The cafe as affective community space: Reconceptualizing care and emotional labour in everyday life

Abstract

The importance of cafes in fulfilling certain political, cultural and social functions has long been acknowledged in the social sciences. Despite this interest, there has been relatively little empirical or theoretical work which explores the intersection between the idea of the cafe and the concept of care as understood in social policy and practice. In particular, there has been little work that considers the social value of sites such as cafes, especially in deprived areas, and the role they may play in the day-to-day lives of people who use them. Through a detailed case study of a cafe, we examine the meaning of community, family and home in terms of the affective connections that places like cafes entail. We argue that powerful forms of everyday care work may be found in such sites, and we advocate for greater awareness in social policy of the complex and multilayered nature of emotional labour in this context.