Dramas of Dignity
Cleaners in the Corporate Underworld of Berlin

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

Jana Costas (Author)

9781108475846, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 9 June 2022

220 pages
23.6 x 15.8 x 1.8 cm, 0.455 kg

'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

Looking beyond the shiny surface of Potsdamer Platz, a designer micro-city within Berlin's city center, this book goes behind-the-scenes with the cleaners who pick up cigarette butts from sidewalks, scrape chewing gum from marble floors, wipe coffee stains from office desks and scrub public toilets, long before white-collar workers, consumers and tourists enter the complex. It follows Costas's journey to a large yet hidden, four-level deep corporate underworld below Potsdamer Platz. There, Costas discovers how cleaners' attitudes to work are much less straightforward than the public perceptions of cleaning as degrading work would suggest. Cleaners turn to their work for dignity yet find it elusive. The book explores how these cleaners' dramas of dignity unfold in interactions with co-workers, management, clients and the public. The book will appeal to students and academics in the fields of organisational theory, organisational behavior, organisation studies, sociology, social anthropology, cultural studies and urban studies.

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.

Subject Areas: Business & management [KJ], Sociology [JHB]