Drawing on a relational approach and based on an ethnographic study of street cleaners and refuse collectors, we redress a tendency towards an over-emphasis on the discursive by exploring the coconstitution 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 (2015) 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.

Through an ethnographic study of 'dirty work' (refuse collection and street cleaning), this article explores how masculinity and class intersect -how, in a mutually constitutive sense, they produce attitudes and practices, strengths and vulnerabilities, which are shaped by shifting relations of privilege and power. We find resistance to class subordination through adherence to traditional forms of masculinity and through esteem-enhancing social comparison (e.g. with women; with migrant workers). Men also mobilised powerful nostalgic themes around the loss of traditional jobs as well as trade union power. We argue that displays of masculine resilience in the face of devaluation are less indicative of a culture of masculine dominance but more an expression of vulnerability and social dislocation, serving both as a source of resistance whilst simultaneously reinforcing anchors of social disadvantage that characterise forms of dirty work.We suggest that combining social comparison with intersectionality can potentially highlight how categories of difference are strategically deployed in response to varied and unequally valued social positionalities.

Through a study of the butcher trade, this article addresses a neglected area in work and organization by exploring the meanings that men, working as employees, give to 'dirty work' i.e. jobs or roles that are seen as distasteful or 'undesirable'. Based on qualitative data, we identify three themes from butchers' accounts that relate to work based meanings: orthodoxy of work, acceptance and choice and physicality, dirt and loss. We argue that notions of sacrifice help us understand some of the meanings men attach to dirty, manual workforming part of a working class 'habitus' that crystallizes past, present and future. Further, we show how meanings relating to sacrifice are illustrative of ways of 'doing' working class masculinity in this context.

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