Abstract
This chapter seeks to bring bodies and embodiment into understandings of dirty work. Drawing on Bourdieu, it highlights the significance of the body and of embodied dispositions and practices; the interrelations between gender, class, and race; and the simultaneity of the material and the symbolic in understandings and experiences of such work. We review the main sources of literature and highlight current theoretical approaches. We present the argument that dirty work needs to be understood, not just as a task or role, but as grounded in prevailing social, cultural, and discursive practices and how such work cannot be divorced from the meanings (e.g. around gender, class, race) attached to the bodies of workers. Further, we seek to show the ways in which the materiality of dirt is implicated in how dirty work is encountered and managed. Thus, while dirt has a moral dimension as disorder and ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas 1966), it also marks physical bodies and shapes lived experiences. We seek to place emphasis on the embodied and the material as well as the symbolic in dirty work, rather than assigning primacy to the discursive, a dominant orientation within current accounts.
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Simpson, R., Hughes, J., Slutskaya, N. (2016). Embodying Dirty Work. In: Gender, Class and Occupation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43969-7_2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43969-7_2
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