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The use of animals as scientific models is argued to be crucial for producing new scientific and medical knowledge and clinical treatments. However, animal research continues to raise socio-ethical concerns. In recent years, there has been a push for openness amongst the life science community, with the aim of increasing the transparency of animal research to wider publics. Yet, how this push for openness is experienced by those responsible for the care and welfare of research animals requires further study. This paper draws upon qualitative interviews with Named Veterinary Surgeons (NVS) in the UK and explores how they practise openness, avoid openness, and, at times, challenge the way their role is represented within openness agendas. Overall, this social scientific analysis reveals that the current openness agenda has the potential to create tensions for professionals, as they seek to manage regulatory and public imaginaries of the veterinary identity alongside the animal research controversy. The paper concludes by arguing for a culture of dialogue, where openness includes allowing those with responsibilities for animal welfare to express ambivalence or concern about their own role. Finally, the paper calls for sustained academic work on relations between the veterinary profession and wider society, particularly areas that involve contested practices in which care and harm may coincide., Competing Interests: None., (© The Author(s) 2024.)

Similar to other health care workers, animal health technologists (AHTs) face emotionally demanding expectations nursing patients and supporting family members. We explore how AHTs experience emotional labor and whether they cope by reframing their work as meaningful and valuable. This study uses a two-phase, exploratory mixed-methods design with data from 12 online interviews and 292 online questionnaires from AHTs. The results show that the emotional labor of caring for clients and conflict with coworkers is associated with greater depression and reframing work as satisfying reduces depression. We discuss how reframing can be an effective coping strategy to improve mental health. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines “body work” in the context of home‐based substance abuse care in Finland, which is provided to adults with intoxicant problems and needing short‐ and long‐term support in their everyday lives. This article is concerned specifically with body work, which can be defined as care work focusing directly on the bodies of others. Through a twofold analysis of 13 audio‐recorded home visits and ethnographic field notes, it examines what body work is in home‐based substance abuse care, how close body work is and how workers and clients negotiate about it. The study shows that home as a site of care has an impact on substance abuse care. The worker’s home visit settles into a tension relation between private and public even if the care is a part of weekly routine. Body work is holistic care work necessitating slight, medium, and extreme bodily intimacy in taking care of and supporting client’s well‐being. During the home visit, worker and client negotiate the body work and its content. Worker and client communicate verbally and non‐verbally by gaze and body movements. Often the workers have to balance between disciplinary, participatory, and caring approaches to support the client living in the best possible way.

This study melds Japanese principles of 3K and Dirty Work into a new model of Distasteful Work. Elements of work stigma and the associated taint affects workers' both intrinsically and extrinsically. While 3K is traditionally associated with bluecollar occupations, the results of interviews with employees in Japanese companies suggest a willingness to transpose these associated stigma to white-collar work activities. Adverse stereotyping caused by distasteful work activities has the potential to cause a decrease in mental health leading to lower work efficiency. Particularly in countries that are suffering from labor shortage, maximizing the potential of existing experienced workforces and top talent is paramount, consequently adapted models are necessary. This research examines occupations within commercial banking and identify types of work activities which have higher potential to cause occupational health issues through associated work stigma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the tensions between ideals about sociology (and what it ought to be) transmitted during university socialization and the everyday working activities among Argentinean sociologists. It focuses on an extreme case: that of the graduates who, lacking the opportunity or the desire to join the professoriate, became market researchers. The case is extreme because while university training provided these individuals with a set of methodological and analytical skills that proved to be useful (and profitable) when studying consumers and markets, it also encouraged a critical, world-rejecting, view of the discipline which was at odds with their professional activities. Not surprisingly, they encountered a distressing moral puzzle: were they betraying sociology's progressive values, values to which they were seriously committed? Building on E. Hughes' concept of "dirty work", this paper examines how these individuals navigated an occupation that was, at least initially, seen as morally objectionable, and the ways by which they came to imbue it with new and edifying "sociological" value. This article is based on interviews with sociologists working in market research and a socio-historical account of the School of Sociology at the University of Buenos Aires, the nation's most important program, where all our interviewees were trained. This study has implications for understanding situations in which actual professional practices are in sharp contrast with the ideals presented during university socialization, and the identity repair processes that university-trained workers undertake when dealing with deviant careers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dirty work involves tasks that are considered disgusting or degrading. Individuals engaged in dirty work are often stigmatized, and this stigma may negatively affect the workers' job-related attitudes. Although dirty work is often cast in a negative light, we explore an aspect of jobs that might lessen the detrimental effects of performing dirty work: invisibility. Using a sample of 329 working adults, we investigate the impact of invisibility on job satisfaction and occupational identification of marginalized dirty workers. Results indicate that performing dirty work, and being marginalized, each negatively impact job-related attitudes. In dirty occupations, relationships were weaker for employees reporting higher levels of invisibility with invisible employees reporting higher levels of occupational identification than their more visible counterparts. These findings shed new light on developing positive workplace experiences by suggesting that invisibility may be the key to reducing the stigmas associated with dirty work. Theoretical implications, directions for future research, and practical implications are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abortion work has changed in the decades since Roe v. Wade, and concerns over efficiency and cost reduction have resulted in increased specialization and compartmentalization of duties among health workers. This study examines the current state of surgical abortion at a clinic in southern California. Drawing on 18 months of ethnographic fieldwork at an abortion clinic, I use theories of dirty work and intimate work to examine how abortion work is organized and allocated among staff. I find that work in the clinic is best understood as existing on two intersecting spectrums of intimacy and dirtiness. Whereas existing research on abortion workers has primarily focused on doctors and nurses, this study includes medical assistants and compares experiences across different occupations. I conclude that frequency, intensity, and purpose of intimate work and dirty work coalesce to create distinct types of abortion workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Exceptional Delivery Model for probation practice in England and Wales meant that probation practitioners predominantly worked from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, engaging and supervising service-users remotely. This article explores the impact of the Exceptional Delivery Model on staff and their practice. We begin by considering how probation practice changed because of the implementation of the Exceptional Delivery Model and the impact that this has had on probation staff. The reality of probation work is brought into perspective when there are children in the home and the demarcation of work and home life is easily blurred, especially when considered through the lens of 'emotional dirty work'. We then present analysis of interviews with 61 practitioners and managers in the National Probation Service. The interviews were primarily focused on staff wellbeing and emotional labour as opposed to the impact of the pandemic, but participants regularly raised the pandemic in discussions. We focus on three key themes: the challenges of working from home and remote communication, experiences of managing risk through doorstep visits and the spill over of probation work into personal lives. The article concludes by considering what the findings tell us about probation work and potential future implications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Commercial surrogacy is a highly controversial issue that leads to heated debates in the feminist literature, especially when surrogacy takes place in developing countries and when it is performed by local women for wealthy international individuals. The objective of this article is to confront common assumptions with the narratives and experiences described by Indian surrogates themselves. Methods This qualitative study included 33 surrogates interviewed in India (Mumbai, Chennai and New Delhi) who were at different stages of the surrogacy process. They were recruited through five clinics and agencies. This 2-year field study was conducted before the 2018 surrogacy law. Results Surrogates met the criteria fixed by the national guidelines in terms of age and marital and family situation. The commitment to surrogacy had generally been decided with the husband. Its aim was above all to improve the socioeconomic condition of the family. Women described surrogacy as offering better conditions than their previous paid activity. They had clear views on the child and their work. However, they declared that they faced difficulties and social condemnation as surrogacy is associated with extra-marital relationships. They also described a medical process in which they had no autonomy although they did not express complaints. Overall, surrogates did not portray themselves as vulnerable women and victims, but rather as mothers and spouses taking control of their destiny. Conclusions The reality of surrogacy in India embraces antagonistic features that we analyze in this paper as “paradoxes”. First, while women have become surrogates in response to gender constraints as mothers and wives, yet in so doing they have gone against gender norms. Secondly, while surrogacy was socially perceived as dirty work undertaken in order to survive, surrogates used surrogacy as a means to upward mobility for themselves and their children. Finally, while surrogacy was organized to counteract accusations of exploitation, surrogates were under constant domination by the medical system and had no decision-making power in the surrogacy process. This echoes their daily life as women. Although the Indian legal framework has changed, surrogacy still challenges gender norms, particularly in other developing countries where the practice is emerging.

I reflect upon Dr. William Shaffir’s influence on my approach to ethnographic research and my study of homeless shelter workers. Dr. Shaffir introduced me to his own brand of the craft of qualitative field work, but also introduced me to important sociologists and ideas in the symbolic in­teractionist tradition. Most central was Everett C. Hughes’ notion of “dirty work,” which helped shape my research focus. Building from Hughes’ concept, but expanding it with Shaffir and Pawluch’s (2003) social constructionist approach to occupations, I was better able to conceptualize the process of how workers themselves piece together the meaning of “dirty work.” Beyond gaining these conceptual insights, I also reflect on Dr. Shaffir’s teaching philosophy of qualitative methods, that is, the impor­tance of learning by doing. I conclude with some thoughts regarding Shaffir’s perspective on the wider ethnographic task of describing, in situ, members’ understandings and definitions. Following Everett Hughes, I call on interactionists to give more attention to “dirty work” as a generic and transcontextual process.

Objective: To explore if abortion care providers in the Republic of Ireland experience abortion-related stigma.Study Design: The survey was distributed to abortion care providers working in community and hospital units nationwide. We measured stigma using the 35-item version of the Abortion Providers Stigma Scale (APSS). We also collected data on demography, professional involvement in providing abortion care, and risk of burnout (measured by the Maslach Burnout Inventory).Results: Of the 309 providers invited to take part, 156 (50.5%) completed the survey between January to May 2020. The sample reported a mean score of 70.9 on the total scale of the APSS. This was comparable with the scores of providers in a Massachusetts-based study but was lower than a sample of providers from across the USA. Linear regression analyses found that the Irish hospital-based obstetricians (b = 10.51, 95% CI 3.16-17.86) and midwives/nurses (b = 10.88, 95% CI 2.3-19.47) reported higher stigma than their colleagues working in general practice.Conclusions: Comparing the scores of the current sample to published studies highlight the factors that may drive stigma in the Irish context. The Irish providers reported fewer issues in disclosing their abortion work than providers in the USA, which may be explained as they also reported fewer experiences of judgment and discrimination. They did, however, report higher levels of social isolation. Additionally, the findings suggest that providing surgical and/or later-gestation abortion care and providing within the hospital environment may present additional challenges for staff which increase level of stigma.Implications: Despite widespread support for the expansion of the abortion care services, providers in Ireland still experience stigma related to this work. Our findings suggest that Irish providers, particularly those working in hospitals, may benefit from supports to reduce abortion-related isolation and challenges posed by collegial interactions or later-gestation care. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this research, we challenge the belief that positive signals of morality always increase job candidates' appeal to interviewers. In four experiments with both experienced and novice interviewers, we find that signals of the candidates' morality interact with the nature of the industry such that candidates who send signals of morality are less likely to be selected for jobs in a morally tainted industry, compared to neutral candidates. Moderated mediation analyses indicate that this effect is driven by a perceived lack of job fit (Experiments 1 and 2). Results of Experiment 3 indicate that this moderation effect is limited to candidates who signal morality—candidates applying for jobs in morally tainted industries who signal immorality do not enjoy a competitive advantage over moral or morally neutral candidates. Finally, the framing of the organization, that is, whether critical aspects of the organization are presented as more morally or economically oriented, within morally tainted industries helps mitigate the penalizing effects interviewers put on candidates who signal their morality—a moral frame eliminates this negative effect whereas an economic frame does not (Experiment 4). Together, these studies indicate that a job candidate's morality is a complicated and important quality that can profoundly affect his/her ratings of hireability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines how professionals working in bureaucratic organizations, despite having formal authority, struggle to enact authority over the clients they advise, transforming their right to command into deference to commands. Drawing on a comparative ethnographic study of two professional groups overseeing compliance in university laboratories, I identify how choices about their task jurisdiction influence each profession’s ability to enact authority over and gain voluntary compliance from the same group of clients. One group constructs its work domain to include not only high-skilled tasks that emphasize members’ expertise but also scut work—menial work with contaminated materials—through which they gain regular entry into clients’ workspaces, developing knowledge about and relationships with clients. Using these resources to accommodate, discipline, and understand clients, they produce relational authority—the capacity to elicit voluntary compliance with commands. The other group outsources everyday scut work and interacts with lab researchers mostly during annual inspections and training, which leads to complaints by researchers to management and eventual loss of jurisdiction. The findings show the importance of producing relational authority in contemporary professional–client interactions in bureaucratic settings and challenge the relevance of expertise and professional identity in generating relational authority. I show how holding on to, not hiving off, scut work allows professionals to enact authority over clients. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

People who engage in dirty work manage the stigma of their jobs by employing various narrative techniques that allow them to diminish the work's negative attributes. Doing so enables them to maintain a positive sense of self and to explain continuation in the work. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with 33 participants, we examine how people who cook shake methamphetamine make sense of their behavior as an occupation in order to distance themselves from the stigma of meth use and manufacturing. We find they emphasized the rewards of cooking in the context of the hedonistic lifestyle they desired. They enjoyed a perceived status increase, a sense of belonging, and developed pride and satisfaction in cooking. We propose that methamphetamine users' marginalization coupled with experiences cooking combine to create a draw to continued production of methamphetamine fostered by positive elements of an occupational identity that lingers despite great cost. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Qualitative field research can capture the life worlds and definitions of the situation of informants often not reported in quantitative studies. Post hoc reflections of how more seasoned researchers de­fine, assess, and interpret the process of entering the field and the interview dynamic between the researcher’s subjectivity and the subjectivity of informants are widespread in the qualitative research literature. However, seldom are the personal stories and reflections of neophyte researchers voiced in published accounts. This article accounts for my experiences in researching the “dirty work” of front­line caseworkers and the importance of practicing empathy while managing a boundary. I emphasize the practical sense-making challenges of managing a delicate balance between under and over rapport in researching homeless shelter caseworkers as an occupational group. My experiences underscore the challenging dynamics of maintaining a professionally oriented research-role, as well as the crucial importance of boundary work and distancing as practical strategies to qualitative interviewing.

In this article, we contribute to sociological literatures on morality, professional and institutional contexts, and morally stigmatized 'dirty work' by emphasizing and exploring how they mutually inform one another in lawyers' work activities. Drawing on interview data with 58 practitioners in the commercial legal industry in Singapore, we analyze how they experience professional and institutional constraints on the expressions of morality in their work. Our findings illustrate how a dominant managerial and economic focus maintains and reproduces a constrained form of morality, limited to instrumental, utilitarian and commercial ends, and subordinated to lucrative client and firm interests. We discuss our findings in terms of the need to research and reform professions in ways that support more rounded and unconstrained moral reflexivity and autonomy in how work is undertaken and valued. This in turn has implications for how organizations and professions might achieve alternative moral institutional orders, and for legal work to avoid the moral and social taints of dirty work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Drawing on ethnographic research in a homeless shelter, this article examines how caseworkers navigate an occupation that is often physically and morally trying, and at times, objectionable. Given this context, we examine the ways in which caseworkers identify and define "dirty work," often seen as a source of occupational degradation, according to two main typifications: the physical and the moral. Building on Erving Goffman's frame analysis, we examine the definitional and interactional strategies actors use to transform unpleasant first‐order realities to more valued, meaningful, or workable second order realities, by keying particular frames of meaning. These involve framing dirty work through (1) a professional lens, (2) humanism and egalitarianism, (3) a negotiated interpretation of institutional rules, and (4) the use of humor. We conclude by reflecting on the constructed nature of dirty work, and the importance of framing strategies in the sociology of occupations, suggesting that a more generic application of these ideas may be useful across a number of other social contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Gerais: Revista Interinstitucional de Psicologia is the property of Gerais: Revista Interinstitucional de Psicologia and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article argues, through a study of cleaning workers, a need to reconsider the changing nature of unskilled work. In particular, how it has, ironically, become more complex and challenging in some cases due to economic and political developments. For example, in relation to questions of dirty work, stigma and issues of dignity, aspects of this literature recognise the difficulty of the work and its 'distribution'. However, we argue a need to draw further attention to the 'mechanics', processes and complexities of this work and the way it is subject to significant contextual changes (e.g. the role of austerity) that create new complexities and challenges just as that work is being undermined and intensified. We use the voices of cleaning workers to reflect, in a rich detailed manner, the changes to their working environment and focus on the broader social perceptions of the work – from the public, employers and the workers themselves. Our analysis demonstrates a clear recognition of the complexity of that work through four dimensions – the changing spatial isolation of work; the growing context of violence due to the changing operational features of the job; the ongoing impact of state led austerity policies and limited resources, and the ongoing role of social stigma. We end the article discussing how workers' control emerges as an important issue in a curious manner within this changing context. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores the professional project for an emergent subaltern specialist community of wound healing clinicians. Drawing on the literature on professions and boundary work, it examines how wound healing clinicians challenge the perception of their work as 'dirty' and seek its transformation into a specialism of 'woundology'. The article is based on an ethnography of a UK multidisciplinary team of doctors and nurses with an interest and expertise in wound healing, who work as clinical academics and provide wound care services in outpatient clinics. It demonstrates that wound healing clinicians vindicate their professional status by seeking to enthral the medical community in 'dirty wound care' as a focused clinical specialty of 'woundology'. Through training nurses to do medical wound care work, educating clinicians from other specialties about wounds and undertaking wound research, wound healing clinicians assert the professional boundaries of their specialism and its fit with mainstream medicine without embellishing the dirty aspects of their work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Stigma has become an increasingly significant challenge for society. Recognition of this problem is indicated by the growing attention paid to it within the management literature, which has provided illuminating insights. However, stigma has primarily been examined at a single level of analysis: individual, occupational, organizational, or industry. Yet, cultural understandings of what is discreditable or taboo do not come from the individual, occupation, organization, or industry that is stigmatized; on the contrary, they come from particular sources that transcend levels. As such, we propose that current silos within the literature may not only be preventing engagement with insights from different levels of analysis but, importantly, be preventing us from truly understanding stigmatization as a social process. To address this issue, we review the stigma literature and then present a cross-level integrative framework of the sources, characteristics, and management strategies therein. Our framework provides a common language that integrates insights across these levels and enables a shift in attention from how actors respond to stigma to broader processes of stigmatization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A legacy of coal mining and manufacturing work in Appalachia has linked regional working-class identity and perceptions of the region to shared experiences of dangerous and stigmatised dirty work. At the same time, manufacturing work here increasingly relies on computerised machinery, systematised practices of cleanliness, and ties to global corporations. This paper, based on 18 months of ethnographic field research explores practices of cleanliness and contamination at a multinational auto parts manufacturing plant in Appalachian Kentucky – a region whose labour history is closely intertwined with ideologies of dirt, class, and moral reform. Findings show that workers negotiate belonging and class identity through strategies of embracing or avoiding dirt and performing practices and personas of cleanliness at work. I argue that lean manufacturing ideals of cleanliness, and their negotiation, intersect with larger discourses of dirty work in Appalachia and the US South to reproduce local ideologies and symbolic categories of class difference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper elucidates the boundary management between (dirty) work and religious life for Indonesian migrant workers in Japan. It answers the critical question of how migrants doing physical, dirty work in fish-processing factories navigate the boundaries between work and religious life. The data in this study was derived from fieldwork in rural Japan, through participant observation, sensory embodiment in the daily activities of migrants and interviews. The study suggests that clothing and appearance act as an on-off switch between the “fishy” job and a life with dignity at church. The boundaries between work and church for Indonesian migrant workers in Japan are located and managed via the practices of expelling the foul smells from the body and the working uniform, and by emphasizing the visibility of fashion and branding at the church.

The purpose of this article is to stimulate new thinking about the role of the humanisation of the person to be sentenced. By rendering the person’s offending more comprehensible, humanisation is assumed to obstruct harsh penal treatment and mechanical case-disposal. Distinctively, however, this article argues that “humanisation work” also achieves profound latent effects. By resolving the potential threat of a person’s own account appearing to be at odds with her formal admission of guilt (e.g. guilty plea), humanisation work enables efficient case-disposal. Applying Douglas’ work on purity and pollution, and with empirical illustrations, I show how the “dirty work” of humanising the person to be sentenced cleanses cases of troubling ambiguities, making punishment easier to impose with confidence. Nevertheless, humanisation work can, especially if the communicative distance between sentencer and the person sentenced is reduced, also be a facilitator of inclusive and empathic penal sentiments.

This article uses the category dirty work in the analysis of the identity of morticians and funeral directors, as well as it identifies techniques and practices to deal with professional stigma. The article analyzes the role of the types of stains in the nature of these workers’ relationships with their dirty job, and the influence of context elements. This research, which integrates quantitative and qualitative methods, uses scales pertaining to this job and semi-structured interviews. It is concluded that the presence of moral stains in funeral directors brings the group together more solidly, and that elements such as class and race inhabit in the social construction of these discredited jobs and operate in the production of stained identities.

This article illuminates the difficulties of achieving dignity at work for hotel room attendants working at 5-star hotels in the Gold Coast region of South East Queensland, Australia. This exploratory research was founded on socialist-feminist epistemologies. In-depth interviews were conducted with a sample of 46 hotel room attendants. A qualitative, social-constructivist, grounded-theory methodology was used to render the empirical material into a basic social structural process of achievement of dignity. Despite exploitation, marginalization and oppression imbued in their working conditions, hotel room attendants achieve dignity through personal inclinations, dispositions, capabilities and affective domain qualities. This research has implications for hospitality industry practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While Mexico has been openly critical of US immigration enforcement policies, it has also served as a strategic partner in US efforts to externalize its immigration enforcement strategy. In 2016, Mexico returned twice as many Central Americans as did the United States, calling many to criticize Mexico for doing the United States' "dirty work." Based on ethnographic research and discourse analysis, this article unpacks and complicates the idea that Mexico is simply doing the "dirty work" of the United States. It examines how, through the construction of "dirty others"—as vectors of disease, criminals, smugglers, and workers—Central Americans come to embody "matter out of place," thus threatening order, security, and the nation itself. Dirt and dirtiness, in both symbolic and material forms, emerge as crucial organizing factors in the politics of Central American transit migration, providing an important case study in the dynamics between transit and destination states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reflects on the morality of violence workers through an analysis of the narratives of 12 former low-ranking men of the paramilitary group Heroes of Montes de Maria in Colombia. By exploring their physical and social experiences in the space of the group, and the meaning given to their actions, I argue that violence should be considered dirty work in which members construct moral representations to deal with the illegality of the group. Despite the immorality of violent actions against civilians, whose bodies were dismembered and buried in mass graves, the paramilitaries represented their mission as necessary dirty work enabling the state to guarantee civilians' security, and creating moral obligations toward their fellows, families and communities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversified domains, such as workplaces, are suitable social fields for the study of ethnic identities, because identities are constructed through comparison and negation, that is, by identifying what or who the "other" is. In the present study I explore the talk of hands-on nursing care work, a stigmatized occupational field, to illuminate ethnic identities and the strategic boundary work that care workers conduct. The study is based on 14 months of field work and 51 interviews and observations at two Israeli geriatric wards with highly diverse staff. I show that actors negotiate their care worker identity by the opposite strategies of making and unmaking ethno-national boundaries. The first strategy denies and erases ethno-national boundaries by stressing universal professional values and individual virtues; the second one demarcates boundaries between ethno-national groups, using perceived cultural differences. The discussion addresses these antithetical evaluation frameworks in relation to theories of boundary making and unmaking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

I reflect upon Dr. William Shaffir's influence on my approach to ethnographic research and my study of homeless shelter workers. Dr. Shaffir introduced me to his own brand of the craft of qualitative field work, but also introduced me to important sociologists and ideas in the symbolic interactionist tradition. Most central was Everett C. Hughes' notion of "dirty work," which helped shape my research focus. Building from Hughes' concept, but expanding it with Shaffir and Pawluch's (2003) social constructionist approach to occupations, I was better able to conceptualize the process of how workers themselves piece together the meaning of "dirty work." Beyond gaining these conceptual insights, I also reflect on Dr. Shaffir's teaching philosophy of qualitative methods, that is, the importance of learning by doing. I conclude with some thoughts regarding Shaffir's perspective on the wider ethnographic task of describing, in situ, members' understandings and definitions. Following Everett Hughes, I call on interactionists to give more attention to "dirty work" as a generic and transcontextual process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper asks: In what ways are the work of rape barristers dirty, with a particular focus on emotional dirt? What impact do clients' burdensome emotions and affects have on barristers and what mechanisms are used to manage this taint? Based on 39 interviews with advocates from four English cities, we argue that emotional dirt is central to the taint of the role. Barristers must distance themselves from emotional dirt in order to maintain objectivity, yet simultaneously invest in those emotions in order to convince a jury. In these contradictory circumstances, barristers employ what we term 'tempered indifference', a form of emotional work premised on strategically turning emotions down. However, the subsequent ability to turn them back on remains debatable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In lay perception, dirty work is a type of labor that degrades human dignity. Work can be perceived as dirty on three bases: social (related to the subordinate position or associated with contact with stigmatized people), physical (related to direct contact with garbage and waste), and moral (related to jobs considered sinful, dubious, or defying social norms). "Dirty" stigma makes workers objects of dehumanization and discrimination, in particular, people distance themselves from dirty workers and are not ready to help and support them. In the experimental study (N = 340), we investigated how certain types of dirty workers are dehumanized compared to nondirty workers and the indirect effect of the type of dirty work on attitudes toward the social support of dirty workers via animalistic (attribution of uniquely human traits) and the mechanistic (attribution of human nature traits) dehumanization. The results show that individuals are willing to offer more social support to a low status but not dirty worker rather than to social or moral dirty workers. At the same time, less social support is provided to nondirty than to physical dirty worker. Animalistic and mechanistic dehumanization mediates the relationship between the types of dirty work and the attitudes toward social support. In particular, less dehumanization leads to more positive attitudes toward social support. The limitations and future directions of the obtained results are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rise in numbers of applications for people being formally detained in hospital is one of the reasons given for the independent review of the Mental Health Act in England and Wales. These figures have led to concerns that the legislation might be flawed, including in relation to the process of Mental Health Act Assessments. Discussed in this article are two of the roles involved: the doctor who is responsible for conducting a medical assessment and the Approved Mental Health Professional (AMHP) who is responsible for assessing the social circumstances and in addition making the application. Using data from a study into AMHPs and the lens of the sociological theory 'dirty work', we discuss shift, an aspect of dirty work not yet applied in this context. We focus on AMHPs' perceptions of the behaviour of doctors as encapsulated in the verbatim phrase 'role over'. We argue that AMHPs, including social workers, justify or, to play on the words of the verbatim quote, roll over. This finding adds to the understanding of behaviour as it is understood within psychiatric occupations, including social work, during Mental Health Act Assessments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]