The Labor of Distinction: Butlers, Service Work, and the Production of Elite Lifestyles

Elites appropriate labor that produces and reproduces distinct lifestyles. This article shows how the practice of this type of labor—what we term the “labor of distinction”—consists of four core dimensions: (1) curatorship, in the management of employers’ class symbols; (2) menialism, in freeing employers from “vulgar” practices; (3) Veblenian embodiment, in signaling employers’ status through bodily display; and (4) non-personship, in procuring social distance between laborer and employer, typically through concealment. Drawing from an “enactive” ethnography of the butler profession, where the lead author trained and worked as a butler in the UK, we illustrate the operation of all four of these dimensions and how they complement one another. By situating the butler in relation to other labor roles and occupations, we theorize a division of labor to outline how types of workers are differentially poised to serve elite distinction, and how elites with varying levels of purchasing power across geographic and historical contexts may incorporate labor in their distinction strategies. Our conceptualization comes at a time when the capacity for elites to employ this labor is growing and is, we argue, important to further understand elite symbolic power.