Aesthetic Labour in Police Administration Department of Pakistan: Navigating Institutional Pressures in Islamabad and Rawalpindi

Abstract

Aesthetic Labour, which involves the use of workers' embodied abilities, such as their physical appearance, grooming, behavior, and voice, has received much attention in the Western, private sector, and service-based industries. However, the implementation of this concept in uniformed, state, and Global South institutions remains to be explored. This research focuses on the various ways that Police Officers from the Islamabad Capital Territory Police and the Rawalpindi Police articulate, confront, and cope with the pressure to comply with aesthetic labour demands. It has a qualitative approach and uses 45 semi-structured interviews and one focus group discussion (n = 50). Reflexive Thematic Analysis used to analyze the data within the interpretivist research paradigm. Five overarching themes emerged from the data: aesthetic compliance and demands of the uniform; colorism and hierarchies of skin tone; navigation of the sifarish (patronage network); gender and the sense of belonging within institutions; and the emotional and psychological toll. The research shows that the demands of aesthetics within the context of policing in Pakistan are the result of the convergence of patriarchal organizational cultures, colorist informal hierarchies, and patronage-based career mobility. Female officers face a greater burden of aesthetic and identity demands. This research extends the theory of aesthetic labor in the public sector, offering both empirical and theoretical contributions, to uniformed services in similar South Asian institutional contexts.

Keywords: Aesthetic labour, Pakistan Police, colorism, sifarish, gender, institutional patriarchy, reflexive thematic analysis, Global South.