The ‘desired state of mind’: Emotional labor and the hidden cost of symbolic power in 911 emergency response in the U.S

Borrowing from scholarship on emotional labor, emotion management and symbolic power, this article highlights emotions’ symbolic role in sustaining the vital correspondence between the reality of social life and the official classification system. Through the concept of the ‘desired state of mind’ and empirical data from 3 years’ ethnographic fieldwork in an urban 911 dispatch center in New England, this research shows what the ‘desired state of mind’ of this context is, how the link between the folk and the bureaucratic is made though ‘controlled empathy’, and how the cost and consequence of this process is shaped by the status disparity prevalent in 911 emergency community.