Natasha Slutskaya

A Bourdieuan Relational Perspective for Entrepreneurship Research

In this paper, we illustrate the possibilities a relational perspective offers for overcoming the dominant dichotomies (e.g., qualitative versus quantitative, agency versus structure) that exist in the study of entrepreneurial phenomena. Relational perspective is an approach to research that allows the exploration of a phenomenon, such as entrepreneurship, as irreducibly interconnected sets of relationships. We demonstrate how ierre ourdieus concepts may be mobilized to offer an exemplary toolkit for a relational perspective in entrepreneurship research.

Sacrifice and distinction in dirty work: men’s construction of meaning in the butcher trade

Through a study of the butcher trade, this article explores the meanings that men give to ‘dirty work’, that is jobs or roles that are seen as distasteful or ‘undesirable’. Based on qualitative data, we identify three themes from butchers’ accounts that relate to work-based meanings: sacrifice through physicality of work; loss and nostalgia in the face of industrial change; and distinction from membership of a shared trade. Drawing on Bourdieu, we argue that sacrifice and distinction help us understand some of the meanings men attach to dirty, manual work – forming part of a working-class ‘habitus’. Further, these assessments can be both ‘reproductive’ and ‘productive’ as butchers reinforce historically grounded evaluations of work and mobilize new meanings in response to changes in the trade.

Introducing Dirty Work, Concepts and Identities

This edited book sets out a research agenda for the study of dirty work - generally defined as tasks, occupations and roles that are likely to be perceived as disgusting or degrading (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999). Through the different occupational settings presented, it explores the identities, meanings, relations and spaces of dirty work and how the boundaries between ‘clean’ and ‘dirty’ are negotiated and defined. As Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) have argued, dirty work has been a neglected area within Organisation Studies, with theory and research failing to reflect changes in the nature of and demand for such work. This neglect is surprising given, within the context of the UK and elsewhere, the increase in the demand for ‘dirty’ work - including paid caring (Anderson, 2000), domestic work and low-level service (Noon and Blyton, 2007) and night-time work driven by the 24-hour economy (Hobbs, 2003) - as well as for areas of work performed by migrant labour.

The use of ethnography to explore meanings that refuse collectors attach to their work

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to detail how the ethnographic approach can be usefully adopted in the context of researching dirty or undesirable work. Drawing on a study of refuse collectors, it shows how ethnography can enable a fuller social articulation of the experiences and meanings of a social group where conventional narrative disclosure and linguistic expression may be insufficient. Design/methodology/approach – Viewing ethnography as no one particular method, but rather a style of research that is distinguished by its objectives to understand the social meanings and activities of people in a given “field” or setting, this paper highlights aspects of reproductive and “dirty” work which may be hidden or difficult to reveal. Combining the methods of participant observation, photographic representation and interviews, we add to an understanding of dirty work and how it is encountered. We draw on Willis and Trondmans (2002) three distinguishing characteristics namely, recognition of theory, ...

Better together: examining the role of collaborative ethnographic documentary in organizational research

Despite growing interest in video-based methods in organizational research, the use of collaborative ethnographic documentaries is rare. Organizational research could benefit from the inclusion of collaborative ethnographic documentaries to (a) enable the participation of “difficult to research” groups, (b) better access the material, embodied, or sensitive dimensions of work and organizing, and (c) enhance the dissemination and practical benefits of findings. To increase understanding of this under-explored method, the authors first review the available literature and consider strengths, limitations, and ethical concerns in comparison with traditional ethnography and other video-based methods. Using recent data collected on working class men doing “dirty work,” the authors then illustrate the use of collaborative ethnographic documentary as an investigative tool—capturing often concealed, embodied, and material dimensions of work—and a reflective tool—elaborating and particularizing participants’ narrative accounts. It is concluded that collaborative ethnographic documentary facilitates greater trust and communication between researchers and participants, triggering richer exploration of participants’ experiences, in turn strengthening theoretical insights and practical impact of the research.

Beyond the Symbolic: A Relational Approach to Dirty Work through a Study of Refuse Collectors and Street Cleaners

Drawing on a relational approach and based on an ethnographic study of street cleaners and refuse collectors, we redress a tendency towards an overemphasis on the discursive by exploring the co-constitution of the material and symbolic dynamics of dirt. We show how esteem-enhancing strategies that draw on the symbolic can be both supported and undermined by the physicality of dirt, and how relations of power are rooted in subordinating material conditions. Through employing Hardy and Thomas’s taxonomy of objects, practice, bodies and space, we develop a fuller understanding of how the symbolic and material are fundamentally entwined within dirty work, and suggest that a neglect of the latter might foster a false optimism regarding worker experiences.

Emotional Dimensions of Dirty Work: Butchers and the Meat Trade

This chapter explores the emotional dimensions of dirty work. In particular, looking at the meat trade, it investigates how butchers draw on and activate emotions in managing the ‘dirtiness’ of the job. Thus, we address the question: what emotions do butchers convey as they discuss key aspects of work practices and their work role? While a body of research has explored how dirty workers manage taint in a variety of occupations (e.g. Dick 2005; Tracy and Scott 2006; Ackroyd and Crowdy 1990), and in so doing have revealed some of the emotional elements involved (Simpson et al. 2011), few studies have made it a central concern—despite well-established recognition of the need to incorporate emotions into analyses of work (e.g. Fineman 1993, 2003). A focus on emotions helps us to explore how the social and the material intertwine through ‘relational’ aspects where emotions are not just a property of the self but more importantly a product and manifestation of the relationship between the individual and the world. In surfacing in a more explicit sense the emotional dynamics of dirty work, we point to, in accordance with some other research (Bolton 2005; Duffy 2007; Perry 1978), the significance of disgust, shame, pleasure, and pride. In addition, in the context of recent ‘cleansing’ and regulation of the trade, we highlight how nostalgia, as ‘a positively toned evocation of a lived past’ (Belk 1990), marks men’s response to how the work is experienced. We consider these themes in the light of a ‘dirty work habitus’, showing how the emotional dynamics of dirty work are complex and ambiguous and how an understanding of these dimensions must be framed within a specific ‘field’ of class and gender relations.

Resistance in Dirty Work: Street Cleaners and Refuse Collectors

In the previous chapter we have seen how social position and associated moral injury—the withdrawal of recognition at the interface of economic and moral principles where dirty workers fail to match the expectations of the neo-liberal market—may potentially lead to forms of resistance. Picking up this theme, this chapter explores resistance in dirty work. Resistance can be seen as an action, inaction, or process whereby individuals within a power structure engage in behaviours stemming from their opposition to, or frustration with, enactments of power (Collinson 1999; Knights and McCabe 1999). As Thomas et al. (2004) point out resistance has a long pedigree in organisation studies though orientations have altered in form—seen less as a behavioural response in the form of oppositional practices to inequality at work and more in terms of struggles against the potential colonisation of particular meanings and subjectivities. At this ‘micro-political’ level (Weedon 1993), resistance takes place when tensions occur between ‘an individual’s notion of self (itself derived from discourse) and the subjectivity offered in a dominant discourse’, thereby involving ‘contests over meanings and the articulation of counter discourses’ (Thomas et al. 2004: 6). Resistance is thus seen as socially constructed in context in that its manifestation and performance will vary between individuals in their specific temporalities and spaces.

Does Necessity Shield Work? The Struggles of Butchers and Waste Management Workers for Recognition

Drawing on two studies of those involved in physically tainted jobs, this chapter seeks to explore what constraints might compel or hinder the application of particular discursive ideologies and strategies in battling stigma attached to these jobs. The findings demonstrate how workers count on labour market participation as a way of preserving their worth. Participants also possess a strong sense of the appropriateness of particular types of work, a sense consistent with traditional norms of masculinity. However, edifying ideologies that workers commonly draw on lose their value as a result of changing labour market conditions (significantly less demand for physical labour and a preference for “clean” white collar work) and malformed understandings of what is useful (when the notion of utility shifts from “being beneficial to communities” to “providing the best value for tax payers’ money”).

Consequences of Neo-Liberal Politics on Equality and Diversity at Work in Britain: Is Resistance Futile?

Abstract In this chapter, we examine the interrelationship between politics of neo-liberalism and practices of equality and diversity at work. In so doing, we illustrate how macro-national politics, in particular the contemporary neo-liberal expansion, impact the definitions, activities, beneficiaries and overall impact of diversity management at the organisational level. The chapter focuses on three fundamental assumptions of neo-liberalism, beliefs in the utility of deregulation (voluntarism), individualism and competition in order to organise economic and social life. The chapter goes on to examine the reflection of these neo-liberal beliefs on construction of diversity management in contexts where neo-liberal politics dominate. The chapter concludes by a critical assessment of how diversity can be freed from the clutches of neo-liberalism, which merely serves to limit the repertoire and imagination of interventions for diversity management.