60 - lavoro affettivo | affective labor | Editor: Michael Hardt Affective labor is a form of immaterial labor that involves both the body and the mind. For example, what is conventionally referred to as service work, particularly ìin personî services, is composed primarily of affective labor. It is true that the service worker, such as the fast-food worker or the airline flight attendant, is performing both material tasks and intellectual operations, but what is central to the work is the affective component. The primary task is to create a sense of well-being and satisfaction. In such service work we can see the most instrumental and exploitative aspects of affective labor, but affective labor stretches throughout the social field of labor, both inside and outside the realm of wage labor. Affective labor creates and maintains the human ties of friendship, kinship, and community ñ and thus carries a strong potential for liberation. The concept of affective labor is very close to the notion of the becoming-woman of labor because many aspects of affective labor have traditionally been designated as womenís work and because the production and reproduction of affects is becoming central to the capitalist economy. The gender division of labor is shifting, however, and we need constantly to remap the lines of patriarchal domination in the realm of labor.