Gender, Class and Occupation Working Class Men doing Dirty Work

This insightful new study explores an emerging and growing interest in Sociology and Organization Studies which concerns the meanings and experiences of ‘dirty’ work. Based on a unique study of male street cleaners, refuse collectors, graffiti removers and butchers, and drawing on Bourdieu as a theoretical frame, it presents an ‘embodied’ understanding of ‘dirty’ work. Gender, Work and Occupation explores new avenues of workplace studies, highlighting how material conditions both support and constrain processes of occupation-based ideological constructions. Using original field research, the authors put forward a different agenda in terms of how we think about dirty work, and how we can explore and understand the ‘lived experiences’ of dirty workers. 

Ruth Simpson is Professor of Management at Brunel Business School, UK. Her research interests include dirty work, gender and organizations, gender and careers, and emotions in organizations. She has recent publications in Organization, Gender Work and Organization, Human Relations, Work Employment and Society and British Journal of Management.

Jason Hughes is Professor and Head of Sociology at the University of Leicester. His research interests include problematised consumption; drugs, addiction and health; emotions, work and identity; figurational sociology and sociological theory; methods and methodology; moral panics and regulation. Authored and co-authored/edited works include Norbert Elias and Modern Sociology: Knowledge, Interdependence, Power, Process (Bloomsbury 2013); Visual Methods (Sage, 2012);Internet Research Methods (Sage, 2012); Documentary and Archival Research (Sage, 2014); Moral Panics in the Contemporary World (Bloomsbury, 2013), and Communities of Practice: Critical Perspectives (Routledge, 2007).

Natasha Slutskaya is a Lecturer of Organization Studies at Brunel Business School, UK. Her research interests include organizational identity and creativity and embodiment. She has recent publications in Organization, Qualitative Research in Management and Organizations and Work Employment and Society.