| ID | 181011 |
| Title Proper | Tarnished work |
| Other Title Information | dignity and labour in Iran |
| Language | ENG |
| Author | Hashemi, Manata |
| Summary / Abstract (Note) | Constituting a growing portion of Iran’s labour force, the working poor shoulder the burden of Iran’s recent economic predicaments. However, little work has examined how working poor men and women employed in stigmatized service jobs cope with the status degradation associated with their work. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 12 service workers, this article examines how working in socially tarnished jobs contributes to these individuals’ moral understandings of themselves and others. By equating personal worth with hard work and responsibility, service workers draw distinctions among themselves, those who do not work, and the ‘ungenerous’ elite. These conceptual boundaries create and legitimate microsystems of ethical worth among them that facilitates workers’ claims to dignity, while simultaneously reproducing cycles of inequality. Hard work becomes a form of symbolic capital that the working poor use to legitimate their entry into middle-class society. As such, this study differs from earlier research by demonstrating that a life lived in economic precarity does not always result in attraction to alternative subcultures, but rather conformism to mainstream ideals and norms in an effort to maintain dignity. |
| `In' analytical Note | British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Vol. 47, No.5; Dec 2020: p. 741-756 |
| Journal Source | British Journal of Middle Eastern Studies Vol: 47 No 5 |
| Key Words | Tarnished Work ; Labour in Iran |