Dirty Work Designations -Dick

Dirty work designations: How policeofficers account for their use of coerciveforcePenny Dick

A B S T R AC T The concept of ‘dirty work’ has much potential to offer insights intoprocesses related to the construction of organizational identities andwork-group cultures. In this article, I use a social constructionistframework, to argue that ‘dirty workers’ perform their identities intwo conceptually distinct contexts: ‘front regions’ and ‘back regions’(Goffman, 1959), each producing its own subjective challenges. I usea critical discourse analysis to explore how, within the research inter-view setting, police officers deal with the moral dilemma of their useof coercive authority. I argue that what is designated as ‘dirty’ withinany specific role differs according to the perspective of the observer,revealing the boundaries and landscape of different moral and socialorders and how these overlap and compete. It is further argued that,within specific interactional contexts, occupational identity comprisesa site of contestation for these different moral and social orders.Theutility of the dirty work concept is explored in relation to its abilityto illuminate the dynamics of ideological reproduction and trans-formation.

K E Y WO R D S dirty work ! identity ! police ethics ! police work ! socialconstruction

1 3 6 3

Human Relations

DOI: 10.1177/0018726705060242

Volume 58(11): 1363–1390

Copyright © 2005

The Tavistock Institute ®

SAGE Publications

London,Thousand Oaks CA,

New Delhi

www.sagepublications.com

by Nicolas Rodriguez Games on September 4, 2010hum.sagepub.comDownloaded from

http://hum.sagepub.com/

The expression ‘dirty work’ was originally coined by Everett Hughes in 1951.By ‘dirty work’ he refers to occupational activities that are physically disgust-ing, that symbolize degradation, that wound the individual’s dignity, or that‘run counter to the more heroic of our moral conceptions’ (Hughes, 1958:50). Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) note that the concept of ‘dirty work’ raisesa provocative issue: specifically, how do ‘dirty workers’ maintain a positivesense of self? Their position is derived from social identity theory, whichproposes that people typically strive to see themselves in a positive light.Since occupations constitute salient social roles in which the self is grounded,being branded a ‘dirty worker’ potentially comprises a significant threat tothis identity goal. Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) suggest that ‘dirty workers’use a variety of techniques to protect their identities from the threats posedby the stigma of their work, in particular, arguing that work-group culturesfunction as effective buffers, providing ideologies which enable groupmembers to make sense of their work in esteem-enhancing ways. In theconclusion to their article they argue that managers of ‘dirty workers’ havea role in countering ‘societal perceptions of dirtiness through the practicesof symbolic management’ (p. 431). For instance, they suggest that managerscan encourage employees to frame ‘dirty work’ in positive ways.

Despite acknowledging that ‘dirty work’ is socially constructed, theconceptions of both identity and culture utilized in Ashforth and Kreiner’s(1999) account privilege cognition, such that the broader social processesthat impinge upon, as well as actively constitute the identities of individuals,(and their work cultures) are neglected (Henriques et al., 1984; Jermier etal., 1994). So for example, while we can readily comprehend that a refusecollector or a prison guard undertakes ‘dirty work’ and that this potentially‘taints’ their identities, the reasons for the ascription of ‘dirty work’ to sometasks is left relatively under-explored, and the specific contexts in which theindividual is both consciously aware of this taint and motivated to accountfor it, are left unexplained. Additionally, as Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990)argue, the meanings that individuals ascribe to their work tasks areembedded in quite distinctive class, regional and national cultures, thatrender the specific cultures of many occupations effectively beyondmanagerial influence.

In this article, I argue that the concept of dirty work offers the poten-tial to utilize an interdisciplinary perspective, in which the relation of the indi-vidual to broader social and institutional orders and structures can be usefullyexplored and elucidated. To this end, I present a social constructionist accountof how, within the context of the research interview, some members of aparticular occupational group, police officers, deal with the ‘dirty’ aspects oftheir role, specifically, the moral ambiguity that accompanies the potential to

Human Relations 58(11)1 3 6 4



use coercive force against citizens (Waddington, 1999a). The aim of theaccount presented here, is to locate this moral ambiguity, this particularly‘dirty’ aspect of the police role, in the wider political and social context, aswell in the institutional context of policing. In doing so, I want to argue thatwhat is designated as ‘dirty’ within any specific role differs according to theperspective of the observer, illuminating the boundaries and landscape ofdifferent moral and social orders and how these overlap and compete. It isfurther argued that, within certain forms of interactional context, occu-pational identity comprises a site of contestation for these different moral andsocial orders.

The article is structured as follows. In the first section, I discuss theconcept of dirty work at some depth, exploring how this concept can be usedto understand the variety of meanings that different aspects of work can holdfor individuals and for the ‘public’ who make judgements about the workcarried out by various occupational groups. I then focus more specifically onpolice work, concentrating on its defining characteristic – the potential to usecoercive force against citizens (Waddington, 1999a), examining the contextsin which this is seen as ‘dirty work’ and contrasting these with those in whichit is, in fact, ‘celebrated’ as a core aspect of police action and identity. In thenext section, I present a brief sketch of the social constructionist positionadopted in this article, highlighting the ways in which it can add to the ‘dirtywork’ literature. I then present a critical discourse analysis of interviewextracts, drawn from a wider research project into policing more generally,which illustrates how a social constructionist approach can be used to under-stand how officers deal with this ‘dirty’ aspect of their occupational identity.In the final section, I present the implications of my analysis.

Dirty work

Everett Hughes’s (1951) conception of dirty work is a useful starting pointfor thinking about tasks or occupations that are characterized by, or containelements that are, physically or morally distasteful. But to fully appreciatethe theoretical significance and utility of this construct requires a reasonablydetailed consideration of two key issues: first, why and how some tasks areconsidered ‘dirty’. And second, whether a task or occupation is universallydesignated as ‘dirty’: one person’s ‘dirty work can be another’s sought andfought for prerogative’ (Emerson & Pollner, 1975: 244). To render the dirtywork concept useful we need to more thoroughly understand its sociallylocated nature.

Dick Dirty work designations 1 3 6 5



What makes some work ‘dirty’?

To the lay-person, it is probably self-evident why some tasks and occupationswould be classed as ‘dirty work’. Dealing with literal dirt, in the form ofrefuse, human or animal bodily fluids or parts, excrement and general ‘muck’would be considered ‘dirty work’ by many people in many parts of the world.However, dirt has a significance beyond its physical manifestation. It is alsoessentially a social matter. As Mary Douglas (1966) comments, ‘Dirt ismatter out of place, [it] offends against order. Eliminating it is not a negativemovement, but a positive effort to organize the environment’ (p. 2). Dirt,then, symbolizes contravention of the ordered relations of which any societyis composed, and the desire to remove it, or to avoid it, is that society’s wayof dealing with the confusion or contradiction that dirt poses to cherishedclassifications.

In many societies, the symbolic significance of dirt is transmittedthrough avoidance rules (Douglas, 1966), which trace the ideal social order,sketching the positions of social groups relative to each other and fixing themin the social space.

For instance, rules of hygiene that govern our personal and domesticlives, emphasizing the importance of being ‘clean and tidy’, symbolize oursocial status and the value we place on self and home maintenance. Thesevalues can be traced, in part, to the Enlightenment era, when, in the emergingcapitalist and democratic West, thresholds between the higher and lowersocial classes were re-negotiated, with filth, dirt and pollution seen as signi-fiers of the lower orders (Stallybrass & White, 1986).

Avoidance rules are also embedded in the social structure of occu-pations. For example, occupations that involve dealing with physical dirt cansometimes be designated as low skill or unskilled work, and often carriedout by groups designated as lower class, less educated, and even less sociallyvaluable. Garbage disposal, street and lavatory cleaners, and general cleanersare all examples here. Similar to the ‘untouchables’ in the Hindu castesystem, dealing with dirt is allocated to the lowest positions in the social hier-archy, enabling the higher classes to avoid pollution, not only literally, butmetaphorically.

Nonetheless, there are higher status occupations that contain tasks thatinvolve dealing with physical dirt. A surgeon, for example, has to deal withhuman bodily fluids and parts, as do nurses and care assistants, and policeofficers, the focus for this study, have to deal with all manner of ‘dirt’ includ-ing rotting corpses. Avoidance rules continue to operate here, however. Whilethe surgeon, for example, will cut into the human body and remove or handlebodily organs or fluids, the removal and disposal of the ‘remains’ of the




surgery is delegated to a lower status employee, like the theatre nurse. Allhigher status occupations, in fact, tend to delegate physically dirty tasks tothose lower in the occupational pecking order (Hughes, 1958).

Literal dirt then has a distinct social significance, in as much as itspresence and removal are related to the maintenance of boundaries that markout the social space, and the distance between groups in that space.

Dirt, however, is not only a material matter. Dirt is also designated toevents, objects and subjects of social origin. For example pornography isconsidered ‘dirty’, as is prostitution and vagrancy. ‘Gypsies’ or ‘travellers’can be designated as ‘dirt’, as can criminals, and other people considered‘bad’ by certain sectors of society. Within occupations, we tend to designate‘dirty work’ to morally dubious tasks, such as ‘sacking’ people, or givingpeople bad news of some sort or other. Dirt additionally signifies trans-gression of the moral order (Cresswell, 1996; Douglas, 1966; Stallybrass &White, 1986). Thus some occupations are tainted with the dirty work stigmabecause the tasks carried out by role occupants transgress the boundariesthat mark out the moral terrain of any given society. Cahill (1996), forexample, argues that funeral direction constitutes a tainted occupation,which can be attributed to the cultural shift in the meaning of death thatoccurred around the beginning of the 20th century. During this period therising medical professions secured their authority over the bodily care of theliving, and death became a signifier of the failure of medical expertise andskill, with dead bodies now seen as both polluting and polluted. It was duringthis era that funeral direction became an established occupation, providinga method of dealing with the dead away from the physical and moral bound-aries of the healthy.

Bittner (1970) argues that police work is a tainted occupation becausepolice officers:

. . . are viewed as the fire it takes to fight fire . . . that they in the naturalcourse of their duties inflict harm, albeit deserved, and that their veryexistence attests that the nobler aspirations of mankind do not containthe means necessary to ensure survival.

(p. 8)

Psychiatric nursing is another example of a ‘tainted’ profession, dealingas it does, with the ‘insane’, which represent a group that routinely trans-gresses society’s ideas of what is right and proper in human conduct(Foucault, 1967), and involving the use of coercion to bring patients undercontrol (Godin, 2000; May & Kelly, 1982).

Dirt in its social sense is, therefore, related to ideological beliefs in




societies. Such beliefs operate to produce and maintain the moral order, inwhich the appropriateness and ‘correctness’ of social action and practice areclearly demarcated and bounded. Transgression of these boundaries not onlysignifies a threat to the moral order but also to the power that certain groupshave to define that order and the meanings that attach to its associatedactions (Cresswell, 1996).

Dirty work designations

As illustrated in the discussion above, some occupations, like policing andnursing, are tainted with the dirty work stigma, precisely because of themoral ambiguity that attaches to some of their core tasks, and to the groupswith which they habitually deal. An interesting theoretical question raisedby this, is not simply how role occupants maintain a positive sense of self(Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999), but whether they themselves consider their workto be ‘dirty’. Dirt, whether physical or moral, is essentially a matter ofperspective, not empirics. Cahill (1996) for example, shows how funeraldirectors resist the stigma that attaches to their work by designating thepublic as ‘in denial’ and ignorant about death, transforming ‘the stigma oftheir chosen occupational identity into a mark of honour’ (p. 114).

Research suggests that what role occupants count as ‘dirty work’ is notnecessarily those aspects of their work that the public might consider ‘dirty’.Studies of nursing, particularly in psychiatric settings (Emerson & Pollner,1975; Godin, 2000; May & Kelly, 1982) and in care homes (Stannard,1973); of medical students (Becker et al., 1961) and GPs (Shaw, 2004;Strong, 1980); as well as of police officers (Bittner, 1970; Ericson, 1982;Waddington, 1999a, 1999b), suggest that dirty work is attributed to tasksthat are perceived to undermine the profession’s raison d’être. For instance,Becker et al. (1961) in their ethnography of medical student culture, illustratehow students designate as ‘scut work’, tasks that undermine their abilities toperform the core characteristics of medical practice: diagnosis and treatment.Strong (1980) argues that GPs’ designation of the treatment of alcoholics as‘dirty work’, derives not from ignorance or prejudice about this group, butfrom the realities of the fact that such patients can rarely be successfullymanaged or cured using a medical model. Emerson and Pollner’s (1975)study of psychiatric nurses, and Stannard’s (1973) study of nurses in carehomes, show how patients that are perceived to be difficult and annoyingare those that undermine the nurses’ potential to ‘take care’ of them, by, forexample, not responding to nursing interventions. The police in both the UK(Waddington, 1999a) and USA (Bittner, 1970) tend to designate as ‘dirty’ or




‘rubbish’ those tasks that are seen not to be relevant to policing’s statedrhetorical purpose: crime-fighting.

What counts as dirty work within any given profession can, therefore,provide a marker that indicates its ideological landscape (Emerson & Pollner,1975; Shaw, 2004). Dirt, as in the more general social context, is designatedto tasks that are seen as marginal to the professional terrain, occurring at,and threatening, the ideological boundaries within which role occupantsconstruct, maintain and defend their professional identities. The activeconstruction and defence of these boundaries illustrates that the meaningsthat attach to the tasks carried out within any given profession are neitheruniversal nor monolithic, they are situated within specific social and ideo-logical contexts, open to contestation and dispute, and requiring continuousnegotiation.

Dirty work designations and occupational identity

While dirty work designations differ according to the perspective of theobserver, members of ‘tainted’ occupations will nevertheless be aware of howtheir activities and tasks are viewed by the wider public (Bolton, 2005).When an occupation is morally tainted, that taint carries over to the identityof the role occupant, which, as Ashforth and Kreiner’s (1999) work indi-cates, has cognitive implications, in as much as individuals appear to be moti-vated to negate it. They identify three specific ideological techniques thatworkers can use to protect or bolster their identities in the face of the stigmaposed by ‘dirty work’: reframing – where the meaning attached to a specificoccupation is transformed; recalibrating – where the tasks that constitute therole are re-categorized so as to emphasize the more acceptable or palatabletasks; and refocusing – where an attempt is made to shift attention to non-stigmatized aspects of the role. Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) argue that thestrength of work-group culture and occupational identification will deter-mine the extent to which individuals are motivated to deploy these ideo-logical techniques to deal with the ‘dirty’ aspects of their roles.

I would suggest that these techniques can be additionally viewed ascontext-specific strategies that are deployed in different ways depending onthe ‘audience’ and its perceived likelihood to interpret the dirty worker inpejorative ways (Emerson & Pollner, 1975). When tasks, role characteristics,or complete occupations are designated as ‘dirty’ work, this exposes thefragility and contingency of any constructed ideological order in the occu-pational domain. The motivation to ‘reframe’, ‘refocus’, or ‘recalibrate’ ideo-logical meanings, stems from how these meanings struggle for hegemony in




the mobile node of the worker’s identity (Kondo, 1990), especially whenthese meanings expose the precariousness and marginality of the group’sidentity. To illustrate this argument more fully, I now turn to the specificexample of police use of coercive authority.

Police work as ‘dirty work’

The moral ambiguity of coercive authority

According to Waddington (1999a), the defining characteristic of policing isthe exercise of coercive authority. While the actual use of coercive authorityby police officers is difficult to ascertain empirically, it is used more or lessroutinely, for example in stop and search situations, and arrests, which willfrequently involve handcuffing. Of less frequency, though more troubling, isthe use of sometimes lethal force, as illustrated by high profile cases of deathsin custody, or of disproportionate force, as illustrated by the brutal beatingof Rodney King in 1992 by Los Angeles police officers, which was caughton video. Klockars (1980) refers to such situations as examples of the ‘DirtyHarry’ problem, alluding to the 1971 film of the same name in which a good‘cop’ is seen to act immorally in order to bring a criminal to justice. Whenpolice officers use coercive force, they do so because they have been authori-jed to prevent, impede or stop, some form of activity that would otherwisethreaten the peace of citizens, or their physical and psychological well-being(Kleinig, 1996). The difficulty is, as police sociologists point out, that makinga judgement as to whether a given situation necessitates the use of coerciveauthority, and judging the manner in which that authority is to be exercisedis not straightforward (Adams, 1996; Bayley, 1996; Kleinig, 1996; Klockars,1996). It is precisely this judgemental dilemma that produces the moral ambi-guity of this core characteristic of policing. In very many situations, policeofficers cannot be certain that had they not used coercive authority a greater‘wrong’ would have occurred. Because this utilitarian logic is untestable,making judgements about whether police use of coercive authority has tippedover into abuse of that authority is extremely problematic. Unsurprisingly,the use of coercive authority by police officers has been the subject of intensepolitical and academic debate, at the centre of which is the issue of howpolice officers are to be controlled (see for example, Waddington, 1999b, fora good summary of the issues here). What is additionally worthy of study,however, is how police officers themselves account for and, deal with, thismorally ambiguous aspect of their role. Simply put, what meanings do policeofficers attach to the use of coercive authority?




The meaning of coercive authority

Ethnographic studies of police culture have examined this issue at somedepth. Waddington (1999a), for example, argues that police sub-culture,often referred to as the ‘canteen culture’, enables officers to deal with themoral ambiguity inherent in the use of coercive authority, by ‘celebrating’ it,via a cult of masculinity. Studies show how police story-telling within theorganization, constructs the use of force and violence as ‘normal’ features ofencounters with ‘villains’ and other disreputable groups (Fletcher, 1996;Graef, 1990; Herbert, 1998; Van Maanen, 1980). Such stories not only actto vilify and marginalize the ‘out-groups’ at whom such force is targeted, butto construct the police identity as ‘heroic’, ‘moral’, and ‘retributive’ (VanMaanen, 1980). Central to this process is the ideological justification ofcoercive authority through the notion that crime-fighting constitutes one ofpolicing’s primary activities. If coercive authority is only ever exercisedagainst those who deserve it, that is, criminals, then the Dirty Harry problemis effectively morally neutralized. This suggests that police officers frame theiruse of coercive authority within a broader ideological context, in whichhuman rights and liberties are articulated as core values.

It is clear, nonetheless, that while police forces across Europe andNorth America share in common many features of the ‘canteen’ culture,including the tendency to glorify crime-fighting, the emphasis on crime-fighting and the extent to which this impacts on the identities and actions ofofficers is deeply embedded in the broader organizational and social fabric.Skolnick and Fyfe (1993), for instance, argue that police officers are morelikely to routinely over-use coercive authority when, for one reason oranother, they are encouraged to define their primary purpose as waging a‘war’ on crime, and to see potential offenders as ‘enemies’ that require mili-taristic treatment to bring them under control. Furthermore, the ‘enemy’ andtherefore the targets of excessive coercive force are defined as such becauseof specific socio-cultural conditions. For example, in Los Angeles, whereRodney King was brutally beaten by a group of police officers, the LA PoliceDepartment had a long history of using excessive force against the blackcommunity, which was related to historical approaches to policing, favour-ing aggressive approaches, coupled with antipathy between the police andthe black community, reflecting America’s troubled race relations history(Skolnick & Fyfe, 1993). Likewise, Banton (1964), Cain (1973) and Young(1993) in their studies of rural and urban forces in the UK, argue that thecrime-fighting ideology of policing flourishes more in urban than ruralregions, because in the latter, the police officer derives the meanings of heror his activities more from the values prevalent in the local community. Since




these frequently emphasize the importance of community, and of ordered andharmonious social relations, the police in such regions tend to see themselvesmore as ‘peace-keepers’ than ‘crime-fighters’ (Cain, 1973), with attendanteffects on how they interpret and act upon apparent breaches of the law. AsBanton (1964) argues, where the police officer is dependent on the localcommunity in terms of both defining and enacting the role, policing is char-acterized by under-enforcement of the law. Conversely, where the policeperceive themselves as members of an ‘in-group’ attempting to maintainorder in a society on the brink of anarchy, there tends to be more use ofcoercive authority against those that are socially defined as the ‘out-group’,and seen as the perpetrators and causes of societal breakdown (Skolnick &Fyfe, 1993; Young, 1993).

In sum, when the police define themselves and their activities princi-pally in terms of crime-fighting, this tends to be because they are removed(relatively speaking) from the informal control of community expectations,which as Skolnick and Fyfe (1993) show, is related to geography, culture andhistory. In such contexts, due to the fragmented and inconsistent support thatpolice officers obtain from the wider community (Reiner, 2000), they tendto develop a strong ‘in-group’ identity, which allows the group to legitimateitself (Cain, 1973). Thus, one core function of the celebration of the use ofcoercive authority observed by police ethnographers is an assertion of adistinct, moral identity in contexts where this is open to considerable contes-tation. The insularity (Reiner, 2000; Waddington, 1999a; Young, 1993) thatpolice officers demonstrate reflects the precariousness of this assertion. Toprotect and defend the moral and ideological boundaries of the professionrequires in-group affirmation and both spatial and moral distanciation fromout-groups, who pose a potential threat to this identity. Similar argumentshave been presented by Ackroyd and Crowdy (1990) in their study ofslaughterhouse workers, by Cahill (1996) in his study of funeral directors,and by Emerson and Pollner (1975) in their study of psychiatric nurses.

Front and back regions

During the routine enactment of policing, and in social encounters withcolleagues, peers and family, the celebration of coercive authority canunproblematically fulfil this function (Herbert, 1996, 1998). However,members of stigmatized occupations, like police officers, slaughterhouseworkers and funeral directors, are not always at work, or with people whoshare their values and beliefs. In this sense, then, we can understand ‘dirtyworkers’ as occupying front regions and back regions (Goffman, 1959). In




‘back regions’ such as at work with colleagues, or at home with supportivefriends and family, the individual can relax; the audience is absent, and theboundaries of professional ideology are relatively secured. Conversely in‘front regions’, the audience is present, and the individual may feel incum-bent to ‘give the appearance that his [sic] activity . . . maintains and embodiescertain standards’ (Goffman, 1959: 93). This characterizes contexts where‘dirty workers’ are held morally accountable for their activities by other indi-viduals who may actively or potentially disapprove of those activities, andhence, of the person performing them. In these contexts, not only might theideological boundaries of the profession be contested, but the individual’sidentity is at stake, exposed to different, perhaps, pejorative meanings,attaching to occupational activities.

The social construction of dirty work in ‘front regions’

The traditional social psychological view, illustrated by the concept of socialidentity (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Hogg & Abrams, 1990), sees identity asrelatively fixed and stable, even if subject to evolution and change across timeand situations. Conversely, recent approaches to identity from the socialconstructionist perspective problematize this assumption, arguing instead fora view of identity as a ‘narrative achievement’, or a social accomplishment(Deetz, 1994; Dick & Cassell, 2004; Karreman & Alvesson, 2001; Potter &Wetherell, 1987; Shotter & Gergen, 1989). From this perspective identity isalways relational, produced within a specific social context for a specificpurpose, ‘partly a temporary outcome of the powers and regulations that thesubject encounters’ (Karreman & Alevsson, 2001: 63). This is not to denythat individuals experience their ‘selves’ as relatively stable or enduring, butanalytically, the individual is ‘de-centred’ (Dick & Cassell, 2002), the causesor roots of expressed identity instead located in the social situation, ratherthan the ‘inner’ psychology of the individual. The task in a social construc-tionist exploration is to identify those aspects of the situation that areproductive of the identity expressed by the individual, as well to explain thepurpose this expression fulfils.

As already argued, individuals perform identity work in quite differ-ent contexts, and I have already differentiated between ‘front’ and ‘back’regions in this regard. Van Maanen (1980), in his examination of how policeofficers account for fatal shooting incidents, makes a similar point, when hesuggests that such accounts take place in three different contexts: accountsintended for public consumption, such as those articulated in formal organiz-ational descriptions of, and justifications for, fatal shootings; accounts madeto fellow officers, who may help the individual frame the shooting as a




morally justifiable action; and accounts made to self, where the officer hasto deal with the self-doubt created by the incident. Each context is charac-terized by a different ‘vocabulary of motive and legitimation’ (Van Maanen,1980: 148). Whether such vocabularies will succeed in ‘convincing’ therelevant audience that the reasons for the actions are essentially honourable,rather than dishonourable, will depend on a wide array of contextual dimen-sions, that can only be understood by examining how specific meanings arearticulated, contested, reproduced or changed within specific accounting situ-ations (Van Maanen, 1980).

I argue here that the research interview can be considered as an oppor-tunity to explore how identity work is performed in a ‘front region’, andamenable to the relatively complex analysis required for understanding howindividuals account for activities and actions whose meaning is subject tohegemonic struggle. This is because the interaction between the researcherand the participant can be understood as a particular power relation, inwhich the latter has agreed to be accountable to the former (Hollway, 1989).Additionally, certain aspects of the research situation are likely to feed intoand affect the interactional dynamic. For example, in the case of the researchreported here, the researcher was a woman, interviewing mainly male policeofficers, with a stated research agenda that was concerned with genderedaspects of police culture. The reputation that the police force has for sexismand other ‘undesirable’ behaviours is a backdrop to this interaction. Thereis a likelihood that the researcher’s intentions will be read by the participantas potentially hostile, and the participant may feel especially morallyaccountable (Gergen, 1990; Widdicombe, 1995). Alternatively, it could beargued that the participant’s identity may be ‘troubled’ by potential, thoughunstated, judgements implied by the social status of the researcher (Ball &Wilson, 2000). Discussing the morally ambiguous aspects of policing repre-sents a situation in which the participant may attempt to accomplish a‘creditable’ identity, because the biographical characteristics of the researcherand the content and scope of the research, mean that the participant couldbe positioned as ‘discreditable’ by the researcher. This can also be likened toFoucault’s (1981) view of the confession as technique of power:

The confession is a ritual of discourse in which the speaking subject isalso the subject of the statement; it is also a ritual that unfolds withina power relationship, for one does not confess without the presence (orvirtual presence) of a partner who is not simply the interlocutor but theauthority who requires the confession, prescribes and appreciates it, andintervenes in order to judge, punish, forgive, console and reconcile . . .

(p. 67)




In short, the ‘front region’ of the research interview can represent a siteof contestation of the ideologies that members of stigmatized occupationsdraw upon to maintain and defend professional boundaries and identities.In such contexts, the meaning of activities (like the use of coercive author-ity) is not so readily fixed as it in ‘back regions’ because the researcher may,by dint of his or her identity, research agenda and interview schedule, exposethe interviewee to alternative, potentially pejorative meanings, that may needto be negotiated and transformed if the interviewee is to convince the inter-viewer that they are not a ‘dirty worker’.

Methodology

Research setting

The research was conducted over a five-year period, spanning 1993 to 1997,in a large rural constabulary in England employing around 1500 uniformedofficers. The research was concerned with examining the extent to whichpolice culture could be understood as ‘gendered’ and with identifying howwomen and men experienced police culture during their day to day activitiesas police officers. The research involved multiple methods, including reper-tory grid interviews, surveys, and in-depth qualitative interviews which werecarried out in the last stages of the study and from which the conversationalextracts presented and analysed here were taken. The ‘dirty-work’ conceptwas not used to inform the interview questions, nor was it part of the initialanalysis. However, I re-read and revisited the qualitative interview data morerecently in the light of my ongoing research interests within the police service,specifically, in attempting to understand why and how police work is sociallyconstructed in the ways that it is, and was intrigued and fascinated by theidentity-work that went on in these interviews, especially with respect to themorally ambiguous aspects of policing which I have already described.

Research participants

Research participants were recruited opportunistically. The police service issubject to much academic scrutiny, and police officers are, in general,somewhat ‘research-weary’. I had a contact within the constabulary, estab-lished during the preceding years, who canvassed his colleagues at two localsites, asking for volunteers to take part in qualitative interviews. This initialattempt resulted in the recruitment of three participants, all men, and all atthe rank of inspector and above. From these initial contacts, I was referredon to other participants who expressed interest in the research, which




included a group of seven male officers (all constables) undertaking a trainingcourse; two traffic police men (constables) who asked to be interviewedtogether; six female officers, including the most senior female in the force (a chief inspector) and one part-time officer (at that time something of anovelty); three more male chief inspectors and one male sergeant; and afurther group of officers of both sexes who were attending a one-dayworkshop (all constables). In total therefore, I carried out 15 interviews withindividuals (and one pair) and two group interviews. The participation of 15individuals and two groups is typical of discourse analytic studies, where theaim is not to establish generalizability, but to examine in detail how differ-ent versions of the world are constructed and with what consequences, asalready mentioned.

Research interviews

Because of my recruitment procedure, participants were more or less con-versant with the research aims before I met them. However, on meeting eachparticipant I informed them of the project’s basic aims (i.e. an explorationof how police culture could be characterized and how it affected the livedexperiences of police men and women) and informed them that my methodwas non-traditional, in that I had no fixed set of questions. Instead I toldparticipants that I wished to have an open-ended discussion with themaround the issues of central concern to the project. I informed them that Isaw myself as a research participant as much as a researcher and that Iwanted them to feel free to challenge or debate the issues raised. Thisapproach was informed by my epistemological stance, from which I rejectedthe view of the interviewer as a neutral passive observer, believing my ownidentity to be as ‘at stake’ as those of the participants, and having a distincteffect on the knowledge production process (Hollway, 1989; Mama, 1995).

All conversations were tape-recorded with the participants’ permission,which was refused by none. The conversations were all conducted at theparticipant’s place of work, typically over lunch. The conversations lastedfor between one and four hours. All were curtailed due to shortage of time,rather than ideas. The conversations were extremely open-ended, with avariety of topics discussed, sometimes which were quite unrelated to theresearch aims. Each conversation was transcribed.

Analytic technique: Critical discourse analysis

The aim in a critical discourse analysis is to establish how different levels ofmeaning are related to each other (Dick, 2004; Fairclough, 1992; Grant et




al., 1998). The ‘resources’ used in a text (i.e. words, ideas and so forth) areunderstood as emanating from the social context, though influenced by boththe specific context in which the text is used, and the ‘motives’ of the usersand consumers of the text. Any text (be it written or spoken) can be under-stood as fulfilling a number of functions: first the text will aim to achievesomething, specifically, to construct a particular version of an event, an objector an identity, using tactics of persuasion, justification, and so forth. Second,the text will be targeted at specific audiences, and hence when making judge-ments about what the text is attempting to achieve, the analysis needs toaccount for the way it ‘handles’ its audience. Finally, the text can be under-stood as reproducing, resisting or even changing, broader ideologies thatexist in society and that have distinct regulatory effects. The way that theselevels relate to each other needs to be built into the analysis.

The analysis used in this article is developed from Fairclough’s (1992)framework. He suggests that discourse constitutes the identities of indi-viduals, the relationships between individuals, and ideological systems thatexist in society. He refers to these as, respectively, the identity, relational andideational functions of discourse. In order to identify how discourse consti-tutes these three domains, Fairclough recommends a three dimensionalanalytic framework in which discourse is analysed as text, as discursivepractice and as social practice.

1) Text: This analytic level is very similar to that used in moretraditional conversation and discourse analysis. The concern is with under-standing how a piece of text (either written or spoken) is constructed. Thekey task is to understand what the text is trying to achieve. Is it attemptingto assert, persuade, justify, accuse, defend or explain? Fairclough (1992)refers to this as the force of the text. A related task is to examine how thetext achieves its aims. What words and phrases are used and what proposi-tions are made?

2) Discursive practice: Discursive practice is the analytic level thatexamines the context of text production. This is a very important level ofanalysis as it is this which enables an understanding of how differentinterpretations of the text might be made. For example, in an interview, thequestion ‘Do you drink?’ is likely to be interpreted in different ways, depen-dent on the real or ascribed status of the interviewer, for example, a medicaldoctor versus a social science researcher. In turn, the interpretation that ismade of the question will then have quite specific consequences for the typeof response made by the interviewee. For instance, if the question was askedby a doctor, it might account for the fact that the response contains hedges(the question is not answered directly), and an attempt to defend the behav-iour (‘only on social occasions’).




3) Social practice: This level of analysis is closely related to Foucault’sideas on discourse (1977, 1981, 1990). The key focus for the analyst is exam-ining the propositions that are made in the text and the extent to which theseare treated as ‘self evident’ or ‘common-sense’. Similar to Therborn’s (1980)definition of ideology, such propositions are those that express:

i) what does and does not exist;ii) what is good, just and appropriate and what is not;iii) what is possible and impossible.

Analytically, those propositions that are made without being chal-lenged, or anticipating being challenged, are those that, in the specific contextof text production (i.e. at the level of discursive practice), have succeeded insecuring ideological consent: ‘. . . an established order, if it is successful, mustmake its world seem to be the natural world’ (Cresswell, 1996: 15). Propo-sitions that are challenged or which are defended in the text are examples ofhegemonic struggle, which Fairclough (1992) describes as the processthrough which contested views of reality are dealt with in an attempt tosecure ideological consent.

Essentially, therefore, the analysis is looking to understand how peoplemake sense of themselves, objects and events within situations that containstructural constraints, and the task is to relate the former to the latter. Below,I present a detailed analysis of two extracts of conversation taken from inter-views with a female and male officer respectively. These extracts were chosenbecause they illustrate an explicit discussion of the coercive authority, detailedabove. The analysis below is not intended to represent the ‘definitive’interpretation of these extracts (even if such a thing were possible), but repre-sents one of a possible multitude of readings that could be made (Alvesson &Deetz, 2000; Cresswell, 1996; Mama, 1995). The ‘validity’ of this analysiscannot be established according to the usual criteria employed in the socialsciences. I believe Lincoln and Guba’s (1985) criterion of ‘naturalistic gener-alization’ is appropriate here, as this is concerned with whether the analysishelps the reader to frame or extend their understanding of the world.

Extract 1: Female officer – constable: age 29

1. Interviewer: Do you have some sympathy with the criminalfraternity?

2. Respondent: Oh yeah. I mean like, to me, when I arrest somebody,y’know, you’ve




3. actually taken their liberty away from them so that in itself, I think,is degrading. So

4. to me – if they’re kicking off and fighting, you’re in a differentposition and you’ve

5. got to wait for them to calm down – but as soon as you arrestsomeone what’s the

6. point of being balshy with them? You’ve done what you’ve beenauthorized – you

7. take them back to the station and you explain to them and I alwaystry and say to

8. them – ‘Do you want a cup of tea or anything before we go aheadwith the

9. interview’ – that’s not because you’re sweetening them – but – tome – they’re going

10. to be more co-operative with you if you treat them as a humanbeing rather than

11. just throwing your collar around. It’s unnecessary I think – and Idon’t see that

12. a lot, which is what I thought I would do. But we’ve got a lot ofexperienced

13. officers who I’m working with as well and you learn from themevery day.

The opening question, ‘Do you have some sympathy with the criminalfraternity?’ implies that it is possible or even probable, that the intervieweedoes not, which, I would argue, is a dominant ‘lay’ belief concerning policeattitudes, held, especially, by more ‘liberal’ groups. It is a reasonable conjec-ture, that she positioned me, as an academic, as a likely member of thisgroup, which would have been further reinforced by the research topic.Thus, at the relational level, I represent a potentially ‘hostile’ audience.Furthermore, as the member of the interview who is older and has more




socially ascribed status, an asymmetrical power relation exists. Overall, theofficer may feel the necessity for self-justification (Widdicombe, 1995).Being able to control conflict is celebrated as a core attribute of the policeofficer’s occupational identity (Reiner, 2000; Waddington, 1999a) andthroughout this extract, at the level of identity, the officer constructs herselfas possessing this attribute. At the relational level, however, there is a dangerthat the interviewer (given her biographical characteristics) could, using‘lay’ beliefs, judge the police officer as making arrests (and hence usingcoercive authority) simply because she enjoys doing so. The officer antici-pates this judgement by providing a fairly comprehensive ‘vocabulary ofmotive’ (Van Maanen, 1980) in which her justification for the arrest ismade, and the meaning of her use of coercive authority ‘reframed’ (Ashforth& Kreiner, 1999).

First of all, in lines 2 through to 5, the officer draws attention to the‘degradation’ that is created by an ‘arrest’, drawing on liberal-democraticdiscourse in which individual rights and freedoms are constructed as corevalues. Thus here, the officer constructs the prisoner’s aggression as a legit-imate response to his (or her) circumstances, rather than attributing it to his(or her) personal characteristics. This is a powerful tactic, as it subverts thenormal rules of ‘attribution’, whereby observers generally attribute thecauses of behaviour to actors (Heider, 1958). The power asymmetry betweenthe prisoner and the officer is explicitly referred to, and used to justify whyan officer should wait for a prisoner to ‘calm down’ before proceeding withthe arrest. Thus the ‘conflict’ engendered by the use of coercive authority (i.e.the arrest) is successfully attributed to the situation of the prisoner, not thebehaviour of the officer, who constructs her response to the prisoner’s situ-ation (and therefore her identity) as humanitarian. This could be interpretedas a ‘recalibrating’ tactic (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999; Shulman, 2000) inwhich certain actions are made more significant, and other actions, less so.In this extract, for instance, the emphasis placed on the hospitable and‘friendly’ treatment of the prisoner deflects attention away from the lesspalatable fact of the arrest itself.

At the ideational level, we see evidence of hegemonic struggle, where‘lay’ ideas about police motivations, in which they are constructed as char-acteristically coercive and authoritarian, compete with more official andacceptable accounts of their motivations. To construct her motivations aspublicly acceptable, she carefully emphasizes and constructs the meaning ofarrests: that they are made not by individuals who enjoy this activity, but byindividuals who have been authorized to make arrests by licence, that is,being allowed or expected to do things that other people are not allowed orexpected to do (Hughes, 1958). This is illustrated in line 6, when she




comments: ‘You’ve done what you’ve been authorized’. In Ashforth andKreiner’s (1999) typology, this tactic is a form of reframing, labelled ‘neutral-izing’, where employees deny their responsibility for a ‘negative’ event byasserting they are simply doing their job because the system demands it, atactic that is often employed by ‘actors’ when their behaviour is morallyambiguous (Arluke & Hafferty, 1996). Whether licensed or not, however, asWaddington (1999b) points out, the ability to use coercive authority in anysociety with pretensions to liberal democracy is problematic. By construct-ing not only a professional but also a humanitarian identity, the officer isable to navigate this problem. The description of the aftermath of the arrest,for instance, is constructed as conversational and hospitable (lines 7 and 8).This incongruity is resolved by her implicit acknowledgement that herhumane treatment of the prisoner could be constructed as cynical manipu-lation (‘that’s not because you’re sweetening them’: line 9), and by drawingattention to the practical and professional goals achieved. The officer alsoattempts to establish the credibility of her humanitarianism by her acknowl-edgement of lay discourses about police officers: (‘What’s the point of beingbalshy with them?’: line 6); (‘. . . rather than just throwing your collararound’: lines 10–11); (‘I don’t see that a lot, which I thought I would do’:lines 11–12). These acknowledgements enable the officer to produce acredible account of her motives without drawing the potential accusationthat she is being unrealistic, naïve or idealistic (Potter & Wetherell, 1987),and she effectively deals with the unspoken backdrop to this interaction: thewell-publicized accounts of police brutality, especially of prisoners incustody. Further, in juxtaposing the sentence in which ‘experienced’ officersare discussed, to that which acknowledges that police officers can be char-acteristically coercive, she implies that this is the domain of inexperiencedand, hence, less accountable officers.

Extract 2: Male officer – sergeant: age 42

1. Interviewer: Have you changed [over the years] in the way that youdeal with people you’ve arrested?

2. Respondent: I feel more confident in the way I’m prepared to relateto other

3. people . . . because I’m not just, I mean . . . I’m part of the organiz-ation. When I say do

4. this . . . it isn’t me telling you to do this, it is me, Sergeant and ulti-mately, the whole




5. organization that stands behind me telling you to do this . . . so Iwield the

6. organization’s authority and ultimately the state’s authority. Umm. . . when people

7. say – you’re doing this to me . . . I say – No I’m not . . . you’ve doneit to yourself and

8. I’m not doing this for me I’m doing this for society as a whole.

In this extract there is far less justification for the use of coerciveauthority than was apparent in extract 1, probably because the lead-updiscussion and the question posed by the interviewer have not ‘troubled’ (Ball& Wilson, 2000) the officer’s identity to the same extent as the question thatwas posed in extract 1. Additionally, this officer is a sergeant, and thereforehis status is more commensurate with that of the interviewer; he is,additionally, a similar age to the interviewer. Overall, there is less of a powerasymmetry in this interaction, rendering the degree to which this officermight feel morally accountable to the interviewer less acute than thatapparent in extract 1. Nonetheless, the interview is a ‘front’ region, and, atthe relational level, the officer does show a motivation to account for his useof coercive authority in a way that negates the lay discourse in which policeofficers are constructed as ‘bullies’ or ‘authoritarians’, thus revealingevidence of hegemonic struggle.

In the build-up to this extract, the interview had focused on how policeculture affects identity, and the officer concerned had been describing thepersonal change he had experienced in his 23 years’ service. The key propo-sition in the extract is that the officer has been more and more able toseparate the personal from the professional as he has become increasingly‘part of the organization’ (line 3). This feeling of membership has not onlyincreased his confidence (line 2) but has enabled him to locate his ability touse coercive authority in the broader context of the organization, the stateand ultimately, society (lines 5–8). In line 4, he separates the personal ‘me’from the professional ‘sergeant’, with agency consigned to the latter. Thusthe potential authoritarianism implied by the notion of ‘telling you to do this’(line 4) is a product of the role, not his personal motivations, needs or desires.He goes on to further reject the notion of himself as an authoritarian agent,by locating the source of the role’s authority in the organization and the state.At the level of identity, this officer, does not, unlike the officer in extract 1,attempt to construct himself as possessing humanitarian credentials. This




might be because as a man, his willingness to use coercive authority is explic-able, simply because of the stereotypical association between masculinity andforce.

The presence of the lay discourse on police characteristics is acknowl-edged in this extract, when he recounts the reactions of prisoners (‘you’redoing this to me’: line 7). This statement implies the use of force, of an agentacting on a passive victim. The officer rejects and resists the construction ofprisoners as passive victims, articulating the use of coercive authority as anaction engendered by the immoral behaviour of the prisoner (‘you’ve doneit to yourself’: line 7). At the ideational level, as in extract 1, liberal-democratic discourse is also drawn upon, but here, it is used to justify thenecessity of using coercive authority, rather than to ‘excuse’ the behaviourof the arrestee: the prisoner is constructed as breaching the ‘rights’ and‘freedoms’ of ‘society’. So whereas in extract 1, liberal-democratic ideologywas drawn upon to enable the interviewee to construct a creditable human-itarian identity, here it is used as a further ‘reframing’ tactic, labelled, ‘denialof victim’, in which it is ‘argue[d] that the exploited either desire or deservetheir fate’ (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999: 422), a tactic that is often used tojustify the apparent ‘ill treatment’ of minority groups (Wetherell & Potter,1992). The lay discourse on police characteristics and motivations is againacknowledged in line 8 (‘I’m not doing this for me’), and rejected by hisascription of a moral jurisdiction (‘I’m doing this for society as a whole’: line8). In this extract, the use of coercive authority is more robustly justified atthe ideational level, by drawing on the notion of mandate, that is, the moral,legal or intellectual power to designate what is right and proper in humanconduct (Hughes, 1958). Whereas drawing on the notion of licence can‘work’ to provide a justification for the use of coercive authority as I haveillustrated in my analysis of extract 1, mandate is a more powerful justifi-cation, because, as Herbert (1998) and Manning (1977) point out, it invokesthe broader value of preserving a legally defined social order.

Summary of analysis

Taken together, these extracts show that these officers succeed in ‘reframing’the meaning of coercive authority using broadly similar strategies. Bothofficers, for example, absolve (Arluke & Hafferty, 1996) themselves for theiruse of coercive authority, by locating their responsibility for their actions ina broader, legally defined social order (Herbert, 1998). In this way, they dealwith the potential accusation that their use of coercive authority couldproceed from questionable, personal motivations. Second, both officers were able to construct a moral identity, by framing their actions within




liberal-democratic discourses of human rights and freedoms, though indifferent ways. In extract 1, for example, this discourse was used to both‘excuse’ the behaviour of the prisoner and to attribute it to his or her situ-ation. In subverting the normal rules of attribution in this way, this officerwas able, using a variety of further tactics, to construct a credible and cred-itable humanitarian identity. In extract 2, this discourse was used to condemnthe actions of the prisoner, drawing on the notion of mandate (Hughes, 1958)to morally justify the use of coercive authority. The two extracts differ to theextent that the officer in extract 1 appears to show a greater concern thanthe officer in extract 2, with how the use of coercive authority might reflecton her identity, revealed by the more extensive ‘working up’ of her human-itarian credentials.

Conclusions and implications

The moral ambiguity that inheres in the use of coercive authority, and thatleads some sectors of the public to perhaps view policing as ‘dirty work’,stems not so much from whether its use is justifiable, because as Van Maanen(1980) points out, this is not verifiable, but from the fact that society haslicensed (Hughes, 1958) the police with these powers. As Douglas (1966)argues, when a society requires a given group to hold ambiguous roles, thepersons in that group are often credited with the potential to wield uncon-trolled, dangerous and disapproved power. As a profession, police officersperform society’s dirty work, operating at the margins and boundaries of thesocial order, using coercive authority, or the threat of it, to ‘keep people intheir place’ (Waddington, 1999b), more often than fighting crime. Theirambiguous and marginal status derives not only from their symbolic clashwith the ideals of advanced liberal democracies, but from the way theyexpose the demarcations in society, between the ‘haves’ and ‘have-nots’, thesocially excluded and the socially included. In ‘keeping people in their place’they make us aware that the established order in which the majority ofcitizens live their lives is not the natural order of things, after all, but alwaysa temporary accomplishment, that could, at any time, be overturned,displaced, and transformed. They symbolize the possibility of potentialdisorder that inheres in any fragmented social system threatening our cher-ished way of life and its habits, customs and routines.

All police officers have, at some time or other, the occasion to usecoercive authority. Whether that is celebrated at group level, is, I have argued,dependent on the extent to which the broader social and cultural context isa politically contested domain, which acts to both marginalize the police and




to render their ideological boundaries fragile and precarious. Celebratingcoercive authority, not only occurs more overtly in ‘back regions’ (Goffman,1959), but provides an ‘in-group’ legitimation of their espoused function, anda negation of the possibility that what they do is potentially both anti-democratic and ineffective. In other contexts, like that of the research inter-view, the individual police officer can become exposed to the possibility thathe or she is judged to be a member of one of society’s ‘out-groups’ (Hughes,1984), licensed to perform tasks that normal upright citizens would disdainon moral grounds. Like all ‘out-groups’, the causes of their behaviours, especi-ally those that are judged to be morally ambiguous, tend to be attributed totheir agency, rather than the situation, resulting in ‘lay’ discourses whichbrand police officers as ‘bullies’ and ‘authoritarians’. In such ‘front region’contexts, the fragile and contingent boundaries of professional ideology arerendered permeable, requiring active re-construction. The identity of thepolice officer is the site of this re-construction, acting as the node throughwhich different and, sometimes, contradictory ideologies struggle forhegemony. In my analysis I have argued that, in the cases presented here, tosuccessfully accomplish this re-construction, the meaning of coercive author-ity had to be negotiated, by bringing it in line with the ideals of a liberal-democratic society and the way that these construct norms of conduct andpersonhood. In doing so, not only were the research participants able toabsolve themselves of personal responsibility for the use of coercive author-ity, but, crucially, to locate its use within the terms of a moral, professionalmandate.

There are a number of implications of the analysis presented here. Thefirst concerns the dirty work concept itself. The utility of this concept liespartly in the way in which it draws our attention to the socially embeddednature of all occupations, and of occupational identities. What we do andhow we see ourselves can never be disconnected from the wider social system.By closer attention to the context relativity of the dirty work concept, exam-ining differences between how it is ‘framed’ in ‘back regions’ and ‘frontregions’, we can better explore those micro-processes through which differ-ent ‘reframing’ techniques (Ashforth & Kreiner, 1999) are mobilized andrendered effective. What is branded as ‘dirty’, for example, refers to thetransgression of a particular boundary (Lockyer & Pickering, 2001), but thisis never fixed. While the use of coercive authority can be seen as morallyambiguous, this depends on the perspective of the observer and their powerto define it as morally ambiguous (Cresswell, 1996). Thus studying howworkers in ‘tainted’ occupations and professions deal with the stigma of ‘dirt’that attaches to their role, provides an opportunity to more closely examinethe dynamics of power that exist between occupations and the broader social




context, particularly in relation to the ways that certain occupations drawattention to the moral boundaries and margins of the social order and howthese are ideologically constructed and contested.

A second implication is that if organizational ideologies that providethe identity resources which individuals use to make sense of themselvesroutinely, are both deeply embedded in the fundamentals of the occupationand in its dialectical relation with society, then as Ackroyd and Crowdy(1990) query: how manageable is organizational culture? This is a criticalquestion for the police, whose culture has frequently been blamed for bothrace and sex discrimination (Brown, 1992; Chan, 1996; Fielding, 1994;Fletcher, 1996; Graef, 1990). The argument in this article is that we cannotunderstand organizational ideologies as existing in any monolithic or staticsense, and that such ideologies are neither smoothly nor routinely reproducedin every context. So while I would argue that culture is probably notamenable to the symbolic management strategies advocated by Ashforth andKreiner (1999), we need to have a better understanding of those organiz-ational contexts in which those ideologies are disrupted and resisted, if weare to identify spaces from which change to organizational culture mightbegin to emerge. Future research could usefully explore these issues by exam-ining ‘dirty work’ identities in a broader range of ‘front’ and ‘back’ regionsthan those considered in this study, perhaps examining the extent to whichidentity presentation differs in various contexts and how, or whether, indi-viduals experience any differences as dissonant.

A further implication relates to the conceptualization of the ‘refram-ing’ techniques identified by Ashforth and Kreiner (1999). The use of theterm ‘reframing’ draws our attention to the fact that certain meaningsbecome privileged, taken-for-granted as truths, reflecting the power thatsome groups have to define the world and its events for us. I suggest that theanalysis presented here exposes the temporality and contingency of allmeanings. They are never fixed. Space for redefinition is always potentiallyavailable, and my analysis implies it is in the active attempt to achieve acoherent and integral self that such spaces can open up, as individuals drawon different meanings to ‘make sense’ of themselves and their activities (Fine,1996; Wrzesniewski et al., 2003). In studying how dirty workers make senseof themselves and their work, therefore, we need to be aware that ouraccount and understanding of what they do derives from a specific socio-cultural perspective, it does not reflect the reality of the dirty worker’s status.

Finally, my analysis suggests that the creative capacities agents haveto accomplish an identity in any given context are subject to social-struc-tural constraint. That is, we are not always ‘free’ to present ourselves in theway or ways that we might like. Gender, class, occupational status,




educational background, accent and age are all examples of the structuralconstraints that need to be negotiated in the performance of identity. Thisnecessarily leads us to a further consideration of power. Part of the identity‘problem’ for the likes of police constables, police sergeants and slaughter-house workers, is that they occupy subordinate positions in the organiz-ational hierarchy. The threat that is posed to their identity emanates fromthese structural positions as well as from the nature of the work they under-take. In another sense, then, we can understand both the celebration of their‘dirty roles’ in ‘back regions’ and the moral justification of their roles in‘front regions’ as resistance to the relations of power in their organizationsand in society more generally. In rejecting their ‘dirty worker’ status, theyaffirm their power as agents, to redefine and contest the meaning of whatthey do.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank Linda Putnam and three anonymous reviewers for theircomments on an earlier draft of this article.

References

Ackroyd, S. & Crowdy, P.A. Can culture be managed? Working with raw-material: Thecase of the English slaughtermen. Personnel Review, 1990, 19(5), 3–13.

Adams, K. Measuring the prevalence of police abuse of force. In W.A. Geller & H. Toch(Eds), Understanding and controlling police abuse of force. New Haven, CT: YaleUniversity Press, 1996, pp. 52–93.

Alvesson, M. & Deetz, S. Doing critical management research. London: Sage, 2000.Arluke, A. & Hafferty, F. From apprehension to fascination with ‘dog lab’: The use of abso-

lutions by medical students. Journal of Contemporary Ethnography, 1996, 25(2),201–25.

Ashforth, B.E. & Kreiner, G.E. ‘How can you do it?’: Dirty work and the challenge ofconstructing a positive identity. Academy of Management Review, 1999, 24(3), 413–34.

Ball, K. & Wilson, D.C. Power, control and computer-based performance monitoring:Repertoires, resistance and subjectivities. Organization Studies, 2000, 21(3), 539–65.

Banton, M. The policeman in the community. London: Tavistock, 1964.Bayley, D.H. Police brutality abroad. In W.A. Geller & H. Toch (Eds), Understanding and

controlling police abuse of force. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996,pp. 273–91.

Becker, H.S., Geer, B., Hughes, E.C. & Strauss, A.L. Boys in white: Student culture inmedical school. University of Chicago, IL: Transaction Books, 1961.

Bittner, E. The functions of the police in a modern society. Washington, DC: US Govern-ment Printing Office, 1970.

Bolton, S. Women’s work, dirty work: The gynaecology nurse as ‘Other’. Gender, Work &Organization, 2005, 12(2), 169–86.




Brown, J.M. Changing the police culture. Policing, 1992, 8, 307–22.Cahill, S.E. The boundaries of professionalization: The case of North American funeral

direction. Symbolic Interaction, 1996, 22(2), 105–19.Cain, M. Society and the policeman’s role. London: Routledge, 1973.Chan, J. Changing police culture. British Journal of Criminology, 1996, 36(1), 109–34.Cresswell, T. In place, out of place: Geography, ideology and transgression. Minneapolis:

University of Minnesota Press, 1996.Deetz, S.A. The micropolitics of identity formation in the workplace: The case of a knowl-

edge intensive firm. Human Studies, 1994, 17(1), 23–44.Dick, P. Discourse analysis. In C. Cassell & G. Symon (Eds), Handbook of qualitative

methods: The essential guide. London: Sage, 2004, pp. 203–13.Dick, P. & Cassell, C. Barriers to managing diversity in a UK police constabulary: The role

of discourse. Journal of Management Studies, 2002, 39(7), 953–76.Dick, P. & Cassell, C. The position of police women: A discourse analytic study. Work,

Employment & Society, 2004, 18(1), 51–72.Douglas, M. Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. London:

Routledge, 1966.Emerson, R.M. & Pollner, M. Dirty work designations: Their features and consequences

in a psychiatric setting. Social Problems, 1975, 23, 243–54.Ericson, R.V. Reproducing order. Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1982.Fairclough, N. Discourse and social change. Cambridge: Polity Press, 1992.Fielding, N. Cop canteen culture. In E. Stanko & T. Newburn (Eds), Just boys doing

business: Men, masculinity and crime. London: Routledge, 1994, pp. 46–63.Fine, G.A. Justifying work: Occupational rhetorics as resources in restaurant kitchens.

Administrative Science Quarterly, 1996, 41, 90–115.Fletcher, C. ‘The 250lb man in an alley’: Police story telling. Journal of Organizational

Change Management, 1996, 9(5), 36–42.Foucault, M. Madness and civilization: A history of insanity in the age of reason. London:

Tavistock, 1967.Foucault, M. Discipline and punish. London: Allen Lane, 1977.Foucault, M. The history of sexuality. Volume I: The will to knowledge. London: Penguin,

1981.Foucault, M. The history of sexuality. Volume 3: The care of the self. London: Penguin,

1990.Gergen, K.J. Warranting voice and the elaboration of the self. In J. Shotter & K.J. Gergen

(Eds), Texts of identity. London: Sage, 1990, pp. 70–81.Godin, P. A dirty business: Caring for people who are a nuisance or a danger. Journal of

Advanced Nursing, 2000, 32(6), 1396–402.Goffman, E. The presentation of self in everyday life. New York: Doubleday, 1959.Graef, R. Talking blues: The police in their own words. London: Fontana, 1990.Grant, D., Keenoy, T. & Oswick, C. (Eds) Discourse and organization. London: Sage, 1998.Heider, F. The psychology of interpersonal relations. New York: Wiley, 1958.Henriques, J., Hollway, W., Urwin, C., Venn, C. & Walkerdine, V. Changing the subject:

Psychology, social regulation and subjectivity. London: Routledge, 1984.Herbert, S. Policing space: Territoriality and the Los Angeles Police Department.

Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1996.Herbert, S. Police subculture reconsidered. Criminology, 1998, 26(2), 343–69.Hogg, M.A. & Abrams, D. Social motivation, self-esteem and social identity. In D. Abrams

& M. Hogg (Eds), Social identity theory: Constructive and critical advances. New York:Springer-Verlag, 1990, pp. 28–47.

Hollway, W. Subjectivity and method in psychology: Gender, meaning and science. London:Sage, 1989.

Hughes, E. Work and the self. In J.H. Rohrer & M. Sherif (Eds), Social psychology at thecrossroads. New York: Harper and Bros, 1951, pp. 313–23.




Hughes, E. Men & their work. Glencoe, IL: The Free Press, 1958.Hughes, E.C. The sociological eye. New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Books, 1984.Jermier, J.M., Knights, D. & Nord, W.R. (Eds) Resistance and power in organizations.

London: Routledge, 1994.Karreman, D. & Alvesson, A. Making newsmakers: Conversational identity at work.

Organization Studies, 2001, 22(1), 59–89.Kleinig, J. The ethics of policing. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Klockars, C.B. The Dirty Harry problem. Annals of the American Academy of Political

and Social Science, 1980, 452 (November), 33–47.Klockars, C.B. A theory of excessive force and its control. In W.A. Geller & H. Toch (Eds),

Understanding and controlling police abuse of force. New Haven, CT: Yale UniversityPress, 1996, pp. 1–22.

Kondo, D.K. Crafting selves: Power, gender and discourses of identity in a Japanese work-place. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 1990.

Lincoln, Y.S. & Guba, E.G. Naturalistic enquiry. Beverley Hills, CA: Sage, 1985.Lockyer, S. & Pickering, M. Dear shit-shovellers: Humour, censure and the discourse of

complaint. Discourse & Society, 2001, 12(5), 633–51.Mama, A. Beyond the masks: Race, gender and subjectivity. London: Routledge, 1995.Manning, P.K. Police work. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1977.May, D. & Kelly, M.P. Chancers, pests and poor wee souls: Problems of legitimation in

psychiatric nursing. Sociology of Health & Illness, 1982, 4(3), 279–99.Potter, J. & Wetherell, M. Discourse and social psychology: Beyond attitudes and behav-

iour. London: Sage, 1987.Reiner, R. The politics of the police, 3rd edn. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 2000.Shaw, I. Doctors, ‘dirty work’, patients and revolving doors. Qualitative Health Research,

2004, 14(8), 1032–45.Shotter, J. & Gergen, K.J. Texts of identity. London: Sage, 1989.Shulman, D. Professionals’ accounts for work-related deceptions. Symbolic Interaction,

2000, 23(3), 259–81.Skolnick, J.H. & Fyfe, J.J. Above the law: Police and the excessive use of force. New York:

Free Press, 1993.Stallybrass, P. & White, A. The politics and poetics of transgression. New York: Cornell

University Press, 1986.Stannard, S.I. Old folks and dirty work: The social conditions for patient abuse in a nursing

home. Social Problems, 1973, 329–42.Strong, P.M. Doctors and dirty work: The case of alcoholism. Sociology of Health &

Illness, 1980, 2(1), 24–46.Therborn, G. The ideology of power and the power of ideology. London: Verso, 1980.Van Maanen, J. Beyond account: The personal impact of police shootings. The Annals of

the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1980, 452, 145–56.Waddington, P.A.J. Police (canteen) sub-culture: An appreciation. British Journal of Crim-

inology, 1999a, 39(2), 287–309.Waddington, P.A.J. Policing citizens. London: UCL Press, 1999b.Wetherell, M. & Potter, J. Mapping the language of racism: Discourse and the legitimation

of exploitation. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1992.Widdicombe, S. Identity, politics and talk: A case for the mundane and everyday. In S.

Wilkinson & C. Kitzinger (Eds), Feminism and discourse. London: Sage, 1995,pp. 106–27.

Wrzesniewski, A., Dutton, J.E. & Debebe, G. Interpersonal sensemaking and the meaningof work. In R.M. Kramer & B.M. Staw (Eds), Research in organizational behavior, Vol.25. New York: Elsevier, 2003, pp. 93–136.

Young, M. In the sticks: Cultural identity in a rural police force. Oxford: Clarendon Press,1993.





Penny Dick (BA, MSc, PhD, C.Psychol.) is a Lecturer in OrganizationalBehaviour at Sheffield University Management School.Her research inter-ests include the management of diversity; identity, resistance and power;and the impact of family-friendly policies on organizations and individuals.She has published in journals such as the Journal of Management Studies,Work, Employment & Society, and the Journal of Occupational & Organiz-ational Psychology. She is co-author of Introduction to organizational behav-iour (3rd edn, McGraw Hill) and has recently completed a role as theprincipal investigator on a two year Economic and Social ResearchCouncil project on the management of flexible working practices in theUK police service.[E-mail: [email protected]]



Dirty Work Designations -Dick

Documents

Transcript of Dirty Work Designations -Dick