desire labor" proposed in this article provides a tool for analyzing these power relations and controls, offering a new possibility for reflecting on people's work and lives in today's society.