Dramas of Dignity

'This book prompts the reader to think of dirt afresh and to enter the world of those who, invisibly, keep our urban spaces clean: the armies of cleaners engaged in an endless battle with filth in shopping malls, office blacks and department stores. Dirt is not an ordinary adversary to these low-paid but not low-skill workers. It can be the source of stigma but also a badge of honour, a Tantalus-like goal out of reach but also a guarantor of a workplace autonomy. Far from draining meaning from their lives, dirt becomes a fountain of meaning. With this book, Costas joins the distinguished company of urban ethnographers whose work liberates their subjects from stifling assumptions and meaningless banalities and lets their stories be heard as they deserve.' Yiannis Gabriel, Visiting Professor at Lund University, Emeritus Professor at University of Bath

'Jana Costas' book is a much needed and excellent account of everyday working lives in the continuous re-making of the city of Berlin. Costas writes with nuance and attention to detail about cleaning as a process involving much more than simply cleaning – perceptions of work, dirt, and dignity.' Christina Garsten, Professor of Social Anthropology, Stockholm University

'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