Body Politics and Affective Performance of Female Flight Attendants

Abstract

This thesis examines a particular form of affect that female flight attendants produce to create social and economic value for airline company. It aims to explore how this affect is produced and circulated under national values, cultural discourse, and dominant gender ideology in Thai society. Another question to be scrutinized in the study is how flight attendants relocate themselves from the dominant powers. Under this regard, the concept of affective economy is employed to understand the linkage between emotion and society at large. In addition, the notion of “disciplined body” and “bio-power” are applied to explain how female flight attendants maintain their beautiful appearance to satisfy the organization and customers’ expectation. The thesis applies the notion of the “circuit of culture” to explain how representations construct meaning in production and consumption process. The image of the female flight attendant in Thai costume symbolically portrayed in airline advertisements is analyzed to disclose the meaning hidden in cultural discourse. Female flight attendants’ bodies are the sites of political, economic and cultural transformation. This “political body” is not only shaped by capitalist disciplines; they are also the sites of resistance. Moreover, I employ “everyday life practice” to explain the construction of new form of identity in order to negotiate with dominant powers. As the insider, I propose self-reflexive ethnography as methodological approach to reduce the effects of researcher. My study relies on in-depth interview of ten female flight attendants in various categories of age and position. The data is also gathered from participation observation by following short and long-route flight and engaging with their activities. Since I focus on body experiences of flight attendants, narrative analysis is employed to understand how flight attendants construct their identities and subjectivity through narrative. The study reveals that ‘winyann’ as a spirit of professionalism is a particular form of affect circulated between female flight attendants, colleagues, and customers. This kind of affect accumulates through body experiences and communicates within female flight attendants society. Winyann is essential form of affect that creates social and economic value for the study airline. Paradoxically, winyann is produced from the capitalist discipline namely organizational regulation and cultural discourses. At the same time and space, this winyann is deployed as coping strategy to constitute new agency in order to relocate the dominant powers. It mediates female flight attendants’ mind, body, and soul to transcend from the suffering experiences.