Senior Lecturer in Sociology of Work and Employment

Contact Details

• Tel:  +44 (0)116 252 5647
• Email: pb222@le.ac.uk
• Office: Room 607, Level 6, Ken Edwards Building
• Office Hours: Appointments via email

Biography

Paul joined the School of Management in 2011 having previously taught at Manchester Metropolitan University and the Open University. Prior to this he was a researcher and speech writer for the Union of Shop, Distributive and Allied Workers in Manchester. He studied at the College of St. Mark and St. John, Plymouth and the University of Leeds.

Academic Roles

• Editorial board member, Work, Employment and Society
• Associate Editor, International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy
• Visiting Research Fellow, Manchester Metropolitan University Business School

Research Interests

Paul’s principal research interests are in debates on emotional labour, subjectivity, labour process theory and the sociology of service work. He is particularly interested in the interdependence of physical, intellectual and emotional labour power, especially the experience of performing front-line interactions with customers, clients and service-users. His other interests are service worker collectivism/trade unionism, employment relations in the UK and France, and critical realism.

PhD Supervision and Interests

Paul would be interested in supervising PhD studies in the following areas:

• Emotional labour and emotion work
• Sociology of service work and customer service
• Organisational theory and analysis (especially labour process theory)
• Trade unions and employment relations

Paul currently supervises research students in the following areas:

• Saudization and the challenges of a segmented labour market in Saudi Arabia
• Labour process analysis of agency work in the French automobile industry
• Workplace learning in UK food retailing
• Critical public accountability: The case of campaigns against council housing transfer
• Political economy and the transition to globalisation
• Service provision in a professional clinical association

Administrative Responsibilities

Deputy Research Ethics Committee and Plagiarism Officer
Admissions Officer

Recent publications

Brook, Paul (forthcoming 2013), ‘I’m not the only one! Emotional labour power, materialist subjectivity and the individual-collective experience’, special issue on ‘30 years after Hochschild’s Managed Heart: exploring the commodity frontier’, Culture and Organization, Vol. 19, No. 4.

Brook, Paul (forthcoming 2013) ‘The heart, head and hand: emotional labour, labour power and the mobilisation of the whole person’ in Gertraud Koch & Stefanie Everke-Buchanan (Eds.), Impediments to Empathy: Challenges to humanity in a commercialized world, Frankfurt: Campus Press.

Brook, Paul and Lucas, Rosemary (2012), ‘Equality and diversity in employment relations: looking in and pushing out of the Industrial Relations academy’, Equality, Diversity and Inclusion: An International Journal, Vol. 31, No. 4.

Brook, Paul (2011), ‘Learning the feeling rules: exploring Hochschild’s thesis on the alienating experience of learning and performing emotional labour’ in Peter Jones (Ed.), Marxism and Education: Renewing the Dialogue, Pedagogy and Culture, New York: Palgrave Macmillan.

Purcell, Christina; Brook, Paul & Lucas, Rosemary (2011), ‘Between keeping your head down and trying to get noticed: agency workers in French car assembly plants’, Management Revue: The International Review of Management Studies, Vol. 22, No. 2, pp. 169-187.

Brook, Paul (2010), ‘An indivisible union? Assessing the marriage of Hochschild’s emotional labour concept and labour process theory’, International Journal of Management Concepts and Philosophy, Vol. 4, No. 3/4, pp. 326-342.

Brook, Paul (2009) 'In critical defence of 'emotional labour': Refuting Bolton's critique of Hochschild's concept', Work Employment and Society, Vol. 23, No. 3, pp.531-548.

Brook, Paul (2009) 'The Alienated Heart: Hochschild's emotional labour thesis and the anti-capitalist politics of alienation', Capital and Class, Vol. 33, No. 2, pp.7-31.

Brook, Paul (2007) ‘Customer oriented militants? A critique of the customer oriented bureaucracy theory on front-line service worker collectivism’, Work, Employment and Society, 21:2, pp. 363-374.

Research Related

Co-Guest Editor with Gertraud Koch and Andreas Wittel of special issue of Culture and Organization on ‘30 years after Hochschild’s Managed Heart: exploring the commodity frontier’ (2013, Vol. 19, No. 4).

Co-Guest Editor with Rosemary Lucas of special issue of Equality, Diversity and Inclusion Journal on ‘Equality and diversity in employment relations’ (2012, Volume 31, Issue 4).

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