Sarah Shaw

ABSTRACT Theravāda Buddhism has travelled. This article gives some history of the practice of samatha breathing mindfulness, in the Theravāda tradition, in the UK. It first gives some background in Britain to the arrival of the meditation in the 1960s, then summarises the life of Nai Boonman Poonyathiro, who introduced this method into the UK, a story that is not generally known. The paper describes some aspects of the development of the Samatha Trust in the UK, attempting to show ways a system that was popular in Thailand when it arrived in a new region has prospered, even while becoming markedly less prominent in its own regions. As I am a practitioner in this tradition, before the conclusion I make some personal comment. To conclude, I speculate about features which appear to characterise Buddhist groups in general in the UK, before considering ways that this specialised tradition has adapted in a new setting.

Emotional labour has been widely recognized in a variety of industries, but not yet in publishing. By examining 126 survey responses from current or former publishing employees, this study identifies the primary forms of emotional labour present in the publishing industry, and how these vary between employees. Also examined is the extent to which industry leaders recognize the emotional labour performed by employees, and the impact that this emotional labour has on the latter. The survey responses demonstrate a high prevalence of emotional labour in the publishing industry and that this work is largely unrecognized and sometimes entirely dismissed. Emotional labour also has a generally negative impact on employees, particularly working-class and black, Asian, and minority ethnic employees, which contributes to low diversity in the industry. I conclude with recommendations for further research and for industry change to reduce emotional labour, improve employee welfare, and facilitate increased retention of working-class and BAME employees.