Dramas of Dignity: Cleaners in the Corporate Underworld of Berlin

ISBN-13: 9781108469166 / Angielski / Miękka / 2022

Jana Costas

Opis

Explores the hidden underworld of Berlin's Potsdamer Platz, where cleaners seek dignity through work yet find it elusive.

Recenzje

'Dramas of Dignity is an eminently readable ethnography of the distinctly down and dirty occupational and organizational world of cleaners in prominent mega-complex located in the heart of Berlin. Theirs is ostensibly unskilled service work of the unrecognized, unrewarded and often distained sort, and yet the practitioners of the trade manage to squeeze a surprising degree of self-esteem and worth from their labours. Working as an apprentice alongside a mostly migrant cast of night-time cleaners - some of whom are rendered in close, personal and indeed memorable terms - Jana Costas describes the idiosyncratic, largely independent and unsupervised ways they go about their work and manage to meet the demanding, sometimes harsh, expectations of the typically unseen clients of the cleaning organization. This is lucid, disciplined and highly respectful treatment of the hidden but essential work of cleaners.' John Van Maanen, Author of Tales of the Field

Spis treści

1. The corporate micro-city Potsdamer Platz: Cleaners' presence from below; 2. Characters from the corporate underworld: Alex, Ali, Luisa, and Marcel; 3. From feces to flowers: The sweat, shame, disgust, pride and fun of working with dirt; 4. Separate in the same boat: Others and allies among cleaners; 5. When worlds collide: Cleaners at work in the upperworld; 6. 'Back to the dark side': Cleaners' tactics against surveillance; 7. Leaving the minus area behind; Postscript; Bibliography; Appendix; Index.