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“Embodying” dirty work: A review of the literature
Abstract
This article reviews the growing literature on dirty work, i.e., work that is seen as disgusting or degrading and argues for a more “embodied” understanding of such work. It points to a tendency in the literature to focus on the nature of the task or role and on social and moral dimensions of the work at the expense of its material and embodied aspects. The latter are discussed through three, interrelated themes: “embodied suitability” whereby forms of dirty work are seen as suitable for some “working bodies” and not for others; “staining” which is presented as both a material and a symbolic process; and the role of work practices in both supporting and undermining ideological constructions around the work. The article concludes by arguing for a more comprehensive approach which includes both the material and the symbolic into accounts of such work.
... Moreover, when considering gender, class, sexuality, or race, the gravity of moral taint may be more pronounced (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2014;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). For example, in research on recognition and the moral taint of sexuality, Hancock (2016) theorizes that men Santa Claus performers, are tainted, "not because of what they do but by what is deemed to be an inappropriate sexual or gendered identity" (p. ...
... Here we extend the literature on dirty work and moral taint by looking more closely at the intersections of gender, leadership, and moral taint to consider the movability of taint for women leaders. We take on Simpson and Simpson's (2018) call to give "explicit recognition…to how bodies are inscribed with gendered… occupational discourses and meanings" (p. 5). ...
... The women church leaders are acutely aware of the moral taint magnetized by their gender; their embodiment is unsuitable for the work (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). ...
... Moreover, when considering gender, class, sexuality, or race, the gravity of moral taint may be more pronounced (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2014;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). For example, in research on recognition and the moral taint of sexuality, Hancock (2016) theorizes that men Santa Claus performers, are tainted, "not because of what they do but by what is deemed to be an inappropriate sexual or gendered identity" (p. ...
... Here we extend the literature on dirty work and moral taint by looking more closely at the intersections of gender, leadership, and moral taint to consider the movability of taint for women leaders. We take on Simpson and Simpson's (2018) call to give "explicit recognition…to how bodies are inscribed with gendered… occupational discourses and meanings" (p. 5). ...
... The women church leaders are acutely aware of the moral taint magnetized by their gender; their embodiment is unsuitable for the work (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). ...
This article offers insights into the dynamic and complex nature of moral taint, specifically taint that emanates at the individual level, triggered by gender, and the trajectory of this moral taint at work. Through a qualitative study of women church leaders, it explores how gender might serve as a trigger of moral taint to dirty the work. The women church leaders are perceived to be morally questionable and a source of disgust. Their gender triggers moral taint. This moral taint creates the risk of a reverse trifecta of taint contagion from the women toward the occupation, institution, and stakeholders. Others respond to the women with disgust, deflecting and protecting against contamination. The women leaders perform gendered dirty work in this sacredly masculine context and their leadership privilege is unstable, immoral, and contested because of their gender. We offer a conceptualization of gendered dirty work(ers) and suggest research avenues for women in leadership.
K E Y W O R D S disgust, gendered dirty work, moral taint, taint contagion, women church leaders
... Work is often regarded as dirty when associated with physical (e.g., contact with dirt, dangerous conditions), social (e.g., contact with stigmatized populations, servile roles), and/or moral taint (e.g., sinful activity, use of deceptive methods; Ashforth & Kreiner, 2013). Being involved in dirty work comes with greater exposure to unfavorable working environments and threats to workers' wellbeing (Simpson & Simpson, 2018), adding up to the societal stigma of being in a situation of precarity (Blustein et al., 2024). Accordingly, precarious work describes conditions exposing workers to objective situations of uncertainty, insecurity, and power imbalance including social stigmatization. ...
... The lack of social recognition for PDC workers was also observed in the abuse and humiliation perpetrated by employers through verbal threats, harassment, or physical aggression (Murray et al., 2022;Zulfiqar & Prasad, 2022). Such findings corroborate studies on dirty work highlighting how workers are not only threatened by social stigmatization but also exposed to insecure conditions and unfair treatment at work (Hughes et al., 2017;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). Furthermore, dirty work was perceived as detrimental to workers' health in public discourses (Mejia et al., 2021), including social representations of adolescents who, when anticipating their school-to-work transition, associate dirty work with precarious conditions and their negative impacts on well-being (Borges et al., 2024). ...
... Our results show the broad impact of PDC's negative social image on working conditions, thus endangering workers' physical and psychological safety. Participants reported being exposed to risks of diseases or injuries, in line with studies on other cleaning workers such as garbage collectors (Hughes et al., 2017) or external cleaning agents (Deery et al., 2019), and echoing workplace hazards generally identified in dirty work (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). Furthermore, our results highlight the power imbalance that may open the door to employers' degrading and abusive behaviors, reminding us that the social taint attached to dirty work may also compromise workers' psychological safety (Khan et al., 2023). ...
Work precarity, referring to the work-related psychological state of insecurity, instability, and powerlessness, is on the rise. Despite being employed, workers are increasingly exposed to work precarity due to the global disparities of access to decent work. Paid domestic cleaning (PDC) workers represent a vulnerable group, exposed to adverse employment conditions and limited labor rights and protections. Yet, the working conditions in PDC have not been studied in the light of precariousness and precarity. Drawing from the work precarity framework (WPF), the present study utilizes semi-structured interviews with 24 PDC workers in Switzerland to investigate if and how they experienced work precarity in the face of adverse working conditions, and to what extent they could access protective resources against such precarity. Experiences of precarity stemmed from insufficient and insecure income, lack of labor protections and rights, lack of social recognition, and unsafe physical and psychological working conditions. Participants reported negative work-related outcomes in terms of health impairment, social stigmatization, and ambivalent attitudes towards their job. Moreover, protective personal, social, and institutional resources were identified as limited or inconsistent. Among the study's contributions, we highlight precarity-derived challenges vulnerabilized workers face. Implications for research, policy, and practice will be discussed.
... Unfortunately, by overemphasizing the symbolic descriptors of dirty work (i.e., physical, social, moral taint) and its symbolic dimension, this research stream missed other crucial and common implications, such as physical demands, deleterious working conditions, or workers' recurrent social attributes (Simpson et al., 2012b). Another research stream focused on the more embodied/material dimension of dirty work, and greater research attention was allocated to tangible difficulties that could stain both workers' sense of self and their bodies (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). On the basis of characteristics such as gender, cultural origin, and socioeconomic status, certain groups were also acknowledged as overrepresented in dirty work and therefore seen as "naturally" suitable for it (Simpson et al., 2012a, p. 7). ...
... This is the case for vocational and educational training (VET) curriculums that have generally lower educational requirements (Basler & Kriesi, 2019): most pupils pursue dual VET programs in Switzerland (i.e., VET combining school and workplace training) (Kriesi et al., 2022), yet vocational tracks are perceived as less prestigious than other educational pathways (Abrassart & Wolter, 2020). In fact, literature shows that dirty work tends to be associated with low-skilled and low-prestige occupations (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). In Switzerland's case, its labor market is characterized by low levels of youth unemployment, even within European countries (Kriesi et al., 2022). ...
... By bringing together these elements, a career dimension may complement the symbolic and embodied/material dimensions of dirty work. This proposition stems from the observation that dirty work may not only affect workers' identities (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999) or their bodies (Simpson & Simpson, 2018), but also their career paths. Indeed, "dirty careers" may be characterized by specific features such as frequent physical injuries (Hughes et al., 2017), overexposure to indecent work (Blustein et al., 2023), or reduced employability due to the "stickiness" of their "dirty worker" reputation to other employers (Bergman & Chalkley, 2007, pp. ...
Defined as occupations, tasks, or roles perceived as disgusting or degrading, dirty work results from perceptions of a broad array of actors in society. This study aimed at identifying descriptors adolescents in Switzerland associate with dirty work. The originality of this study stems from investigating dirty work on the basis of adolescents’ perceptions, which represent an outsider group receptive to social norms, and thus informative of social stigmatizations. Responses of 225 adolescents to an open-ended question were analyzed using a consensual qualitative research-modified approach. Participants associated dirty work with adverse working conditions, adverse employment conditions, negative social images, and negative well-being outcomes.
... Despite the increased interest in dirty occupations, there is still much to understand about the experiences of dirty workers. So far, the focus of dirty work studies has been occupational features and taint/stigma management strategies (Simpson and Simpson, 2018), mostly drawn from social identity theory (SIT). Following Ashforth and Kreiner (1999), these studies implicitly assume that dirty workers eventually succeed in creating a positive and coherent self. ...
... In this study, we examine how dirty workers in a neoliberal context, specifically cleaners in India, make sense of their self in the face of multiple intersecting structural and cultural constraints. Dirty workers facing multiple intersecting taints are found to occupy a tensional space (Wolfe et al., 2018) between positive and negative meanings (Shepherd et al., 2021) arising from simultaneously enabling and constraining identity resources (Simpson and Simpson, 2018). In such contexts, the process of constructing a positive identity may remain as a persistent challenge characterized by helplessness, ambivalence, and discontinuity. ...
... The study highlights the instrumental role of caste in organizing work, space and roles at multiple and intersecting levels (individual, occupational, organizational, and industry), especially in a neoliberal environment. Further, in the case of dirty work research, caste emerges as more than a stigmatized identity; rather, it becomes a distinct form of taint that perpetuates embodied suitability (Simpson and Simpson, 2018), especially in undertaking most denigrated tasks such as toilet cleaning (Zulfiqar and Prasad, 2021). Finally, the study enumerates the coconstitution of caste and neoliberal vulnerabilities in India (Gupta, 2022;Mahalingam et al., 2019), where caste-based differences are operationalized and reworked through neoliberal practices (Harriss-White and Rodrigo, 2016). ...
Drawing from in-depth interviews of cleaners employed in the cleaning industry in India, the study examines the ongoing process of constructing a positive identity among dirty workers. Cleaners respond to the intense identity struggles emerging from caste stigma, dirty taint, and precarity by constructing ambivalent identities. Cleaners’ identity work is constituted by the very identity struggles they encounter, and their efforts to negotiate stigmatized identities further create identity tensions. Apart from accenting the paradoxical duality inhered in identity work, the findings show how caste/class inequalities are reworked in a neoliberal milieu and reproduced in identity construction processes. The findings call attention to caste as an important social category in organizational studies that has implications for work identities, dirty work, and precarious work.
... While outsiders have typically implied individuals outside the occupation, prior research indicates that certain characteristics are embodied within some dirty occupations, which means that the work is deemed to be more suitable for some workers than others (Simpson and Simpson 2018). Work that involves some form of physical taint (i.e., the presence of dirt or danger) has been commonly associated with working-class men and traditional notions of masculinity (Ashforth and Kreiner 1999, Perrot 2019, Tracy and Scott 2006. ...
... Through a review of the symbolic meanings of dirty work, Simpson and Simpson (2018) submit that the dirty work literature has largely focused on equating dirty work with certain occupations or roles based on assessments of physical, social, or moral dirt and strategies to manage the associated stigma. Missing from the literature is a greater exploration of the meanings ascribed to the physical bodies undertaking the work and the implications of 'embodied' practices. ...
... Simpson (2009) proposes that cleanliness and dirt tend to be associated with particular 'bodies', which potentially affords them different levels of value according to how the work is perceived. Thus, other identities, such as gender, race, or social class, are likely to affect the experiences and perceptions of dirty work (Simpson and Simpson 2018), such that workers are positioned 'as more or less suitable to perform different types of work' (McDowell 2009, p. 14). ...
Police organisations in Canada and other parts of the world, have recently undertaken efforts to address misconduct arising from high-profile reports of internal discrimination and harassment and/or instances of excessive use of force. However, these actions tend to be pursued through traditional approaches without fully understanding the contextual factors that contribute to these harmful behaviours. Through a sequential, qualitative mixed-methods study involving Canadian police officers, this paper highlights how symbolic meanings attached to police work contribute to perceptions that the work is more suitable for some individuals than others. The findings also illustrate how officers respond to identity threats from stigmatised officers or from external sources. Finally, the findings suggest that the prototypical image of a police officer may be changing with recent criticisms of the police presented as possibilities for change.
... According to Giuseppe and many other informants, the heaviest and dirtiest tasks were delegated to terroni 3 since 'no one else would have done it'. From the perspective of both managers and local workers, South Italian migrants -typically associated with a rural background, a low level of education and loutish manners (all connotations epitomised by the derogatory term terrone) -started to be largely perceived as the most 'appropriate' or 'suitable' slaughterhouse workforce (McDowell, 2008;Simpson and Simpson, 2018). ...
... On one hand, they legitimise and enable the spread of subcontracting by weakening the opposition of local workers and their unions and hampering worker solidarity (Wagner and Refslund, 2016). On the other hand, they amplify the worsening of labour conditions (which also occurs in the logistic sector, see Alimahomed-Wilson 2019), since 'bad' workers are deemed more appropriate for and 'deserving' of bad jobs (McDowell, 2008;Simpson and Simpson, 2018). ...
... In slaughterhouses, in particular, dirty, physically and emotionally demanding tasks have been progressively attributed first to internal and later on to international migrant workers, thus leading to the coexistence of processes of racialisation and de-racialisation (Gans, 2017). Workers, initially directly employed and then subcontracted, are selected according to specific social characteristics to embody 'suitable' gendered and racialised labourers (McDowell, 2008;Simpson and Simpson, 2018). These processes of racialisation, which also involve direct workers, are more severe for subcontracted labourers as they are subject to a different labour contract. ...
The aim of this paper is to extend discussion on subcontracted labour by focussing on the labour process and on the role of race and racialization within it. The existing literature has so far analysed the factors that have encouraged employer decisions to outsource labour, together with its effects on labour conditions and on industrial relations. Missing, however, has been any detailed analysis of the role of race and racialization processes, pivotal elements in the facilitation of subcontracting thereby accelerating the worsening of labour conditions.
Based on qualitative empirical research on the meat industry in Northern Italy, this article highlights how the processes of outsourcing and racialization intersect to support the segmentation of labour within the workplace. In particular, we argue that, through contracting out work to racialized groups of migrant workers, outsourcing has been both facilitated and legitimized. Furthermore, the presence of in-plant contractors has fostered the implementation of racializing practices, which in turn have bolstered workforce fragmentation on racial lines.
Notwithstanding this, our findings show that race can be a factor in the mobilization of subcontracted migrant labour through the production of pragmatic (racial) solidarities. These informal ties are a key component in the development of the everyday struggles and alliances that emerge within grass roots worker organisations as well as beyond their boundaries through hybrid forms of collective organisation.
... Despite the increased interest in dirty occupations, there is still much to understand about the experiences of dirty workers. So far, the focus of dirty work studies has been occupational features and taint/stigma management strategies (Simpson and Simpson, 2018), mostly drawn from social identity theory (SIT). Following Ashforth and Kreiner (1999), these studies implicitly assume that dirty workers eventually succeed in creating a positive and coherent self. ...
... In this study, we examine how dirty workers in a neoliberal context, specifically cleaners in India, make sense of their self in the face of multiple intersecting structural and cultural constraints. Dirty workers facing multiple intersecting taints are found to occupy a tensional space (Wolfe et al., 2018) between positive and negative meanings (Shepherd et al., 2021) arising from simultaneously enabling and constraining identity resources (Simpson and Simpson, 2018). In such contexts, the process of constructing a positive identity may remain as a persistent challenge characterized by helplessness, ambivalence, and discontinuity. ...
... The study highlights the instrumental role of caste in organizing work, space and roles at multiple and intersecting levels (individual, occupational, organizational, and industry), especially in a neoliberal environment. Further, in the case of dirty work research, caste emerges as more than a stigmatized identity; rather, it becomes a distinct form of taint that perpetuates embodied suitability (Simpson and Simpson, 2018), especially in undertaking most denigrated tasks such as toilet cleaning (Zulfiqar and Prasad, 2021). Finally, the study enumerates the coconstitution of caste and neoliberal vulnerabilities in India (Gupta, 2022;Mahalingam et al., 2019), where caste-based differences are operationalized and reworked through neoliberal practices (Harriss-White and Rodrigo, 2016). ...
... Increasing calls in the sociology of work to extend Hughes' physical, social and moral dimensions of occupational 'dirt' (1951,1958,1962) have helped conceptualise 'emotional taint' (Kreiner, Ashforth, and Sluss 2006;Shigihara 2018;Simpson and Simpson 2018). This advances a more symbolic and socially constructed meaning of 'dirty work' that workers frame as a collective in line with their emotions and embodiment of their occupational tasks rather than their public image (McMurray and Ward 2014). ...
... Shantz and Booth (2014), for instance, attribute the widespread anxiety of call centre workers to their negative societal image. This has led dirty work scholars to focus on 'extreme' cases and social outcasts, often struggling for acceptance in the organisational domain until very recently (Simpson and Simpson 2018;Ashforth and Kreiner 1999). Nevertheless, the significance of expanding the boundaries of Hughes' tripartite definition of dirty work has led to a paradigmatic and symbolic shift in the literature toward 'emotional taint'. ...
... Emotional taint thus deepens Hughes' moral dimension of dirty work by highlighting the importance of workers' feelings and emotions in symbolically affording meaning to their working tasks, which violate their idealised occupational image. In turn, this translates into a label reflexively perceived and embodied by workers at a group level (Simpson and Simpson 2018;McMurray and Ward 2014;Shigihara 2018;Dick 2005). Rivera and Tracy (2014), for instance, reveal that border patrol agents' taint is a consequence of their emotions and sense of guilt in relation to their handling of immigrants. ...
Despite a symbolic shift toward 'emotional taint' in dirty work literature, the role of the workplace has not been studied in relation to socially admired professions, such as corporate social responsibility (CSR) work. This article carries out an in-depth, critical examination of CSR as an emotionally tainted occupation in Japan. Its findings, substantiated by an analysis of 34 CSR workers' rhetoric, help conceptualise 'internal uselessness'. This emerges when workers feel their organisations publicly foster an image of their work that is decoupled from its internal reality, assigning them chief tasks they consider irrelevant. This leads to negative consequences that damage their workplace social relationships, professional aspirations and emotional well-being. The findings ultimately show that these CSR workers in Japan attempt to counterbalance internal uselessness through a social quest with peers outside their workplace, but also manage their emotions by rationalising their job status as inescapable, influenced by situated commitment norms.
... Increasing calls in the sociology of work to extend Hughes' physical, social and moral dimensions of occupational 'dirt ' (1951, 1958, 1962) have helped conceptualise 'emotional taint' (Kreiner, Ashforth, and Sluss 2006;Shigihara 2018;Simpson and Simpson 2018). This advances a more symbolic and socially constructed meaning of 'dirty work' that workers frame as a collective in line with their emotions and embodiment of their occupational tasks rather than their public image (McMurray and Ward 2014). ...
... Shantz and Booth (2014), for instance, attribute the widespread anxiety of call centre workers to their negative societal image. This has led dirty work scholars to focus on 'extreme' cases and social outcasts, often struggling for acceptance in the organisational domain until very recently (Simpson and Simpson 2018;Ashforth and Kreiner 1999). Nevertheless, the significance of expanding the boundaries of Hughes' tripartite definition of dirty work has led to a paradigmatic and symbolic shift in the literature toward 'emotional taint'. ...
... Emotional taint thus deepens Hughes' moral dimension of dirty work by highlighting the importance of workers' feelings and emotions in symbolically affording meaning to their working tasks, which violate their idealised occupational image. In turn, this translates into a label reflexively perceived and embodied by workers at a group level (Simpson and Simpson 2018;McMurray and Ward 2014;Shigihara 2018;Dick 2005). Rivera and Tracy (2014), for instance, reveal that border patrol agents' taint is a consequence of their emotions and sense of guilt in relation to their handling of immigrants. ...
... Kreiner (1999, 2014) suggest that ''dirt'' can be associated with certain occupations and groups of workers who are perceived to be physically, socially, or morally tainted (see also. Baran et al., 2012;Hughes, 1958;Riviera, 2015;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). Hence, dirty work can involve literal dirt, as in the case of refuse collectors, butchers, or chimney sweeps, as well as socially or morally defined dirt. ...
... Ambiguous public views, shame, and stigma are commonly found in relation to professions that could be characterised as socially tainted (Hughes, 1958;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). This is particularly evident in relation to an experienced "spillover effect'' of stigma in terms of shamefulness and avoidance of social services. ...
Public perceptions play a crucial role in shaping the image of any profession, and social work is no exception. It is widely assumed that adverse public views of social work can negatively impact the legitimacy of social services and the well-being of social workers—ultimately threatening efficiency and retention. Yet, empirical studies addressing these assumptions are rare. The current study investigates social workers’ experiences of public perceptions of the social work profession and key factors contributing to public views. Focus groups with Swedish social workers were conducted, and data were analysed via qualitative content analysis. The dirty work framework was applied in interpreting the findings. The analysis revealed that adverse public views are experienced as prevalent and that organisational structures, legislation, and social work practice contribute to such views. However, media portrayals are seen as the most influential factor in establishing adverse public views. Based on the social workers’ experiences, it is concluded that the social services in Sweden can be understood as socially and morally tainted, but that levels of taint differ between social services areas, and efforts to reduce such taint are discussed.
... Whereas institutional practices are explicit and, thus, open to contestation, embodied displays of privilege and oppression occur subconsciously (Shilling, 2012). Hegemonic masculinity is, therefore, internalized and naturalized through the interplay of bodies-for example, through comparisons with 4 -YOON and UDOR men's disabled bodies (Gerschick & Miller, 1995) and racialized bodies (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). Furthermore, racially marginalized undocumented men are often deemed naturally equipped for dirty, dangerous, and demeaning jobs due to essentialized stereotypes connected to their skin color, height, weight, and demeanor (McDowell, 2009;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). ...
... Hegemonic masculinity is, therefore, internalized and naturalized through the interplay of bodies-for example, through comparisons with 4 -YOON and UDOR men's disabled bodies (Gerschick & Miller, 1995) and racialized bodies (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). Furthermore, racially marginalized undocumented men are often deemed naturally equipped for dirty, dangerous, and demeaning jobs due to essentialized stereotypes connected to their skin color, height, weight, and demeanor (McDowell, 2009;Simpson & Simpson, 2018). ...
With the rapid influx of labor migration and accelerating rates of globalization, studies of hegemonic masculinity have become increasingly divided in representing the amount of agency marginalized men have access to in constructing alternative, more hybrid masculine ideals as they travel overseas. This paper offers a new methodological approach for studying hegemonic masculinity. Specifically, we analyze how multiple forces at the structural , interpersonal , and individual levels work together as a system of oppression. As our case study, we focus on African bachelors who have migrated to South Korea to fill the demand for 3‐d (dirty, difficult, and dangerous) labor. By analyzing 30 interviews and two years of ethnographic observation of African migrants in Korea, our study demonstrates how migrant men become trapped by their desires to perform their masculine worth as reliable wage laborers, even at the cost of their physical and emotional well‐being. While past studies on undocumented migrant workers in Korea have highlighted their heightened exposure to institutional violence, we shed light on how structural forces also bleed into the private spaces of everyday life, shaping the intimate relationships and personal desires of marginalized men themselves.
... Dirty work is generally defined as tasks, occupations and/or roles that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999), and are seen as physically, socially and/or morally tainted (Simpson and Simpson, 2018). Drawing on the early work of Everett Hughes (1962) in his text Good People and Dirty Work, a growing interest has been shown in recent years in forms of work that might come under this broad category (Galazka and O'Mahoney, 2021, Glerum, 2021, Ostaszkiewicz et al., 2016a, Simpson and Simpson, 2018. ...
... Dirty work is generally defined as tasks, occupations and/or roles that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999), and are seen as physically, socially and/or morally tainted (Simpson and Simpson, 2018). Drawing on the early work of Everett Hughes (1962) in his text Good People and Dirty Work, a growing interest has been shown in recent years in forms of work that might come under this broad category (Galazka and O'Mahoney, 2021, Glerum, 2021, Ostaszkiewicz et al., 2016a, Simpson and Simpson, 2018. Within the care homes context, intimate care such as continence care, bathing and dressing of residents is carried out by care assistants (and occasionally by registered nurses) (Ostaszkiewicz et al., 2016a), with care managers often avoiding these messier routines. ...
Background: Faecal incontinence is an under-reported but debilitating health problem that affects people of all ages, and particularly older people aged 65 years and above living in care homes, many of whom have comorbidity such as dementia. Prevalence of faecal incontinence is high in the group, but the exact prevalence is unclear. Faecal incontinence can have significant negative impact, including low self-esteem, feeling stigmatised (and leading to social isolation), and sometimes death. In older people, faecal incontinence is not only the consequence of age-related anorectal deficits such as reduced anal sphincter pressure, but also cognitive decline, care home placement, diarrhoea, constipation and/or effects of polypharmacy. However, faecal incontinence remains a taboo subject because people with the condition are too embarrassed to discuss their symptoms with their family or health care workers. Health care workers, on the other hand, do not routinely broach the topic with patients perhaps because of therapeutic nihilistic attitudes (the belief that nothing can be done to help). In a care home, where most residents live with dementia, this nihilism can mean that residents are not assessed to find out why they are incontinent, thus resulting in the routine use of incontinence pads by care staff. Within the care homes, intimate care such as continence care, bathing and dressing of residents is mostly carried out by care assistants (and occasionally by registered nurses). The care home managers often avoid these messier dirty works because care work for the older people involve bodily dysfunctions and discharges such as blood, vomit, urine, faeces, illness, and death. Therefore, the emotional labour of the care homes’ care workers is an important skill that has therapeutic value to both the care staff and the residents experiencing faecal incontinence. The development of a theory-driven, context-dependent intervention to manage FI is needed for this population.
Methods: The overall aim of this thesis was to develop a context-dependent, complex intervention for the management of faecal incontinence in people living with dementia in care homes and test it for feasibility and potential efficacy. Underpinned by realist programme theories situated within the UK Medical Research Council framework for development and feasibility phases of intervention development, three steps of the framework were iteratively followed. A systematic review (PhD Paper 1) identified the burden and correlates of faecal incontinence among older people living in care homes, and potential modifiable risks factors. A Cochrane systematic review of interventions for faecal incontinence in care homes (PhD Paper 2) did not find any intervention that accounted for the care home residents’ characteristics or dementia. Therefore, some previously published realist programme theories were tested with care home stakeholders using realist evaluation approaches to develop an intervention for faecal incontinence that is context dependent. The intervention developed included toileting exercises (scheduled and prompted toileting), physical exercises (mobility and upper arms movement), conservative management (dietary and fluid intake, and review of polypharmacy) and staff education. Lastly, a pre/post feasibility study (nested in multiple case studies) was carried out in 16 care home residents from two care home units, all of whom had faecal incontinence at baseline and had dementia.
Results: Paper 1 included 23 studies and found the medians for reported prevalence of isolated faecal incontinence, double incontinence, and all types of faecal incontinence in care home residents as 3.5% [interquartile range (IQR) = 2.8%], 47.1% (IQR = 32.1%), and 42.8% (IQR = 21.1%), respectively. The Cochrane review (PhD Paper 2) included only four randomised controlled trials and found no clear evidence on what interventions work for this group. Stakeholder consultation was used to refine previous programme theories and then to develop an intervention. During feasibility testing of this intervention, the study was undermined by poor engagement by the care home staff. It was unclear what intervention had been carried out in one of the two units due to very poor documentation by the care staff. There was no overall significant difference in frequency of faecal incontinence episodes among the care home residents between baseline (four weeks prior to the intervention) and the last four weeks at the end of the 8-week intervention (mean and standard deviation (SD) of faecal incontinence episodes over the four weeks: 50.63 and 52. 94 (p=0.77). When the two care home units are compared, there were also no significant changes in the mean (SD) number of faecal incontinence episodes among the residents of Unit-1 and Unit-2 at baseline [52.50 (± 19.54) and 48.75 (± 20.31)], and four weeks to the end of the intervention [53.13 (± 23.33) and 52.75 (± 24.52)] respectively.
Conclusion: Although there were some changes in stool consistency among individual residents, the changes did not result in an overall reduction of faecal incontinence episodes in the participating care home units. In practice, unless regulatory bodies such as the Care Quality Commission include measures to reduce faecal incontinence (and as a safeguarding issue such as falls and pressure areas), or the care staff believe that incontinence among older people living with dementia in care homes can be ameliorated by intervention, the management of faecal incontinence is likely to remain as reactive measures by the care staff. Research in this context needs to be influenced by the care home managers who run the day-to-day activities of the care home, or risk implementation failure.
... In Silesia, coal's petro-materialities down the mine-dirty, heavy, hard, potentially explosive, and subterranean-have historically contributed to co-constructing hegemonic working-class masculine embodiment and its ideals such as toughness, hardiness, physical strength, and endurance Thiel, 2007). Through coal's 'dirty work' (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2014;Simpson et al., 2012;Simpson & Simpson, 2018;Slutskaya et al., 2016;Thiel, 2007), in fact, the very basis of gendered class experience and positionality in industrial society have been constituted. In the home, coal's materialities were also experienced as heavy, dirty, smelly, requiring technical skill and know-how (defended as part of the masculine realm) to light and keep alight, while retaining sociomaterial connection to homosocial worlds. ...
... It is not only breadwinning that has declined in postindustrializing times, however, but also the value and prestige associated with doing 'dirty work' (Ashforth & Kreiner, 2014;Simpson et al., 2012;Simpson & Simpson, 2018), and thus the value of embodied investments into its working-class petro-masculinity. Whereas under socialism, getting dirty down the coal pit was a means through which to earn and live well, gain respect, and fulfil ideals of manly work, today, the symbolic capital of industry and working-class petro-masculinity has also taken a harsh blow, where particularly male workers, formerly the bedrock of national modernization efforts, went from 'heroes' to 'villains' practically overnight (see Kalb, 2014;Keskula, 2012;Kideckel, 2008;Morris, 2016 for similar stories in Poland and elsewhere in the postsocialist sphere). ...
In Upper Silesia, domestic heating is a heated topic. This is because it is the leading contributor to extreme air pollution levels. Coal of assorted qualities is combusted in over 70% of the country’s 5.5 million single-family households for heating, often in ‘primitive’ boilers or stoves that do not fulfil any environmental standards. Accordingly, 33 out of 50 of the most air-polluted towns in Europe are found in Poland; fourteen in Upper Silesia. Efforts to solve the crisis have focused on incentivizing rational household-level technical and behavioural changes. Yet, results have been slow and largely unsuccessful. This chapter argues that the role of historically and culturally sedimented gendered subjectivities have been overlooked in understanding this phenomenon. In Silesian intergenerational coal-mining families, coal-based home heating is traditionally the responsibility of the male breadwinner. In turn, embodying its dirty work has long been a primary route for attaining domestic masculinity, securing its patriarchal authority and integrity and acceptably expressing its familial love and care. Drawing together Cara Daggett’s concept ‘petro-masculinity’ with Martin Hultman and Paul Pulé’s notion of ‘industrial/breadwinning masculinities’, denial of smog discourse and attachment to coal in the home is thus proposed as an attempt to hold onto dwindling resources for achieving a Silesian, working-class variation of hegemonic industrial breadwinning petro-masculinity precisely at a time when such positionality is increasingly feared to be marginalized. Holding onto coal can be understood as holding onto a sense of self that is ontologically at risk, itself resonating with far-right, fossil-fuelled, anti-ecological, masculinist populism.
... Some examples are self-identity and stigma (Ashforth & Kreiner 1999), social and moral dimensions of dirty work (Ashforth & Kreiner 2014), and the 'embodied aspects' of the work (i.e. those undertaking the work based on gender, class, age and race -see Simpson & Simpson 2018) as well as the 'physical and symbolic' or 'material' dynamics involved in 'staining' (Simpson & Simpson 2018). Much of this work is based on the original writings on dirty work by Hughes (1958) who used the term '. . . to refer to tasks and occupations that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading' (p. ...
... Some examples are self-identity and stigma (Ashforth & Kreiner 1999), social and moral dimensions of dirty work (Ashforth & Kreiner 2014), and the 'embodied aspects' of the work (i.e. those undertaking the work based on gender, class, age and race -see Simpson & Simpson 2018) as well as the 'physical and symbolic' or 'material' dynamics involved in 'staining' (Simpson & Simpson 2018). Much of this work is based on the original writings on dirty work by Hughes (1958) who used the term '. . . to refer to tasks and occupations that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading' (p. ...
This article argues, through a study of cleaning workers, a need to reconsider the changing nature of unskilled work. In particular, how it has, ironically, become more complex and challenging in some cases due to economic and political developments. For example, in relation to questions of dirty work, stigma and issues of dignity, aspects of this literature recognise the difficulty of the work and its ‘distribution’. However, we argue a need to draw further attention to the ‘mechanics’, processes and complexities of this work and the way it is subject to significant contextual changes (e.g. the role of austerity) that create new complexities and challenges just as that work is being undermined and intensified. We use the voices of cleaning workers to reflect, in a rich detailed manner, the changes to their working environment and focus on the broader social perceptions of the work – from the public, employers and the workers themselves. Our analysis demonstrates a clear recognition of the complexity of that work through four dimensions – the changing spatial isolation of work; the growing context of violence due to the changing operational features of the job; the ongoing impact of state led austerity policies and limited resources, and the ongoing role of social stigma. We end the article discussing how workers’ control emerges as an important issue in a curious manner within this changing context.
... Other concepts in the sociology of work help us understand the embodied performance of violence (McSorley, 2014). One is dirty work, known as labour, which, for some moral or perceptual reason, is undesirable for society (Simpson and Simpson, 2018). For example, Manrique Rueda and Tanner (2016) found that the Colombian government fostered the formation of paramilitary groups to control the presence of the then-FARC (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia) guerillas as dirty work that this government did not want to enact counterinsurgency with the Army. ...
Scholars have long debated what is the role of inequalities in organised violence, but the causal mechanisms remain unclear. I argue that mainstream approaches (e.g. deviance, subcultures, grievances, rational choice and Marxism) fall short because they overlook that organised violence is an intensive form of work. These perspectives often exoticise individuals involved in violence for profit or political purposes. Violence is not a deviant feature of social life but an integral part of collective action. By applying occupational lenses, I position those engaged in violence as a specialised class of manual workers recruited in the protection labour market. Scholars can acknowledge the occupational stratification observed before in research about organised violence by understanding violence specialists as workers. This essay explores how the sociology of work can enhance our understanding of inequality reproduction within criminal organisations, guerrillas, armies, police forces, mercenaries and private military companies.
... These distinctions also shape how forms of 'dirty' work are naturalised as suitable for some gendered working bodies, but not others (Simpson and Simpson, 2018). Looking at gender and 'interactive service work ', McDowell (2009: 14) contended that that 'embodied characteristics such as skin colour, weight or height, accent, and stance map onto gender to produce finely graded set of evaluations that position workers as more or less suitable to perform different types of work'. ...
This article explores the political economy of eldercare labour and the gendered politics of care work in China. Building on insights from research conducted in 2016–17 in Shanghai, we argue that gendered regimes of productive and reproductive labour, processes of class formation and economic reforms articulate with a regime of differential urban citizenship rights – urban and rural hukou – in shaping and influencing the lived experience of paid eldercare workers. As a framework for understanding ‘who cares’ in local eldercare labour markets in China, we follow recent work interweaving social reproduction theory (SRT) and intersectionality. In conversation with those debates, we experiment with mobilising intersectionality alongside SRT as we explore these eldercare workers’ paths into the sector, but argue that attention to the Chinese context and Chinese feminist contributions can also transform SRT and intersectional approaches through historically and materially grounded analyses of evolving relations of exploitation and oppression. This approach enriches the feminist political economy of paid eldercare through attention to who is channelled into this work in one of the world’s largest, and fastest-ageing, economies.
... Hitherto, the SCQ and the SSS have been widely used to assess stigma awareness in diverse occupational populations. However, different occupations exhibit major diversity in the aspects of professional prestige, social status, work content, service targets, and job characteristics [27]. Practitioners in various industries differ in experiencing internalized occupational stigma. ...
Background
Tour guides’ identification and internalization of occupational stigma may exacerbate their career development, perceived professional reputation and status, and mental health. The current study aimed to develop and verify the Tour guides Internalized Occupational Stigma Scale (TIOSS) to provide an effective tool for relevant quantitative research.
Methods
The study developed an initial questionnaire through literature analysis, expert review, and semi-structured surveys. We conducted item analyses and exploratory factor analyses among 326 tour guides, and confirmatory factor analysis and reliability and validity tests among 315 tour guides.
Results
The TIOSS consists of 21 items and is formed in three dimensions referring to Stigma Perception (SP), Status Loss (SL), and Career Denial (CD). The correlation coefficient values of the TIOSS total scale and dimension scores with the criterion instruments ranged from 0.17 to 0.68. In addition, the Cronbach’s α coefficients for the TIOSS and its dimensions ranged from 0.837 to 0.928, and the split-half reliability coefficients ranged from 0.843 to 0.916. The study also revealed that the TIOSS was consistent across genders.
Conclusion
The TIOSS performed favorable reliability and validity to be a valid instrument to assess tour guides' internalized occupational stigma.
... So-called women's work is often segregated along social constructions of what it means to be feminine versus masculine, with the former sometimes not being considered "real" work even public service and beyond (Mastracci et al., 2010). Part of dirty work is imbuing values on the profession and by extension onto the person doing the dirty work, and aspects of genders and races constructed as other can affect how someone sees the dirty worker (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). "Dirt and dirty work are therefore tied up with a moral and social order with implications for prestige, work hierarchies, and social positioning" (Simpson & Simpson, 2018, p. 2). ...
... Aqueles que empreendem trabalhos braçais são geralmente vistos como inferiores, por executarem tarefas marginalizadas, ainda que imprescindíveis à sociedade 11 . Muitas vezes essas atividades são consideradas como "trabalhos sujos" 12 , pois envolvem tarefas desvalorizadas (máculas sociais), estigmatizantes (máculas morais) e degradantes (máculas físicas) 13 . Essa noção tem sido empregada para analisar atividades de coleta de lixo hospitalar e de preparação de corpos para os ritos funerários no contexto hospitalar 14 . ...
Resumo No contexto do trabalho hospitalar durante a COVID-19, é preciso reconhecer que as atividades de apoio exercidas por maqueiros, agentes de limpeza e auxiliares administrativos são imprescindíveis para o processo de trabalho. Este artigo analisou resultados de uma etapa exploratória de uma pesquisa ampla com esses trabalhadores dentro de uma unidade hospitalar referência para COVID-19 no estado da Bahia. Foram selecionadas três entrevistas semiestruturadas produzidas a partir da perspectiva do “fazer falar” sobre o trabalho, utilizando pressupostos da etnometodologia e da ergonomia. A análise incidiu sobre as atividades de trabalho de um maqueiro, um agente de limpeza e uma auxiliar administrativa, problematizadas a partir da díade essencialidade-invisibilidade. O estudo demonstrou que esses trabalhadores são invisibilizados pela desvalorização social de suas atividades e nível de escolaridade e resistem apesar das circunstâncias e do sobretrabalho; e evidenciou a essencialidade desses serviços pela interdependência entre o trabalho de apoio e o trabalho assistencial e suas contribuições para a segurança do paciente e da equipe. Conclui-se que é necessário criar estratégias para que esses trabalhadores sejam valorizados social, financeira e institucionalmente.
... The narrative of angels and heroes represents critical care nurses as invincible, self-sacrificing, knowingly and willingly working in risk, 6,21 and undertaking dirty, invisible work. 22 It is hardly surprising, therefore, that the participants in our study rejected these historical, gendered, and outdated narratives, as they have done in other studies. 3,6,8,23 Critical care nurses strive to deliver high-quality care to patients, but participants suggested that they struggled with feeling insufficiently protected (lack of PPE), suboptimal work conditions, and other obligations outside their jobs. ...
Background
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the use of the labels ‘heroes’ and ‘angels’ to describe nurses (and especially critical care nurses) became prevalent. While often well intentioned, the use of these labels may not be the most positive image of nurses and the nursing profession. Critical care nurses have not previously been given the opportunity to provide their perceptions of the angel/hero narrative and the impact this may have on their practice and working environments.
Objectives
The objectives of this study were to explore the perspectives of critical care nurses and discover their perceptions about the angel/hero narrative and its impact on their clinical practice, safe working environments, and professional development during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Methods
A semistructured qualitative virtual interview study was conducted with critical care nurses from the United Kingdom, Australia, and North America. Digital audio data were transcribed verbatim. Thematic analysis of the transcribed data was performed. The COREQ guidelines were used to report the study.
Findings
Twenty-three critical care nurses located in the United Kingdom, Australia, and North America participated. Four themes were synthesised: history repeating, gender stereotypes, political pawns, and forgotten heroes.
Conclusions
Critical care nurses did not perceive the hero and angel labels positively. Participants were concerned about unrealistic expectations, potential safety workplace risks, and poor remuneration related to these narratives. Participants perceived that context and intention were important in the interpretation of these narratives; they spoke with pride about their work and called for improved representations of their role, recognition, and work conditions.
Open access: https://www.australiancriticalcare.com/article/S1036-7314(22)00240-5/fulltext
... Direct contact with dirtiness in hotel work can arouse students' disgust (Simpson & Simpson, 2018). Also, the social dirtiness characteristics of hotel service make it difficult for students to gain respect or equal treatment (Newman, 1999). ...
The shortage of human resources is a key problem restricting the development of China’s hospitality industry. In the meantime, Chinese hospitality higher education faces high graduate leakage – their undergraduates as the most promising hospitality human resource are reluctant to pursue a career in the hotel industry. Therefore, based on a framework of the perception of a job-the perception of a person-outcome, this study explored the negative effects of perceived occupational stigma and work dirtiness on hospitality management undergraduates’ career choice intentions. Structural equation modelling was applied using 928 questionnaires received from 31 universities in China. The results also revealed the psychological mechanism of face concern and self-esteem, as well as the moderating role of career development programmes. From the perspective of Chinese Confucian culture, this research explicated the reason for Chinese hospitality management undergraduates’ giving up on a hotel career, and provided valuable implications for hospitality higher education and hotel human resource management.
... 12,50 However, whereas previous studies mainly explored the negative impact of occupational stigma on individual's overall well-being, this article enriches the current literature and extends the scope of well-being research by exploring a relatively neglected but more detailed dimension of workplace well-being. Moreover, because previous research on the mechanism of occupational stigma mostly focused on qualitative studies, 12,14,35,50-52 scholars 38,49,51,53 To answer this call, this study collected quantitative data to provide empirical evidence for the research of occupational stigma. This contributes to the emerging literature on the stigmatized features of platform-based ondemand work and the impact on gig workers' workplace well-being from the following three aspects. ...
Objective:
In this paper, the influence of occupational stigma on workplace well-being of platform-based food-delivery workers is examined. The mediation effect of work-contingent self-esteem and the moderating effect of job control are also assessed.
Methods:
Questionnaire data from 362 platform-based food-delivery workers were gathered at three time points and multiple regression analyses were used to test each hypothesis.
Results:
Occupational stigma reduces workplace well-being of platform-based food-delivery workers and this relationship is mediated by work-contingent self-esteem. Job control exerts a negative moderating effect on the relationship between occupational stigma and platform-based food-delivery workers' work-contingent self-esteem.
Conclusions:
Strategies for reducing occupational stigma should be prioritized to increase workplace well-being in gig workers. Giving them more control over their work will likely alleviate the detrimental effect of occupational stigma on work-contingent self-esteem.
... Researchers have already highlighted the possible contiguities between service work and social taint (e.g. Ashforth et al. 2007Ashforth et al. , 2017Simpson and Simpson 2018), thus supporting the idea that 'service work' can easily become 'servile work'. These dynamics seemed to operate in the company studied. ...
While researchers have to date mainly focused on the coping strategies employed by dirty workers to normalise taint, the organisational and managerial roots of dirty work have been little explored. The article contributes to filling this gap by means of a single case study conducted in a big Italian banking company. In the research context investigated, branch-level bank employees felt themselves tainted from the moral (as ‘vendors’) and social (as ‘servants of customers’) points of view. These perceptions were directly associated with organisational strategies and managerial practices intended to fulfil demanding sales targets or to create more space and freedom for customers. Although the literature assumes that occupational taint is generated by external societal attributions, by introducing the concept of ‘organisationally-reinforced taint’ this study shows that internal organisational strategies and managerial practices can contribute to dirtying an occupation, even a relatively prestigious one like bank work.
We respond to recent calls to connect our understanding of stigma across and between levels of analysis by investigating how stigma management strategies to the same stigma vary and relate in nested industry, organizational, and individual actors. Drawing on data collected from 61 interviews with various workers in the coal industry in Australia, we find evidence of commonalities across individual, organizational, and industry stigma management strategies as well as substantial distinctions. Furthermore, we find evidence of cross‐level influence efforts that aim to increase the probability that specific tactics will be more likely adopted or effective. While individual, organizational, and industry actors can all be ‘labelled’ by the same stigmatization, the present study is, to our knowledge, the first that explores whether and how actors at different levels manage the same stigma.
This article critically explores responses to the suffering of animals caused by industrialised agriculture aiming to reflect on broader aspects of the current state of animal politics in the 21st century. Focusing on the regulatory schemes introduced to control the welfare of animals in Denmark, the article foregrounds sites of law enforcement and industry regulation, in which animal suffering is ‘carefully’ curated. The analysed material comprises inspection reports and interviews with veterinary officers and technicians charged with monitoring the level of care in Danish agribusinesses. The article builds upon Kelly Oliver’s theory of witnessing to develop a sociological perspective on the function of expert testimony within regulatory and administrative domains – what is defined as acts of juridical eyewitnessing. Through this framework, it becomes evident that law and bureaucratic procedures wield considerable influence in transforming a social and legal expectation to reduce animal suffering into specific ethical-scientific and bureaucratic standards. Furthermore, in adopting a de-human-centred sociological lens, the article presents an alternative interpretation of the evolution of anti-suffering sentiment – understood as negative emotional responses to animal suffering – one in which the state plays a prominent role in shaping particular attitudes towards other animals based on ‘seeing’ and ‘knowing’ suffering.
Societies create material, social, and moral boundaries that define who and what is dirty. “Dirt” encompasses literal and figurative things—objects, beings, ideas—that transgress these boundaries and thus are “out of place.” Previous research describing how consumers avoid and manage dirt assumes that dirt is aversive. The concept of consumer dirtwork emerged from our examination of self-described “dirtbag” wilderness consumers. Dirtwork reveals the potential usefulness of dirt. Instead of cleaning, dirtworkers redraw dirt boundaries, revealing resources they then work to capture. Boundary redrawing describes a continuum of adjustments to dirt boundaries, ranging from small shifts to complete inversions. Resourcing work describes the efforts required to capture the resources that are uncovered by boundary redrawing. Dirtwork results in challenges and rewards, and offers the possibility of continued dirtwork-resourced consumption. Dirtwork contributes by revealing the process wherein consumers make use of dirt, thus demonstrating the usefulness of dirt and fluidity of dirt boundaries. Dirtwork provides a useful lens for understanding consumer behaviors that do not aspire or cannot conform to socially-imposed cleanliness rules, including stigmatized, mundane, and extraordinary consumption. Dirtwork challenges assumptions that clean is good, socially-valuable, safe, and sustainable, and implicit associations of dirt with danger, stigma, and unsustainability.
Underemployment is a widely discussed but complex concept. This article progresses discussions and provides a new sociological conceptualisation. It builds on a classic theory of unemployment, Jahoda et al.’s ‘latent deprivation theory’ (LDT), that identified five ‘latent functions’ provided by jobs, besides a wage: time structure, social relations, sense of purpose/achievement, personal identity and regular activity. LDT was ground-breaking in illuminating previously hidden injuries of joblessness. This article proposes that LDT can be similarly ground-breaking for reconceptualising underemployment: it demonstrates conceptually the multiple ways in which the mere existence of a job is insufficient in protecting individuals from socially and psychologically negative impacts associated with unemployment. A sociology of underemployment can help better understand complex, shifting and precarious work and expose inherent forms of suffering and injustice.
The present study examines the transformation of the profession of Gassals, dead body bathers in Islamic culture, from a prestigious role to a stigmatized job in modern Türkiye. Through a qualitative research design, this study employs a combination of participant observation and in-depth interviews with Gassals in Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality. In the study conducted with the purposeful convenience sampling technique, in-depth interviews were conducted with 19 participants (3 male,16 female). Ultimately, the study raises three major modernity-related claims: Modernity marginalizes death and excludes it from daily life, primarily functions to secularize the public sphere and excludes religious issues, and presents the dead body as dirty, as it sees the body as a biological mechanism, as a product of standardization and institutionalization. Their job involves physical contamination due to direct contact with deceased bodies, and this solid physical taint overshadows the overall dignity of the profession. The three main findings of the study are important. First, community members perceive it as a “reminder of death.” The second is the modern human tendency to avoid death in the domains of everyday life, primarily through institutions such as hospitals. Lastly, the stigma toward gassals may be explained by them losing their status in the modern era under the influence of institutionalization despite enjoying a prestigious status in the past.
Changes to domestic divisions of labor have been widely documented, but some tasks seem particularly resistant to change. Using the lens of ‘doing gender’, this article draws on interviews with 25 heterosexual working parent British couples who produced a ‘household portrait’ of their division of labor. It examines how they explain men’s continuing responsibility for ‘man-typed’ domestic tasks and why this is so resistant to change. Although men’s ‘gatekeeping’ of these tasks is consequential for the overall household division of labor, there is relatively little opposition from their women partners. This gatekeeping reproduces gendered meanings of ‘man-typed’ tasks and enables both men and women to ‘do gender’ while supporting their image of a ‘sharing’ couple.
This chapter looks at two contrasting ethical issues: work and superintelligence. We first examine the application of AI use within the workplace, both its use to replace human jobs or tasks, involving the careful comparison of human and machine agency, analysis of the objectives and values of the workplace, and a range of other issues. Second, we examine ethical issues arising from the prospect of widespread technological unemployment. Topics covered include surveillance; assessment of human and machine agency; AI and existing structures of power; how AI may alter lines of communication and epistemology; how technology may increase structure and how well it fits into existing informational settings and infrastructure; control and autonomy; and how benefits of implementing AI are measured. The discussion of these issues is thus also pertinent to many other applications of AI. The discussion of superintelligence examines the nature of the fears surrounding it and possible ways of addressing its dangers. We examine attempts to ensure that superintelligence aligns with human purposes, noting the underlying ethical and philosophical framework. Parallels between the ways in which the control issue of AI occurs and is understood within its use in the workplace and in relation to superintelligence are indicated.KeywordsAI ethicsTechnological unemploymentSuperintelligenceSurveillanceValue alignmentLongtermism
This chapter examines the research on transparency in business operations, distinguishing between the literature on supply chain transparency, focused on product-centric organizations, and operational transparency, concerned with service-centered organizations. The complex and inconsistent nomenclature and nomological linkages in this literature are clarified as is the growing research emphasis on downstream issues. One significant conclusion reached is that business operations transparency is often as much about managing perceptions of a particular target audience as it is about improving actual performance.KeywordsTransparencySupply chainsBusiness operationsCustomersService operations
Across the world lockdowns during the beginning of the COVID-19 crisis saw the forced closure of many hands-on services such as beauty salons, hairdressers, and barber shops. In Australia although hair services were allowed to stay open during the first National lockdown, subsequent state lockdowns mandated these grooming services shut to the public for extended periods. There has been much public debate about the necessity – or perceived lack thereof – of grooming services, especially given that hairdressers were permitted to stay open during the first lockdown when many other businesses shut. 2020 saw claims in Western media that the closure of these spaces was ‘liberatory’, particularly for women. This article interrogates this assumption, drawing on data from 383 Australian survey respondents collected between July and September 2020 to look at the impact of salon inaccessibility during the period. While some survey respondents relished the freedom of not having to ‘keep up appearances’, many also reported on the negative impacts of salon closures in terms of connection, self-esteem and identity. This article considers how the site of the salon is considered a transformative ‘sanctuary’ for some and untangles the deeper impact of the closure of these sites on individuals during a crisis.
The story of carriage cleaners has been sadly neglected in the history of railway workers. The work has low pay, it is sometimes unpleasant, and it is also physically tough. This panorama paper explores some of the literature surrounding the history of carriage cleaners from the earliest records in the nineteenth century, through the two world wars, up to the early days of privatisation. The focus is on female carriage cleaners, exploring the reasons why their work has been hidden from history and putting forward an argument as to why more attention should be drawn to it. Despite its low pay and poor working conditions, cleaning work is found at an important nexus of the railway economy, ensuring that the spaces of railway travel remain sanitary and functional. Given their importance for the operation of the railway transport system, it is surprising that cleaners remain largely invisible.
How Direct Care Workers (DCWs) interpret their work and perform care activities undeniably impacts the well-being of institutionalized older adults. Despite the emotionally charged nature of paid care work, little is known about how Chinese DCWs talk about their work and construct meaning within China's unique social context of a burgeoning institutional care market and changing cultural expectations for long-term care. This study qualitatively explored Chinese DCWs' emotion work as they navigate among institutional pressures and low social recognition in an urban government-sponsored nursing home in central China. Results revealed that DCWs used Liangxin (the good heart/mind) – a ubiquitous Chinese moral notion emphasizing the unity of feeling, thought, and action – as an interpretive framework, including its four dimensions (ceyin, xiue, cirang, and shifei), to inform care practice, manage emotions, and find dignity within what can be personally demeaning and socially devalued work. Our study delineated the processes through which DCWs sympathized with the pain and struggles of the older adults in their care (ceyin xin), shamed unjust attitudes and behaviors embedded in institutional care (xiue xin), delivered family-like relational care (cirang xin), and formed and reinforced principles of good (versus bad) care (shifei xin). We also revealed the nuanced role that the cultural value of xiao (filial piety), working in tandem with liangxin, both shaped the emotional terrain of the institutional care setting and impacted how DCWs engaged in emotion work. While recognizing the effect of liangxin for incentivizing DCWs to provide relational care and renegotiate their role status, we were also alerted to the risks of overburdening and exploiting DCWs who relied solely on their liangxin to meet complex care needs.
Physicians who participate in abortion and medically assisted death in the United States work at the margins of institutionalized medicine. What motivates them to engage in such “dirty work”? This article uses ethnographic materials from two recent projects to analyze physicians’ roles as gatekeepers to contested medical services. Abortion and medically assisted death share many similarities: They are both deeply stigmatized practices that are heavily restricted in many U.S. jurisdictions, and which many physicians are reluctant to participate in for moral, religious, or professional reasons. They both also confer medicine with the power to govern life and death decisions through the apparatus of state law. However, state laws operate quite differently on physicians in these two cases, with different outcomes. This comparative analysis demonstrates how dirty work in medicine enrolls the agency and subjectivity of physicians in distinctive ways that may be eclipsed by totalizing biopolitical frameworks. [abortion, medical aid in dying, physicians, agency, biopolitics, United States]
While hair and beauty salons are often thought of as spaces that reproduce normative ideals of gender and sexuality, the past decade has seen an increase in salons catering specifically to LGBTQ+ clientele. More broadly, research has shown that far from only treating ‘surface’ concerns, salons in general are sites of intensified affect, making them a unique space of entangled body, emotional, and identity work. This article draws on interviews with salon workers from 2017 and client responses to a survey about salons during COVID-19 from 2020, conducted in Australia. This article gives particular focus to salons catering to the LGBTQ+ community (‘queer salons’), as well as data from salon clients that identify as LGBTQ+. Drawing on this dataset this article offers insight into how queer salons challenge our expectations of what hair and beauty salons can do for queer precarity in terms of physical, emotional and identity vulnerability and trouble ideas of the salon as a space which merely reinforces normative ideals of beauty. Furthermore, this article considers how salons might provide a sense of safety and belonging for some LGBTQ+ people, especially within the context of a pandemic.
As we saw in Chap. 10.1007/978-3-030-91971-9_1 , the gendered transfer of labour globally and within Europe has been the focus of attention and the core of the discourse concerning the feminization of migration. Whilst gendered labour migrations are not new, their composition, extent, and how we analyse them, theoretically and methodologically, have evolved. As data show, migrants and especially females, are heavily concentrated within certain sectors producing not just a migrant division of labour (Wills et al., 2010) but a gendered migrant division of labour. Some sectors such as household services (domestic work and care) or social reproductive labour are not only predominantly female but, especially in Southern Europe, overwhelmingly filled by migrant women. Although this type of work has attracted much attention in studies of female labour migration, other sectors, both lesser skilled and more skilled, have also relied heavily on female migrant labour but have been much less studied. Mirjana Morokvasic (2011) questioned the basis of our preoccupation about migrant women as subaltern and victims, exclusively filling low skilled sectors. Thus domestic and care workers have become the emblematic figures of globalised migrations in stark contrast to the easily mobile male IT worker (Kofman, 2013). This is not to deny that domestic and care work globally employ more migrant women than any other sector, and that demand has not grown in response to the inadequacies of public provision across different welfare regimes, leading to the search for cheap solutions to fulfil reproductive needs by using migrant workers, including men. However it does raise issues around our lack of attention to other low skilled sectors such as hospitality and contract and commercial cleaning in hospitals, offices and public spaces, which also employ large numbers of migrants. Skilled labour, especially in welfare sectors, such as education, health and social work is also sourced globally to make good shortfalls in professional reproductive labour (Kofman & Raghuram, 2015). Thus at all skill levels migrant women are employed disproportionately in diverse sectors of social reproduction in sustaining the wellbeing of the household and of society more generally.
There is now a substantial body of literature on the coping strategies used by workers employed in stigmatized dirty work. However, there is insufficient knowledge about what resources they use while employing these strategies, what factors impact resource availability and utilization for coping, and how the utilization of resources leads to differential coping. Our study fills these gaps. First, using meta-synthesis of 39 qualitative studies, we consolidate the resources these workers use to cope into six categories. Second, the study discusses what factors impact resource availability and utilization by proposing the role of occupational prestige as a determining factor. Third, borrowing from conservation of resources theory and self-affirmation theory, this study proposes resources as facilitators of self-affirmations leading to differential coping. Finally, we propose a conceptual framework along with propositions depicting how dissonance, caused by inconsistency in self-integrity, leads to the use of various resources for differential coping.
New materialist applications in ‘dirty work’ studies have rightly emphasised the importance of materiality alongside symbolism. However, these approaches have neglected important themes irreducible to the material world, such as temporality, reflexivity and social structure. This article develops an alternative critical realist perspective on socio-materiality in dirty work which emphasises these themes. It draws on 2016–2017 ethnographic data on the work of clinical photographers of wounds in a UK specialist outpatient wound healing clinic. First, it shows how photographers’ reflexivity mediates the relationship between their embodied materiality and their agency in the physical domain. Second, it highlights the temporal dynamics between reflexive agents, their material environment, and the context of their operation. Finally, it emphasises the non-conflationary relationship between the social structures of the medical hierarchy and photographers’ agency in dirty work. Together, these contributions highlight the utility of an emergent, realist ontology in understanding the dynamics of dirty work.
Fear of contamination is central to our thinking about ‘dirty work’, that is, tasks and occupations that carry a stigma due to being perceived as having degrading, disgusting, or immoral qualities. However, most existing literature focuses on the symbolic dimension of taint, particularly, dirty workers’ cognitive, ideological tactics to counter taint. While contamination has more material consequences, the processes through which it is experienced and contained in dirty work have not yet been well-explicated. Drawing on an ethnographic study of work in two Danish prisons, this article offers an opportunity to see behind the walls and gain insight into the extreme emotional dirty work of prison officers as they face burdensome emotional encounters with manipulative and intimidating inmates. As society’s agent in the containment of inmates’ emotional dirt, officers, as emotional labourers, risk contamination if they give into inmates’ pressure and manipulation and do them illicit favours. I use embodied phenomenology as an original and fertile approach to deepen the understanding of how contamination occurs in emotional dirty work and the bodily responses that workers engage in to resist it. Drawing on these findings, I extend our understanding of emotional dirty work.
This study examines reserve military service from a perspective of social construction—the ways in which the reservist’s conscious experiences are constructed to give meaning to military service. Content descriptions of conscious experiences of reserve military service are identified in past studies. Constructions fell into four broad categories: (1) complementary to life—reserve military service providing wanted satisfaction not otherwise achieved, material gain, or ideological commitment; (2) equitable arrangement—understood compensation for self-sacrifice; (3) discordant identity—requirements of military life blatantly or surreptitiously conflicting with established identity and civilian life; and (4) self-definition—reserve military service understood as an aspect of self-identity. Directions for integrating these constructions as a basis for future research are identified and discussed.
This paper was presented at the Conference on Global Labor Migration: Past and Present
June 20-22, 2019, The International Institute for Social History, Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
Comments welcome. Please do not cite without permission.
Drawing on a relational approach and based on an ethnographic study of street cleaners and refuse collectors, we redress a tendency towards an overemphasis on the discursive by exploring the co-constitution of the material and symbolic dynamics of dirt. We show how esteem-enhancing strategies that draw on the symbolic can be both supported and undermined by the physicality of dirt, and how relations of power are rooted in subordinating material conditions. Through employing Hardy and Thomas’s taxonomy of objects, practice, bodies and space, we develop a fuller understanding of how the symbolic and material are fundamentally entwined within dirty work, and suggest that a neglect of the latter might foster a false optimism regarding worker experiences.
Exotic dancing and other types of sex work (e.g. prostitution, pornography) hold a low position in the hierarchy of paid work (Price, 2008) and other social hierarchies. These occupations are viewed as dirty work (Hughes, 1958) - physically, morally and socially tainted. Individuals who work in these occupations must manage the stigma associated with the work and in turn the stigma associated with being ‘dirty workers’ (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). It has been argued that the construction and maintenance of positive, affirming identities in this context are complex and problematic (Grandy, 2008). Price (2008) notes that constituents of exotic dancing establishments (e.g. club owners, managers, disc jockeys, clients, bar workers, dancers) re-produce gendered stereotypes of dancers - wild, easy, untrustworthy, immature, unreliable, expendable and promiscuous.
This chapter focuses on the theoretical potential of stains and staining as a productive way of understanding dirty work, especially the physical,social and moral taint attributed to it (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999; Drew et al., 2007). The concept of the stain can be understood through the ethics of dirty work, focusing on healthcare and the presence of the body as a key site through which staining and stains may be a rich theoretical resource. This may involve physical as well as emotional and symbolic staining, something that leaves its mark against the backdrop of domestic hygiene, cleanliness and order.
Although perceptions of physically, socially, and morally stigmatized occupations – ‘dirty work’ –
are socially constructed, very little attention has been paid to how the context shapes those
constructions. We explore the impact of historical trends (when), macro and micro cultures
(where), and demographic characteristics (who) on the social construction of dirty work.
Historically, the rise of hygiene, along with economic and technological development, resulted in
greater societal distancing from dirty work, while the rise of liberalism has resulted in greater
social acceptance of some morally stigmatized occupations. Culturally, masculinity tends to be
preferred over femininity as an ideological discourse for dirty work, unless the occupation is
female-dominated; members of collectivist cultures are generally better able than members of
individualist cultures to combat the collective-level threat that stigma inherently represents; and
members of high power-distance cultures tend to view dirty work more negatively than members
of low power-distance cultures. Demographically, marginalized work tends to devolve to
marginalized socioeconomic, gender, and racioethnic categories, creating a pernicious and
entrapping recursive loop between ‘dirty work’ and being labeled as ‘dirty people.’
Dirty work refers to occupations that are viewed by society as physically, socially, or
morally tainted. Using exploratory, semistructured interviews with managers from 18
dirty work occupations, we investigated the challenges of being a manager in tainted
work and how managers normalize taint—that is, actively counter it or render it less
salient. Managers reported experiencing role complexity and stigma awareness. Four
types of practices for countering taint were revealed: occupational ideologies, social
buffers, confronting clients and the public, and defensive tactics. We discuss links
between these practices.
The identity literature suggests that the stigma of "dirty work" threatens the ability of occupational members to construct an esteem-enhancing social identity. However, research indicates much the opposite, creating a puzzle we attempt to answer. We argue that the stigma of dirty work fosters development of a strong occupational or workgroup culture, which fosters (1) ideological reframing, recalibrating, and refocusing and (2) selective social comparisons and differential weighting of outsiders' views. These defense mechanisms transform the meaning of "dirt" and moderate the impact of social perceptions of dirtiness.
Through a study of the butcher trade, this article explores the meanings that men give to 'dirty work', that is jobs or roles that are seen as distasteful or 'undesirable'. Based on qualitative data, we identify three themes from butchers' accounts that relate to work-based meanings: sacrifice through physicality of work; loss and nostalgia in the face of industrial change; and distinction from membership of a shared trade. Drawing on Bourdieu, we argue that sacrifice and distinction help us understand some of the meanings men attach to dirty, manual work - forming part of a working-class 'habitus'. Further, these assessments can be both 'reproductive' and 'productive' as butchers reinforce historically grounded evaluations of work and mobilize new meanings in response to changes in the trade.
We challenge recent assertions that discourse studies cannot de facto address materiality. We demonstrate how a Foucauldian theorization of discourse provides a way to analyse the co-constitutive nature of discursive and material processes, as well as explore the power relations implicated in these relationships. To illustrate our argument, we identify exemplary studies that have effectively combined a study of discourse and different aspects of materiality – bodies, objects, spaces and practices. In doing so, we demonstrate how power relations are brought to bear through the interplay of discourse and materiality, and explain how future research on discourse can attend to the material aspects of our realities, rather than simply focusing on language.
We analyse how men incarcerated in Helsinki Prison managed through talk their stigmatized identities as prisoners. Three strategies are identified: ‘appropriation’ of the label ‘prisoner’; claiming coveted social identities; and representing oneself as a ‘good’ person. The research contribution we make is to show how inmates dealt with their self-defined stigmatized identities through discourse, and how these strategies were effects of power. We argue that stigmatized identities are best theorized in relation to individuals’ repertoires of other (non-stigmatized) identities which they may draw on to make supportive self-claims. Prisoners, like other kinds of organizational participants, we argue, have often considerable scope for managing diverse, fragile, perhaps even contradictory, understandings of their selves.
Based on qualitative field and interview data, this comparative analysis of dirty work by firefighters and correctional officers demonstrates that taint management and its relative utility is inextricably bound to and embedded within macro-level discourses. While firefighters labor to fulfill expectations as “America's heroes,” correctional officers work to squelch images as “professional babysitters” and the “scum of law enforcement.” The authors' analysis illustrates how discourses of occupational prestige and masculine heterosexuality allow firefighters to frame their work in preferred, privileged terms while correctional officers struggle to combat taint discursively associated with low-level feminized care work or with brutish, deviant sexuality. This study extends theoretical understandings of identity construction, dirty work, taint management, and organizational performances of masculinity and sexuality. The authors' analysis concludes with limitations, future directions, and practical applications regarding the potentially dysfunctional results of taint management.
Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) documented how workers in so-called “dirty work” occupations were able to overcome threats to their social identities by engaging in the cognitive tactics of ideology manipulation and social weighting. This paper expands Ashforth and Kreiner's work in three ways. First, we move beyond an exclusive focus on intense dirty work occupations by mapping the broader landscape of stigmatized work. Second, we examine how system justification theory and social identity theory---typically cast as competing mechanisms by which individuals and groups perceive their places in a social structure---can complement each other to tell a more complete story of how individuals and groups deal with stigmatized identities. Third, we consider how stigmatized workers experience identification, disidentification, and ambivalence as a result of conflicting occupational and societal influences.
The concept of ‘dirty work’ has much potential to offer insights into processes related to the construction of organizational identities and work-group cultures. In this article, I use a social constructionist framework, to argue that ‘dirty workers’ perform their identities in two conceptually distinct contexts: ‘front regions’ and ‘back regions’ (Goffman, 1959), each producing its own subjective challenges. I use a critical discourse analysis to explore how, within the research interview setting, police officers deal with the moral dilemma of their use of coercive authority. I argue that what is designated as ‘dirty’ within any specific role differs according to the perspective of the observer, revealing the boundaries and landscape of different moral and social orders and how these overlap and compete. It is further argued that, within specific interactional contexts, occupational identity comprises a site of contestation for these different moral and social orders. The utility of the dirty work concept is explored in relation to its ability to illuminate the dynamics of ideological reproduction and transformation.
This article questions whether a core objective
of HRM – to manage organisational culture – is
feasible, other than at a most superficial level.
On the basis of an in-depth case study analysis
the authors argue that the dominant values of
society at large are implicated in what appears to
be the spontaneous formation and character of
occupational cultures. The article raises the
question of whether spontaneously occurring
“cultures of excellence” are gratuitously hijacked
by self-serving managerial groups, happy to co-opt
the sub-culture of work groups when it works
to their advantage.
In U.S. nursing homes, it is the job of nursing assistants to tend to residents ' basic bodily needs, including elimination and incontinence care.
Given their frequent contact with pollutants, aides are very much at risk of becoming “pollutedpeople.” In this article, I investigate how nursing assistants' continual contact with contaminating substances impacts their status within the workplace, their relationships with others, and their attitudes toward their work and themselves as workers. I also explore how aides manage their encounters with pollutants and their stigmatized role as “dirty workers.” In doing so, I hope to explicate the meaning of elimination and of incontinence caregiving in the United States, [nursing homes, caregiving, symbolic pollution, incontinence, American culture]
The paper presents a qualitative study of men who do traditionally female dominated and feminized work (specifically nursing and primary school teaching). Men are often seen as not only a minority to women in these contexts, but also their Other. The paper explores the processes of doing gender as a social and discursive practice, highlighting the necessity to manage difference and the processual, emergent, dynamic, partial, and fragmented nature of gendered identities. We show some of the complex ways in which men manage difference and how they transcend Otherness by doing masculinity and appropriating femininity so that masculinity is partially subverted and partly maintained. This analysis not only relies on the doing of gender through the doing of difference but also surfaces the undoing of gender and difference to disrupt gender norms and practices in work organizations.
This paper explores the significance of dirt in the work of technicians who service and repair private cars. Rather than being useful in understanding how dirt is dealt with, the historical and anthropological analyses of dirt are shown to be overly concerned with cultural significance and the idea that dirt is no more than 'matter out of place'. Such accounts suppress the more common sense approach that dirt is unpleasant to human beings and is to be avoided if possible. In work such as garage servicing and repairs, dirt has to be confronted and dealt with pragmatically, according to the consequences of its presence, rather than symbolically according to its cultural meaning. The writing of Sartre on slime provides a more persuasive explanation both for the ambivalence towards ambiguous materials of slime and dirt and for the moral connotations that attach to them. Everett Hughes's account of a 'moral division of labour' in which distinctions are made concerning dirty work fits with some of the visible hierarchical distinctions in the garage setting. But it is the variability of practices, both between garages and between technicians in a similar setting, that suggests dealing with dirt is a practical matter that is not prescribed by ritual or cultural significance.
Descriptions of manual employment tend to ignore its diversity and overstate the homogenizing effects of technology and industrialization. Based on ethnographic research on a London construction site, building work was found to be shaped by the forms of a pre-industrial work pattern characterized by task autonomy and freedom from managerial control. The builders' identities were largely free from personal identification as working class, and collective identification was fractured by trade status, and ethnic and gender divisions. Yet the shadow of a class-based discursive symbolism, which centered partly on the division of minds/bodies, mental/manual, and clean/dirty work, framed their accounts, identities and cultures. The builders displayed what is frequently termed working-class culture, and it was highly masculine. This physical and bodily-centered culture shielded them from the possible stigmatization of class and provided them with a source of localized capital. 'Physical capital' in conjunction with social capital (the builders' networks of friends and family) had largely guided their position in the stratification system, and values associated with these forms of capital were paramount to their public cultures. This cultural emphasis offered a continuing functionality in the builders' lives, not having broken free from tradition or becoming an object of reflexive choice.
This theoretical paper proposes that some stigmas, once removed, can continue to incite prejudice toward the formerly marked ("stickiness"), essentially restigmatizing individuals and continuing the stressful experience of being a "dirty person" in others' eyes. The authors focus on dirty work roles (e.g., morticians, exotic dancers) as prototypes of sticky marks that can lead to continued devaluation and, due to legitimizing myths about work, may be especially vulnerable to it. The authors argue that stickiness results from internal attributions made by others about dirty work and is influenced by visibility, onset- and offset-controllability, taint, tenure, and how the work ended. The authors conclude with an analysis of how stickiness might affect vocational patterns of former dirty workers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were approximately 1.7 million home health aides and personal and home care aides in the United States as of 2008. These home care aides are rapidly becoming the backbone of America's system of long-term care, and their numbers continue to grow. Often referred to as frontline care providers or direct care workers, home care aides—disproportionately women of color—bathe, feed, and offer companionship to the elderly and disabled in the context of the home. This book draws on observations of and interviews with aides working in Ohio and California to explore the physical and emotional labor associated with the care of others. Aides experience material hardships and find themselves negotiating social norms and affective rules associated with both family and work. This has negative implications for workers who struggle to establish clear limits on their emotional labor in the intimate space of the home. Aides often find themselves giving more, staying longer, even paying out of pocket for patient medications or incidentals; in other words, they feel emotional obligations expected more often of family members than of employees. However, there are also positive outcomes: some aides form meaningful ties to elderly and disabled patients. This sense of connection allows them to establish a sense of dignity and social worth in a socially devalued job. The case of home care allows us to see the ways in which emotional labor can simultaneously have deleterious and empowering consequences for workers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, there were approximately 1.7 million home health aides and personal and home care aides in the United States as of 2008. These home care aides are rapidly becoming the backbone of America’s system of long-term care, and their numbers continue to grow. Often referred to as frontline care providers or direct care workers, home care aides-disproportionately women of color-bathe, feed, and offer companionship to the elderly and disabled in the context of the home. In The Caring Self, Clare L. Stacey draws on observations of and interviews with aides working in Ohio and California to explore the physical and emotional labor associated with the care of others. Aides experience material hardships-most work for minimum wage, and the services they provide are denigrated as unskilled labor-and find themselves negotiating social norms and affective rules associated with both family and work. This has negative implications for workers who struggle to establish clear limits on their emotional labor in the intimate space of the home. Aides often find themselves giving more, staying longer, even paying out of pocket for patient medications or incidentals; in other words, they feel emotional obligations expected more often of family members than of employees. However, there are also positive outcomes: some aides form meaningful ties to elderly and disabled patients. This sense of connection allows them to establish a sense of dignity and social worth in a socially devalued job. The case of home care allows us to see the ways in which emotional labor can simultaneously have deleterious and empowering consequences for workers.
Exploring how men in service and caring occupations (cabin crew, primary school teachers, nurses and librarians) both 'do' and 'undo' gender as they manage the potential mismatch between gender and occupational identity, this book engages with the key theoretical concepts of identity, visibility and emotions to examine men's experiences.
Normalität ist unter Psychologen und Soziologen ein reichlich unsicherer Begriff. Bestimmte erkennbare und erleidbare Arten der Abnormalität hat der amerikanische Soziologe Erving Goffman unter dem allgemeinen Begriff des Stigmas zusammengefasst. Er schließt Körper-, Geistes- und Charakterdefekte gleichermaßen ein. Träger eines Stigmas leben ein schweres Leben: sie werden abgelehnt, verbreiten Unbehagen, lösen Beklemmung aus bei den Gesunden, gefährden deren eigenes zerbrechliches Normal-Ich, so weit der Defekt für jeden erkennbar ist. Andere, mit geheimerem Stigma belastet, müssen verleugnen, täuschen, spielen, um weiterhin als normal zu gelten; sie leben in Angst vor Entdeckung und Isolierung. Einsam sind beide. Goffman beschreibt die Techniken des Kontakts von Stigmatisierten: sie brauchen oft komplizierte Strategien, um das nicht zu verlieren, wovon Menschen als soziale Wesen leben: von Akzeptierung, Anerkennung und Sympathie. Stigmatisierte haben zwei Identitäten: die der Normalen, mit der sie identifiziert bleiben, ohne sie zu erfüllen, und ihre reale, defekte, die hinter ihrem Ich-Ideal so schmählich zurückbleibt. Dies auszuhalten und zu ertragen, ist die Grundleistung eines jeden Gezeichneten. Und weil die Toleranz der Normalen so verschwindend gering ist, haben die Kranken, nach Goffman, die Last der Anpassung zu tragen. Sie müssen, um die Normalen zu schonen, spielerische Leichtigkeit entwickeln im Umgang mit sich selbst, damit die Normalen nicht von Depression und Mitleid verschlungen werden. Das Stigma darf nicht als Last erscheinen, es muss verborgen werden hinter Würde und Selbstachtung, damit die Akzeptierungsbereitschaft der Normalen nicht überstrapaziert wird.
In many European countries the utilisation of ‘cheaper’ forms of migrant labour has become the cornerstone of the management of labour market fluctuations (MacKenzie and Forde, 2009). However, despite its apparent utility in filling labour ‘gaps’, migration causes controversy and concerns about its impact upon job substitution patterns, effect on wages and wider social and ‘community’ cohesion. The vast majority of economic migrants to the European Union do not arrive in their new countries to take up highly paid, professional jobs. On the contrary, many enter knowing that they will be working at the bottom of the labour market, in monotonous, repetitive, physically dirty and socially rejected occupations, within the ‘secondary labour market’ (this concept encompasses non-desirable work that many people will not undertake).
‘After reading this book it will be more difficult to "do" the sociology of work and the sociology of the body in the absence of the other. In some quite exquisite ways it throws down a challenge which practitioners in both fields will find difficult to ignore’ - Paul Stewart, former editor of Work, Employment and Society, University of the West of England Bodies at Work provides the first full-length, accessible account of the body/work relation in contemporary western societies. Bringing together fields of sociology that have hitherto developed mainly along separate lines, the book demonstrates the relevance of concepts developed in the sociology of the body for enriching our understanding of changing patterns of work and employment. Bodies at Work begins by establishing key concerns in both the sociology of the body and the sociology of work. Drawing on existing research, the author proceeds to examine a wide range of employment sectors: industrial employment; customer relations; health practice; care work; the beauty industry; and sex work. The contribution of feminist theory and research is highlighted throughout, and analyses of photographs help the reader conceptualise the changing nature of the body/work relationship over time. Bodies at Work helps readers think more clearly and creatively about how work relations shape bodily experience.
Through a series of case studies of low-status interactive and embodied servicing work, Working Bodies examines the theoretical and empirical nature of the shift to embodied work in service-dominated economies. Defines 'body work' to include the work by service sector employees on their own bodies and on the bodies of others Sets UK case studies in the context of global patterns of economic change Explores the consequences of growing polarization in the service sector Draws on geography, sociology, anthropology, labour market studies, and feminist scholarship.
Based on data from a recently completed project in Australia, this chapter explores the gendered nature of 'dirty work' and how male nurses perceive and manage the 'taint' associated with nursing care. From Hughes (1951) dirty work includes tasks, occupations and roles that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading, while the management of taint refers to the ways in which contact with dirt, as a 'discrediting mark' (Goffman, 1963), is responded to and experienced (Drew et al., 2007). As Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) point out, dirty work has been neglected in recent organisational literature. Further, while the proportion of male nurses in the profession in Australia has risen - currently 9 per cent, reflecting the proportion in other Western contexts (AIHW, 2007) - persistent labour shortages mean that understanding the challenges men face, for reasons of retention and recruitment, is a pressing concern.
* 1. Introduction: political fictions and real oppressions. * 2. Dr. Jekyll and Mrs. Hyde: defining domestic work. * 3. A foot in the door: the social organisation of paid domestic work in Europe. * 4. Invisible women I: migrant domestic workers in Southern Europe. * 5. Invisible women II: migrant domestic workers in Northen Europe. * 6. Changing the rules: the case of the UK. * 7. Selling the self: commodification, migration and domestic work. * 8. The legacy of slavery: the American South and contemporary domestic workers. * 9. "Just like one of the family": status and contract. * 10. "Your passport is your life": domestic workers and the state. * 11. Conclusion.
“& une secte est le noyua et le levain de toute foule& . Etudier la foule c'est juger un drame d'aprks ce qu'on voit sur la scène; étudier la secte c'est le juger d'après ce qu'on voit dans les coulisses.”
Sighele, S. Psychologie des sectes. Paris, 1898. Pp. 62, 63, 65.1
This article uses Acker's theory of gendered organizations to frame an analysis of the ways in which policies and practices in a men's and a women's prison reflect and reproduce gendered inequalities. The article offers a working definition of one of Acker's key theoretical concepts, the notion of “gendered organizational logic.” Then, using interview data collected from correctional officers in a men's and a women's prison, the article examines the ways in which officer training and assignments, although designed to be nominally generic, assume a male worker and disproportionately benefit male officers working in men's institutions. These findings imply that the perspective could more usefully be conceived as a theory of “masculinized” organizations.
The concept of reproductive labor is central to an analysis of gender inequality, including understanding the devaluation of cleaning, cooking, child care, and other “women's work” in the paid labor force. This article presents historical census data that detail transformations of paid reproductive labor during the twentieth century. Changes in the organization of cooking and cleaning tasks in the paid labor market have led to shifts in the demographics of workers engaged in these tasks. As the context for cleaning and cooking work shifted from the dominance of private household servants to include more institutional forms, the gender balance of this reproductive labor workforce has been transformed, while racial-ethnic hierarchies have remained entrenched. This article highlights the challenges to understanding occupational segregation and the devaluation of reproductive labor in a way that analyzes gender and race-ethnicity in an intersectional way and integrates cultural and structural explanations of occupational degradation.
This article seeks to explore the world of the gynaecology nurse. This world defines the gendered experience of nursing; that is, women in a women's job carrying out ‘women's work’. It is also a world that receives scant public recognition due to its association with the private domain of women's reproductive health. Many issues dealt with on a daily basis by gynaecology nurses are socially ‘difficult’: cancer, infertility, miscarriage and foetal abnormalities; or socially ‘distasteful’: termination of pregnancy, urinary incontinence, menstruation and sexually transmitted disease. The ‘tainted’ nature of gynaecology nursing gives it the social distinction of ‘dirty work’ but does not deter the gynaecology nurse from declaring her work as ‘special’, requiring distinctive knowledge and skills. Qualitative data collected from a group of gynaecology nurses in a North West National Health Service hospital displays how they actively celebrate their status as women carrying out ‘dirty work’. Through the use of ceremonial work that continually re-affirms their ‘womanly’ qualities the gynaecology nurses establish themselves as ‘different’, as ‘special’, as the ‘other’.
The small but growing number of men in the nursing profession does not herald a progressive integration of masculine and feminine sex roles. The evidence presented in this paper suggests that even in female-dominated occupations such as nursing, patriarchal gender relations which reflect a high valuation of all that is male and masculine, play a significant role in situating a disproportionate number of men in administrative and elite specialty positions. At the heart of this gender dynamic is the need to separate the masculine from the lesser valued feminine. Male nurses do this by employing strategies that allow them to distance themselves from female colleagues and the quintessential feminine image of nursing itself, as a prerequisite to elevating their own prestige and power. They are aided in this task by patriarchal cultural institutions that create and perpetuate male advantage, as well as by women nurses themselves who, consciously or unconsciously, nurture the careers of men colleagues.
The aim of this research was to explore the experience of men nurses and the ways in which gender relations structure different work experiences for women and men in the same profession.
Men are now entering the nursing profession in record numbers and challenging the notion that men are inappropriate in caregiver roles or incapable of providing compassionate and sensitive care. A limitation of the current state of knowledge regarding caring and men nurses is that it is primarily focused on men nursing students, not practising nurses. Little is known about men nurses' practices of caring and how such practices reflect the gendered nature of nursing and nurses' caring work.
The theme of men nurses as cautious caregivers emerged from data that were collected in two rounds of semi-structured interviews with eight men nurses practising in Nova Scotia, Canada. Thematic analysis, informed by feminist theory and masculinity theory, was used as the method for analysing the data.
For men nurses, the stereotype of men as sexual aggressors is compounded by the stereotype that men nurses are gay. These stereotypes sexualize men nurses' touch and create complex and contradictory situations of acceptance, rejection and suspicion of men as nurturers and caregivers. They also situate men nurses in highly stigmatized roles in which they are subject to accusations of inappropriate behaviour. For men nurses, this situation is lived as a heightened sense of vulnerability and the continual need to be cautious while touching and caring for patients. Ultimately, this situation impacts on the ability of men nurses to do the caring work they came into nursing to do.
The ageing of the population in the US and elsewhere raises important questions about who will provide long-term care for elderly and disabled people. Current projections indicate that home care workers--most of whom are unskilled, untrained and underpaid--will increasingly absorb responsibility for care. While research to date confirms the demanding aspects of the work and the need for improved working conditions, little is known about how home care workers themselves experience and negotiate their labour on a daily basis. This paper attempts to address this gap by examining how home care workers assign meaning to their 'dirty work'. Qualitative interviews suggest that home care workers have a conflicted, often contradictory, relationship to their labour. Workers identify constraints that compromise their ability to do a good job or to experience their work as meaningful, but they also report several rewards that come from caring for dependent adults. I suggest workers draw dignity from these rewards, especially workers who enter home care after fleeing an alienating service job, within or outside the healthcare industry.
Class inequality in austerity Britain: Power, difference and suffering
- W. Atkinson
- S. Roberts
- M. Savage
Work matters: Critical reflections on contemporary work
- S. Bolton
- M. Houlihan
Doing the dirty work: Gender, race and reproductive labour in historical perspective
- Duffy
Dirty work: Concepts and identities
- G. Grandy
- S. Mavin
Dirty work: Concepts and identities
- R. Simpson
- N. Slutskaya
- J. Hughes
Dirty work: Concepts and identities
- S. Vachhani
Dealing with dirt: Servicing and repairing cars, sociological review www
- T Dant
- D Bowles
- Bolton
- Douglas
- Stacey