Aesthetic labour, emotional labour and masculinity

This special issue of the journal focuses on the topic of service work and gender. The theme for this special issue arose out of a stream on service work and gender at the 2005 Gender Work and Organization conference. In many respects this special edition can be considered as complementary to an earlier special edition on gender and service work that came out in 2005. In the editorial for the 2005 special edition Kerfoot and Korczynski raised a number of issues, questions and points for debate. It is worth briefly reprising some of these here as in many respects they provide a point of departure for a number of the concerns of this particular special edition.