Coming soon · Book Profile
The Managed Hand
This book examines how race, gender, and class intersect in the intimate service encounters within Korean-owned nail salons, introducing the concept of 'body labor' to explain the commercialization of bodies and emotions in this globalized beauty industry.
A profile of this book is on the way.
What it’s about
The Managed Hand takes you inside the world of New York City's ubiquitous Korean-owned nail salons to explore the complex relationships forged across the manicuring table. Author Miliann Kang introduces the concept of 'body labor'—the physical and emotional work of attending to clients' bodies—to analyze the intricate dance of race, gender, and class between immigrant service providers and their diverse clientele. Through ethnographic research, the book reveals how different types of salons—upscale spas for white women, nail art salons for Black women, and discount shops for a mixed clientele—reproduce or challenge societal stereotypes like the 'model minority,' 'Black-Korean conflict,' and 'yellow peril.' It's a fascinating look at how a simple manicure becomes a site for negotiating identity, inequality, and the human cost of the global service economy, forcing us to ask: what is a manicure truly worth?
The through-line
- Who it’s for
- The reader is a socially conscious individual, likely a woman, who is interested in feminism, race, and labor issues. She may be a consumer of beauty services like manicures and feels a mix of pleasure and unease about the exchange, wondering about the lives of the women who serve her and the broader social implications of this transaction. She wants to understand the hidden dynamics of the service economy and find ways to be a more informed and ethical consumer and citizen.
- The problem
- The reader sees the proliferation of low-wage service work performed by immigrant women but lacks a framework to understand the complex social dynamics at play, particularly in intimate settings like nail salons. She feels conflicted and perhaps guilty about participating in a service economy that seems to rely on the exploitation of marginalized women, yet she doesn't fully understand the workers' perspectives or the structural forces at work.
- The plan
- Understand the structural forces that created the nail salon industry and channeled immigrant women into it.
- Learn the personal stories of the manicurists and the customers to see the human side of the economic exchange.
- Apply the concept of 'body labor' and analyze how its different forms (pampering, expressive, routinized) play out in salons serving different racial and class demographics.
- Examine how these service interactions reinforce or challenge major racial stereotypes.
- Reflect on the true worth of a manicure and how to promote more equitable conditions and relationships.
- The payoff
- The reader transforms from a passive consumer into an informed observer of the social world. · She understands the invisible labor and complex hierarchies embedded in everyday life. · She can critically analyze issues of race, gender, and class in the service economy, and feels empowered to advocate for more just labor practices.
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Related profiles we’ve built
Additional reading
- The Managed Heart: Commercialization of Human Feeling · Arlie Russell Hochschild
This book is foundational to the concept of 'emotional labor,' a key analytical tool used in many chapters to understand the psychological and relational demands of care work.
- Caring for America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State · Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein
Provides a deep historical and policy context for home care work, a major occupation covered in the book, particularly regarding its exclusion from labor law and recent organizing efforts.
- Making Gray Gold: Narratives of Nursing Home Care · Timothy Diamond
A classic ethnographic study that reveals the day-to-day realities, constraints, and relational aspects of work for nursing assistants, a key group of workers analyzed throughout this volume.
- Moral Boundaries: A Political Argument for an Ethic of Care · Joan C. Tronto
A key text in care ethics that provides a theoretical framework for understanding care as a political and social concern, which underpins the book's overall argument for valuing care work as a collective responsibility.
- Care and Equality: Inventing a New Family Politics · Mona Harrington
The book quotes Harrington in the first chapter to establish the contemporary "care crisis" and the failure to replace the care once provided by stay-at-home women, setting the stage for the author's own analysis.
- Ancient Law · Henry Maine
The author references Maine's classic argument about the societal shift from status to contract to frame her own argument that status obligations (based on gender and race) have persisted in both family and market relations concerning care.
- The Time Bind: When Work Becomes Home and Home Becomes Work · Arlie Russell Hochschild
Cited to describe the 'time bind' and 'stretch out' experienced by middle-class families, illustrating that the care crisis is no longer confined to the poor and has become a widespread societal problem.
- Good Jobs America: Making Work Better for Everyone · Paul Osterman and Beth Shulman
Cited by the author in the preface, this book likely provides the broader context for his argument that improving low-wage work requires industry-specific analysis and strategies.
- Caring in America: Home Health Workers in the Shadow of the Welfare State · Eileen Boris and Jennifer Klein
The author cites this work extensively to provide the historical context for why the home care aide job was created as a form of 'workfare' and has been stigmatized and excluded from labor protections.
- The Nicomachean Ethics · Aristotle
It provides the philosophical challenge that frames the entire book: the quest to manage our emotional life with intelligence.