TITLE:
The Clean World of Dirty Work: Actors, Technology, Social Relations
AUTHORS:
Diana Maria Aron
KEYWORDS:
Work, Work with Dirt, Digitalization of Work, Technology, Innovation
JOURNAL NAME:
Advances in Applied Sociology,
Vol.13 No.10,
October
17,
2023
ABSTRACT: This paper explores the importance of technology in the work of cleaning
agents and implicitly of companies specialized in offering professional
cleaning services. Understanding how dirt is part of society and how it is
integrated into the concerns of major industries in the field is useful.
Approaching dirt as unpleasant and its removal as denigrating are aspects
deeply rooted in the cultural meanings of this work. The practices and ways in
which cleaning is done with the help of technology are what make the work with
dirt more honorable and less degrading. Dirty work seen through Everett Hughes’
concept of the “moral division of labor” can be understood as the existence of
hierarchical distinctions within the profession of cleaning workers. Who has
access to the use of revolutionary equipment? Are there limitations on their
use? What kind of limitations? Treating technology as part of the cleaning
process seems to be not immune to fear from users and compromises from
companies. However, in some situations, it seems that the digitization of the
cleaning process and the replacement of humans with robots will be just a happy
and somewhat confusing dream that creates a rift between the dirty world of
dirty work and the clean world of dirty work.