Beyond the symbolic: a relational approach to dirty work through a study of refuse collectors and street cleaners
基于对垃圾收集工和街道清洁工的田野调查，本文提出关系性方法，揭示脏活中物质与象征的相互构成，指出过度强调象征可能忽视物质条件对工人体验的影响。
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.