Abstract
This chapter builds directly from our discussion in Chap. 3, Dirt in Material Worlds. At the conclusion of the previous chapter, we argued that since the early paradigmatic literature on dirty work, there has been something of a ‘return to the material’: a direct consideration of how ‘matter matters’ in the context of dirty work. We observed, nonetheless, that there are also problems with the materialist corrective, in particular the tendency to oscillate between the ‘material’ and ‘symbolic’ planes and facets of dirty work, first swinging the analytical pendulum one way, and then the other. As we argued in the conclusion to the previous chapter, the challenge of how to integrate a consideration of both planes within a unified scheme underpins our own attempts to advance a relational conceptualisation of dirt and dirty work. That undertaking is central to this chapter.
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Simpson, R., Hughes, J., Slutskaya, N. (2016). Dirt as Relational. In: Gender, Class and Occupation. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43969-7_4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-43969-7_4
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