Dirty Work: Concepts and Identities(Identity Studies in the Social Sciences)

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.

Table of Contents:
Notes on Contributors Introducing Dirty Work, Concepts and Identities; R.Simpson, N.Slutskaya, P.Lewis & H.Hopfl Dirty Work and Acts of Contamination; H.Hopfl Stains, Staining and the Ethics of Dirty Work; S.Vachhani Reconceptualising Dirty Work: Investment Banking and the Financial Crisis; L.Stanley 'Glamour Girls, Macho Men and Everything in Between': Un/doing Gender and Dirty Work in Soho's Sex Shops; M.Tyler Doing Gender in Dirty Work: Exotic Dancers' Construction of Self-Enhancing Identities; G.Grandy & S.Mavin Dirty Talks and Gender Cleanliness: An Account of Identity Management Practices in Phone Sex Work; G.Selmi Embracing Dirt in Nursing Matters; R.McMurray Dispersing of Dirt: Inscribing Bodies and Polluting Organisation; P.White & A.Pullen Gendering and Embodying Dirty Work: Men Managing Taint in the Context of Nursing Care; R.Simpson, N.Slutskaya & J.Hughes Cleaning Up: Transnational Corporate Femininity and Dirty Work in Magazine Culture; E.Swan Managing 'Dirty' Migrant Identities: Migrant Labour and the Neutralisation of Dirty Work Through 'Moral' Group Identity; G.Lee-Treweek Post-feminism and Entrepreneurship: Interpreting Disgust in a Female Entrepreneurial Narrative; P.Lewis Bibliography Index

About the Author :
RUTH SIMPSON is Professor in Management at Brunel Business School, UK. Her previous publications include Men in Caring Occupations and Gendering Emotions in Organizations (with P. Lewis). NATASHA SLUTSKAYA Lecturer in Organization Studies at Brunel Business School, UK. Her research interests include organizational identity and creativity and embodiment. PATRICIA LEWIS 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 and Organizations (with R. Simpson). HEATHER HOPFL 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 the Workplace (with B. Czarniawska).