Emotional Dimensions of Dirty Work: Butchers and the Meat Trade

Abstract

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.