Dirty Work Concepts and Identities

by Simpson, Ruth; Slutskaya, Natasha; Lewis, Patricia; Höpfl, Heather

• ISBN13: 9780230277137
• ISBN10: 0230277136
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2012-05-22
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book explores new understandings and contemporary experiences of dirty work tasks or roles that are seen to be disgusting or degrading. Through novel empirical sites that include nursing, medicalization, sex workers, sex call operators, financiers and women's magazines, the book offers new theoretical insights into a form of work that is increasing in significance in the contemporary labour market. By drawing on concepts such as staining, embodiment and 'whiteness', it complicates the clean/dirty divide in the context of work and contributes to understandings of dirty work as contingent, fluid and socially constructed. It offers rich insights into the complex ways in which such work is experienced and the variety of strategies drawn on as dirty workers seek to manage identity.

Author Biography

Ruth Simpson is Professor of Management at Brunel Business School, UK. Her previous publications include Men in Caring Occupations and Gendering Emotions in Organizations (with P. Lewis). Natasha Slutskaya is Lecturer in Organization Studies at Brunel Business School, UK. Her research interests include organizational identity and creativity and embodiment. Patricia Lewis is Senior Lecturer in Management at the Kent Business School, UK. Her previous publications include Voice, Visibility and the Gendering of Organizations (with R. Simpson) and Revealing and Concealing Gender (with R. Simpson). Heather Hpfl is Professor of Management at the University of Essex, UK. Her previous publications include Interpreting the Maternal Organization (with M. Kostera) and Casting the Other: Maintaining Gender Inequalities in Work Organizations (with B. Czarniawska).

Table of Contents

List of Figures and Tables	p. vii
Notes on Contributors	p. viii
Introducing Dirty Work, Concepts and Identities	p. 1
Dirty, Work and Acts of Contamination	p. 19
Stains, Staining and the Ethics of Dirty Work	p. 33
From High Flyer to Crook - How Can We Understand the Stigmatisation of Investment Bankers during the Financial Crisis?	p. 49
'Glamour Girls, Macho Men and Everything In Between': Un/doing Gender and Dirty Work in Soho's Sex Shops	p. 65
Doing Gender in Dirty Work: Exotic Dancers' Construction of Self-Enhancing Identities	p. 91
Dirty Talks and Gender Cleanliness: An Account of Identity Management Practices in Phone Sex Work	p. 113
Embracing Dirt in Nursing Matters	p. 126
Dispersing of Dirt: Inscribing Bodies and Polluting Organisation	p. 143
Gendering and Embodying Dirty Work: Men Managing Taint in the Context of Nursing Care	p. 165
Cleaning Up? Transnational Corporate Femininity and Dirty Work in Magazine Culture	p. 182
Managing 'Dirty' Migrant Identities: Migrant Labour and the Neutralisation of Dirty Work through 'Moral' Group Identity	p. 203
Post-Feminism and Entrepreneurship: Interpreting Disgust in a Female Entrepreneurial Narrative	p. 223
References	p. 239
Index	p. 262
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