On the "Front Lines"

Amy Tyson’s The Wages of History: Emotional Labor on Public History’s Front Lines provides an in-depth look at the world of costumed historical interpreters.  Employed in numerous historic sites across the country, costumed interpreters are rarely considered in the way the Tyson considers them in her book: as laborers occupying a precarious position in a customer-centric service industry.  Tyson provides a scathing indictment of a system of non-profit cultural institutions that exploits the skilled interpreters whose work on the “front lines” ultimately makes those institutions meaningful for the people who visit them.

Tyson examines this phenomenon of exploited “emotional” labor in the environment of Minnesota’s Historic Fort Snelling, an 1820s U.S. Army fort managed by the Minnesota Historical Society.  Her study combines archival research on the history and development of the interpretive program at Fort Snelling with ethnography of the interpreters she worked with at the fort in the late-1990s to the mid-2000s.  Fundamental to the nature of interpretive work at Fort Snelling is that it is carried on only on a seasonal basis.  For most of its history as a tourist attraction (since the 1960s) Fort Snelling’s interpreters have had to reapply for jobs each season.  While working at the fort interpreters earned a meager wage with no benefits and were accorded little respect or consideration by the historical institution that employed them.  Nevertheless, Fort Snelling most interpreters became deeply invested in their work, going out of their way to enhance their knowledge and tailor their interpretations to the emotional needs of visitors.  Many interpreters reported feeling deep satisfaction from their interactions with visitors despite the otherwise poor conditions under which they labored.  For Tyson, the exploitation of interpreters hinges on the poor pay they receive despite their devotion and expertise.

Tyson raises important questions about how cultural and historical work is carried out in the United States, if not the world.  Among these is the question of whether there is a meaningful difference between non-profit and for-profit corporations with regard to how they view and treat their non-managerial workforce  in the post-industrial, neo-liberal order that has emerged over the last half-century.  Regrettably, she spends little time discussing the parent institution of Historic Fort Snelling, giving the impression that the Minnesota Historical Society is a cold, faceless bureaucracy (although it is conceivable that that is the point).  However, one would expect that the MHS is staffed by individuals whose background is similar to that of the interpreters on the ground (college or higher education, grounded in the humanities).  If this is the case, then what accounts for the apparent lack of sympathy of employer for employee? 

Of course, as with any ethnographic  work one must ask of Tyson’s Wages of History just how particular are the experiences she describes to the milieu in which they occurred.  Tyson repeatedly compares interpreters with waitresses, graduate students, and temporary workers, in other words, with other workers who are perceived as not having “real jobs.”  However, she does not entertain the possibility that even more generally valued jobs can also exact a sizable emotional toll.  That of physician immediately comes to mind.  To get a sense of the ways in which even workers at the top of the capitalist food chain are exploited in similar ways, Tyson’s Wages of History could be profitably read in tandem with Karen Ho’s Liquidated: An Ethnography of Wall Street.  Forty years ago, when the modern service economy was only beginning to come in to view, Daniel Bell observed that in contrast to earlier eras in which humans battled against nature and against the physical limitations of their technology, “the post-industrial society is essentially a game between persons,” (The Coming of Post-Industrial Society, p. 488).  Tyson’s study of historical laborers in a consumer-centric environment helps us envision what such a game looks like, and what effect it has on its participants.