Tainted Love: From Dirty Work To Abject Labour in Soho's Sex Shops

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1177/0018726711418849TylerHuman Relations
human relations
human relations
64(11) 1477–1500
Tainted love: From dirty work to © The Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/0018726711418849
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Melissa Tyler
University of Essex, UK
Abstract
This article is based on ethnographic research carried out in sex shops – retail
premises selling sex toys, clothing and accessories, as well as sexually explicit books
and films – located in London’s Soho. Drawing on the concept of ‘dirty work’, it
explores not only the ways in which the various taints associated with dirty work
– physical, social and moral – are lived and experienced, but also the allure of this
particular type of work for those who perform it, and particularly of Soho as a work
place. In doing so, the article extends the study of dirty work by drawing attention to
two related themes that emerged from the research – first, the performance of what
might be termed ‘abject labour’; that is, work that invokes a simultaneous attraction
and repulsion for those who undertake it, and second, the significance of location
and place in understanding the lived experience of work and the meanings with
which particular types of work are imbued. The discussion concludes by arguing that
teasing out the inter-relationship between these two themes – of simultaneity (of
repulsion and desire) and setting – enables us to better understand interconnections
between the meanings attached to particular types of work, and the specific locations
in which they take place.
Keywords
abjection, dirty work, London, organizational space and place, sex shops, Soho, taint
and taint management
Corresponding author:
Melissa Tyler, Essex Business School, University of Essex, Wivenhoe Park, Colchester CO4 3SQ, UK.
Email: mjtyler@essex.ac.uk
1478 Human Relations 64(11)
Introduction
It’s an inspirational place to work in. Yes, it’s seedy and it has an edge, but that’s what makes it
exciting. It’s what makes it what it is. (Davina, retail sales assistant in a specialist lingerie store,
Soho, May 2009)
There looms within abjection . . . an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. (Kristeva, 1982:

5, emphasis added)
This article draws on ethnographic research carried out in sex shops located in London’s
Soho, an area simultaneously ‘inspirational’, ‘seedy’, ‘tempting’ and ‘condemned’, that
has been at the heart of the capital’s sex industry for over 200 years. The analysis pre-
sented combines Hughes’s (1951) ‘dirty work’ typology, and its subsequent development
in the work of Ashforth and Kreiner (1999), with the concept of abjection (Douglas,
1966; Kristeva, 1982). It also draws on and extends related writing on ambivalence
(Kreiner and Ashforth, 2004; Pratt; 2000, Pratt and Doucet, 2000) and dis-identification
(Costas and Fleming, 2009; Elsbach and Bhattacharya, 2001) within work and organiza-
tion studies in order to explore not only the ways in which the various taints associated
with working in a sex shop – physical, social and moral – are lived and experienced,
often engendering feelings of repulsion, but also the simultaneous attraction – the temp-
tation – of dirty work for those who perform it. Hence, the aim is both to apply the con-
cept of dirty work to make sense of the experiences of those employed in this particular
setting and sector, and in doing so, to stretch the concept itself beyond its current analyti-
cal capacity. In this respect, the article also aims to further develop some of the in-roads
that Kristeva’s (1982) writing on abjection has made into the study of work by reflecting
on how those who took part in the study experienced a simultaneous attraction and repul-
sion to their work, and particularly their place of work, that her concept of abjection
helps us to understand. Considering the apparent centrality of abjection to the processes
by which organizations are produced and maintained,1 it is perhaps somewhat surprising
that the concept has thus far received relatively limited attention among organizational
scholars (for notable exceptions, see Brewis and Linstead, 2000; Cohen et al., 2006;
Dale, 2001; Linstead, 1997). In its pursuit of these various objectives, a related aim of the
article is literally to put work in its place; that is, to reflect on the role of place in shaping
the construction, perception and lived experience of work that carries physical, social or
moral taints, considering the dynamic inter-relationship between the meanings attached
to particular types of work and the specific locations in which they are embedded.
The article begins by considering the nature of Soho as a workplace, focusing particu-
larly on its association with the sex industry, before outlining how the data were collected
and analysed, and explaining in more detail the research setting and sector. It will then
discuss the different ways in which retail sales work in sex shops carries physical, social
and moral taints, reflecting on how these taints are lived and experienced. Various tech-
niques used by workers to manage the taints with which their work, and indeed their
place of work, is associated will then be considered, highlighting the ways in which the
place itself is significant in this respect. Here Ashforth and Kreiner’s (1999) linking of
the recasting of dirty work to strong organizational and occupational cultures is extended
by drawing attention to the role of place and locale in shaping the meanings attached to
Tyler 1479
dirty work. In the final part of the article, it is argued that as well as these coping tech-
niques, the findings of this research also emphasize the need to appreciate what, borrow-
ing from Kristeva (1982), we might describe as the ‘power of horror’ in the performance
of dirty work. For many of those who took part in the study, the very attraction of the
place, the sector and the job is precisely its ‘dirt’ – physically, socially or morally (‘it’s
seedy and it has an edge, but that’s what makes it exciting’, as Davina puts it), and the
article concludes by arguing that the study of dirty work ought to be extended by drawing
attention also to the performance of what might be termed ‘abject labour’; that is, to
work that is simultaneously attractive and repellent, ‘as tempting as it is condemned’, for
those who perform it, and to understanding the role of place in shaping this simultaneous
sense of attraction and repulsion.
In the shadows: Sex and place in the study of work

Within the social sciences, particularly in sociology and geography, there is a well-
established body of literature on sex work,2 much of which draws attention to the stig-
matization of those who provide and consume commercial sex (Brewis and Linstead,
2000; Sanders, 2005, 2008a; West and Austrin, 2002), as well as to the association of
sex work with particular places and spaces (Hubbard and Sanders, 2003). Research on
sex work has also highlighted the need to study the ‘supply side’ of the sex industry,
‘including ancillary industries that support sex markets in the shadow economy’
(Sanders, 2008b: 704). Alongside, but not necessarily in dialogue with this literature on
sex work is an emerging body of research focusing on sexualized labour in sales-service
work whereby the commodification of sexuality is more implicit, involving for instance
the presentation of a sexualized appearance as part of a commercial transaction (Adkins,
1995; Mills, 2006; Warhurst and Nickson, 2009), or the expectation that service work-
ers will engage in sexualized ‘banter’ with customers, clients or co-workers (Filby,
1992; Pringle, 1989). Yet comparatively little attention has been paid to work that is
carried out in a retail sales environment in sex shops, in which there is no direct exchange
of sexual interaction (as in the case of sex work), or obvious aesthetic sexualization of
the service encounter (as has been argued to be the case in the performance of sexual-
ized labour – Warhurst and Nickson, 2009), yet in which important emotional and aes-
thetic aspects of the interaction are likely to be heightened because of the sexual nature
of the exchange. The encounter is arguably relatively intense because the performance
and consumption of commercial sex raises physical, social and moral issues arising
from the transgression of boundaries generally considered necessary to the maintenance
of the social and moral order, the latter involving the containment of sex to the private
sphere (and space) of intimate relations, rather than to its enactment within a commer-
cial transaction between relative strangers, and in the case of a sex shop, in a relatively
open, public environment. Yet while a number of interesting studies of the ways in
which customers negotiate this encounter have emerged from within sociology and con-
sumer studies (Berkowitz, 2006; Stein, 1990; Storr, 2003; Tewksbury, 1990, 1993),
research on work and organization has to date neglected the experiences of those
employed in this particular sector and in this specific setting; much has been written
about sex shops, or about sex workers, and there exists a considerable body of literature
on Soho itself, but the work experiences of those employed in the many sex shops for
which Soho has a global reputation remain neglected in the study of work and organiza-
tions. As a recent (and rare) article on sex shops in Journal of Management History put
it, there is ‘no other concentration of specialist erotic retailing comparable to London’s
Soho, which remains a uniquely-themed neighbourhood’ (Kent and Berman Brown,
2006: 201). Yet as researchers of work and organization, we know little about the work
experiences of those employed in this relatively unique workplace. How does Soho’s
global association with commercial sex impact upon the work experiences of those
employed in its many sex shops? What are the physical, social and moral taints associ-
ated with the sector and setting, and in what ways are these taints shaped by the place
itself? What light can the work experiences of those employed in this particular sector
and setting shed on our understanding of work more generally?
While there has been a burgeoning interest in the relationship between space, work
and organization in recent years (Baldry, 1999; Dale, 2005; Dale and Burrell, 2007;
Kornberger and Clegg, 2004), place, as ‘a meaningful location’ (Cresswell, 2004: 7), has
been relatively neglected within this literature, as has the interrelationship between work,
place and sexuality (with, as outlined above, the notable exception of sociological
research on sex work). Yet as Herod et al. (2007: 255) have put it, ‘efforts to theorize
place in a more sophisticated manner are crucial for understanding [work and employ-
ment] practices’. Is place merely a neutral backdrop, or are places constitutive of work
experiences, and if so how? How does an association with particular types of work in
turn shape the places in which work is embedded? Social geographers have argued that
places constitute the material setting for social relations enabling humans to produce and
consume meaning through the emotional and subjective attachment people have to a
particular locale (Creswell, 2004; Massey, 1997; Tuan, 1977), or what Lippard (1997)
calls ‘the lure of the local’. Yet our sense of place can also be shaped by precisely the
opposite, that is, by a sense of revulsion or repulsion, particularly to those spaces deemed
contaminated or contaminating (Campkin and Cox, 2007), for instance because of their
associations with deviant forms of sexuality (Andersson, 2007; Hubbard, 2000; Hubbard
and Sanders, 2003; Janes, 2007; Wolkowitz, 2007), so that those who consume or work
in such places might themselves become contaminated by association. As Pullen and
Thanem (2010: 1, 4) have recently outlined, however, ‘work and organization studies has
thus far not attended to the various relations between sexuality and space’; further
research is required in order to focus on ‘the ways in which sexuality is performed,
expressed and enacted in various spatial contexts of work and organization’ including in
and through the performance of work, not only in particular spatial contexts but also in
particular places.
With this in mind, this article aims to consider the work experiences of retail sales
workers employed in sex shops in a particular locale, namely Soho, an area that contin-
ues to be synonymous with the consumption and provision of commercial sex (Hubbard
et al., 2009; Mort, 1998; Summers, 1989). Work clearly does not take place – it is not
enacted, experienced or made meaningful – within a social or material vacuum, yet we
know comparatively little about how where work is carried out shapes its lived experi-
ence, and of course vice versa; that is, how a close association with a particular sector of
work shapes a locale. Described in a recent European Journal of Cultural Studies article
Tyler 1481
as a place ‘abandoned to sleaze and inadequacy’ (Smith, 2007: 169), Soho has a long-
standing association with commercial sex – how does this influence the work experi-
ences of those employed in Soho’s many sex shops? Are they ‘dirty workers’ because of
the shops they work in, and the jobs they do, or also because of where these shops are
located? How are these associations with abandonment, ‘sleaze and inadequacy’ experi-
enced? Felstead et al. (2005) argue that in order to understand more about the relation-
ship between work practices and settings, we should begin to focus attention on ‘work
stations’ (the immediate location where work takes place, such as at a desk), ‘work
places’ (the buildings designated for work), and ‘work scapes’ (the network of places and
work stations, and the telecommunications that connect them). Yet work places are much
more than buildings, they are composite accumulations of the socio-cultural associations
that constitute particular work settings; a dynamic nexus of meaning and materiality in
which work is embedded, work places are the site on which work identities and practices
are played out and made meaningful. As scholars of work and organization, however, we
know relatively little about precisely how work identities and practices are played out in
particular places of work.
Even within social geography, place remained a relatively undeveloped concept until
the 1970s with the emergence of humanistic geography (Cresswell, 2004), and its phe-
nomenological emphasis on places as constellations that gather ‘things, thoughts and
memories in particular configurations’ (Escobar, 2001: 143). Yet the subjective signifi-
cance of place has yet to have any sustained influence on the way in which we study
work, including work that is imbued with particular physical, social or moral connota-
tions in part precisely because of where it is carried out, or as a result of the specific
setting or locale with which it is associated. Equally, the question of how particular
locales or communities might shape the experience of, and meanings attached to specific
types of work, remains relatively neglected within work and organization studies, which
has yet to place work; that is, to understand how work is shaped by place, and vice versa.
Does where work is carried out matter? When work is tainted, in what ways does place
contribute to that taint – does it accentuate or alleviate it? Understanding the role of place
in the study of dirty work is important because while on the one hand, the taints with
which particular types of work are associated may in part relate precisely to where they
are carried out, it may also be the case that the settings in which dirty work is performed
help workers to cope with the stigmatizing effects of their work. Yet, as noted above, we
know relatively little about these interconnections because place remains a somewhat
marginal theme in the study of work.
Although much has been written about Soho itself, the work experiences of those
employed in the sex shops with which it continues to be associated also remain neglected;
these workers continue to occupy the ‘shadows’ to use Sanders’ (2008b) term, both
empirically and theoretically, working in an ancillary industry, and one that remains
hitherto unexplored by sociologists of work.3 With this in mind, the aim of this article is
to consider the following questions: How do those employed in sex shops experience the
stigma attached to their work, and to their place of work, and how does their place of
work shape not only the various taints with which working in a sex shop is associated,
but also the coping techniques they deploy? How do they negotiate their own perceptions
of their work, and their place of work, as well as those of others? What attracts sex shop
workers to the work they do, and to their place of work? What role does their place of
work play in shaping employer, customer and their own expectations of what the job
involves? Before considering the methodological approach that was taken to exploring
these questions, it is important to contextualize the research by considering both the set-
ting and the sector itself in a little more depth.
Soho . . . the (other) square mile

Much like the City of London, Soho occupies a relatively compact geographical area
but constitutes something of a ‘glocalized space’ (Glennie and Thrift, 1992; Mort,
1998) in terms of its disproportionate social, political and economic impact, primarily
as a result of its global association with commercial sex and its reputation as a ‘night-
time economy’ (Roberts and Turner, 2005), or ‘nocturnal space’ (Houlbrook, 2005).
But Soho is also a vibrant workplace and a thriving residential community, an urban
village in the heart of London’s West End. It is ‘a place of dazzling contrasts . . . both
homely village and red-light district, a place of work and a place to forget it’, as
Summers (1989: 5) puts it in her monumental history of Soho and its people.4
Characterized by an ethos of generosity, Soho’s tolerance ‘has always offered the
unconventional, the eccentric, the rebellious and the merely different a chance to be
themselves’ (Summers, 1989: 190). The area’s characteristic sexual and legal liminal-
ity, coupled with gay male social and recreational opportunities and the assimilation
of the area into a fashionable mainstream (in a similar vein to Manchester’s gay vil-
lage – see Binnie and Skeggs, 2004), characterize Soho as the UK’s ‘gay capital’, as
Collins (2004: 1789) describes it in his analysis of Soho’s urban regeneration (see
also Andersson, 2007; Mort, 1998).
An entertainment district with a colourful history to say the least, contemporary Soho
is known for its sex shops, bars, restaurants, for its nightlife and for the film industry. In
the last two decades or so, Soho has undergone something of an urban renaissance,
shaped by a combination of entrepreneurial activity, artful urban branding, local com-
munity initiatives, economic revival relating to the area’s long-standing association with
the film industry, and particularly the expansion of businesses specializing in new media
and communications technologies. By the end of the 1980s, purges of the Vice Squad,
along with the introduction of licensing regulations5 began to ‘clean up’ Soho (a process
that had actually been going on for at least 100 or so years6). Sex work is still wide-
spread, however, and premises deemed suitable for sex-related businesses command
inflated rents, a process that has squeezed out many local traders not connected with the
sex industry. Binge drinking and especially drug dealing are rife; there are many sex
shops remaining, most of which are licensed, some of which are not,7 and the area con-
tinues to be associated largely with commercial sex. While some have argued that the
twin processes of gentrification and corporatization have sanitized the area (see Hubbard
et al., 2009 for a discussion), Soho retains an ‘edge’ to it that makes it unique as a place
to live, work and consume and, therefore, a particularly interesting place in which to
study the interrelationship between sector and setting in the performance of work that
might be classified as ‘tainted’.
Tyler 1483
On a bench in Soho Square: Researching sales-service

work in Soho’s sex shops
As Mort (1998: 901) argued in his discussion of commercial sex and the ‘cityscape’,
‘ethnographic work delivers insights into the relationship between identity and place
that cannot be supplied by the formal maps of the consumer city’. The approach taken
here was driven by the conviction that ethnography could bring into focus the ways in
which ‘dirty work’ is enacted and experienced within the context of a specific locale,
focusing on the relationship between identity and place to which Mort refers, and think-
ing about how this relationship shapes and is shaped by the performance and perception
of dirty work by those who undertake it. This ethnographic dimension was important
because it provided an opportunity to reflect on how retail sales work in sex shops is
lived and experienced by those working in the sector, in their own words and from their
own perspective.
The research I undertook included observational fieldwork carried out in and around
Soho, and specifically in 12 sex shops between May and July in 2009. This observational
research was broadly carried out along a continuum, along which my role shifted from
participation as a potential customer (in shops where I had yet to interview, or where I
had not planned to interview), or as an assumed employee (when the staff but not the
customers were aware of my role as a researcher – although I had no direct involvement
with customers, other than to exchange passing greetings), through to entirely non-participant
observation, when I spent time at the counter in the shops with a note book and tape
recorder out and was therefore clearly identified as an ‘outsider’. This outsider status
shifted though, as the research progressed and as I got to know people working in the
shops and gradually became more familiar in two or three of them as just someone who
was hanging around and chatting. About half way through the fieldwork period, I started
to notice that I was gradually becoming more accepted as I began to have more informal
interactions with people working in the shops, and particularly as I began to be recog-
nized in cafes and bars by people I had met during the course of the research and was
invited to join them for coffee, or just to sit in one of the squares during their break peri-
ods. I also maintained regular email and text contact with several of the people I inter-
viewed, who arranged to meet up with me when I was in Soho, or who got in touch when
they had interesting stories to tell me about particular encounters they had had during the
course of their work.
In addition to carrying out observational research inside the shops, I observed and
made field notes on the spaces in and around the shops, and in Soho more generally,
covering all of its main streets, side streets, courts and alleyways. I took over 300 photo-
graphs, and made notes on what I had photographed, and why, making connections
between the different photographs, and the observational data I had gathered, and when-
ever possible asking those I interviewed to do so as well. I also took photographs in and
around the shops where I undertook interviews and observational research, often in col-
laboration with interviewees. My role was therefore something of a research ‘flaneur’,
consuming the place and the space, rather than its products or services (although I did the
latter on occasion as well). During the course of the fieldwork, I undertook semi-structured
interviews with 14 people employed in sex shops at the time of the research, guided by
an interview schedule that I continually refined. I firmly believe that the people who took
part in the research were representative of those working in sex shops in Soho; that is to
say, there was no ‘typical’ research participant, but rather a broad range of people from
different backgrounds, at various stages in their life, and with a range of motivations for
working in a sex shop in Soho.
Participants (referred to here using pseudonyms) worked in a range of stores (four of
the men I interviewed worked in shops that they described as ‘gay lifestyle’ stores; two
of the women worked in a couture lingerie store that also sold designer sex toys; one
woman worked in a ‘high street’ store that markets its products primarily to women; one
man and one woman worked in a large store that they described as an ‘adult centre’; two
men worked in unlicensed stores selling primarily DVDs and a few sex toys, and the rest
worked in traditional sex shops selling a mix of sex toys, pornographic magazines and
R18-rated DVDs).8 Four of the people I interviewed were women and the rest were men,
and participants represented a broad range of age groups and work roles, from company
directors to entry level shop floor workers, and included people who described them-
selves as single, co-habiting with partners, as married, divorced or separated, and identi-
fying with various sexual orientations. The youngest person who took part in the research
told me that this was his first full-time job and the oldest, who appeared to be in his early
60s, was semi-retired; the rest of the participants were spread fairly evenly between these
two extremes and, on the basis of the observational research I undertook and informal
conversations I had with participants, the sample seemed to be reasonably representative
in terms of gender, sexuality, marital status, social class, age, ethnicity and length of
service. In terms of the latter, one participant had been working in a sex shop in Soho for
only six weeks, while the longest serving employee had worked for the same employer
for 26 years, with again, an even spread in between.
As noted above, while some of the interviews took place in Soho Square or in local
cafes, the majority were conducted at the sales counter (by the tills) on the shop floor
where the participants worked, during their working hours, or while they were on infor-
mal breaks during quiet periods. This meant that (much like Sanders’ interviews with sex
workers that were also undertaken in situ – see Sanders, 2005) the flow of the conversa-
tion was often interrupted by customers, or by co-workers, and that audibility was some-
times difficult owing to the background music or noise from the pornographic DVDs that
are played in most of the shops. However, it also meant that interviewees were able to
talk candidly and often very animatedly about their work, and their work environments,
giving examples, and recollecting incidents as something in the shop itself triggered
recollections or prompted thoughts that they might not otherwise have had, or showing
me around the store and explaining things.
Because most of the interviews were undertaken with my recording equipment
resting on the sales counter at the front of the shop, and because most of the shops
have at least one, and mostly several, screens on the shop floor playing DVDs that
are on sale, the majority of interviews were carried out while hard-core pornographic
films played on screens next to the counter and at various other points throughout the
store. Initially this made me feel very self-conscious, particularly if I was the only
(other) woman in the shop, but I quickly became accustomed, even immune to it and
this in itself gave me an interesting insight into the work experiences of those employed
Tyler 1485
in the shops. As Shirley, one of the four women who took part in the interviews put
it, ‘after a while nothing phases you, nothing at all, not in this business’ (Shirley,
June 2009).
Everyone I spoke to had interesting stories to tell, and before long and as I got to
know them better, patterns began to emerge in their accounts of working in a sex shop,
and particularly of working in Soho. Several of the interviews, even though they were
carried out in the shops themselves, continued over a couple of hours, and most were at
least an hour long, generating 337 pages of transcript containing rich, detailed and
reflexive accounts of people’s work experiences; combined with 94 (A5) pages of field
notes and over 300 photographs, the data collected has provided a rich body of material
from which to draw in trying to understand what it is like to work in a sex shop in con-
temporary Soho.
As indicated earlier, data collection and analysis were part of a research process that
can best be characterized as improvisational, interactive and iterative. With a young
family and a full-time academic post, my participation in the field was opportunistic. It
was somewhat fortuitous in this respect that most of the time I was able to be in Soho
was during weekdays, when the shops were open but relatively quiet and so people
working in them were able to spend time talking to me, and most seemed only too
pleased to do so. My approach to sampling was also highly improvisational – with a
small number of shops operating in a relatively compact geographical space, I was able
to go into the shops, explain my background and interests, and invite people to talk to
me (assuring those who took part of confidentiality and anonymity), and to combine
two or three interviews with observational work and gathering visual material during
the course of a day’s fieldwork.
The interview data and field notes were subject to in-depth thematic analysis, which I
undertook both during and between visits. Two or three transcripts were read at a time
and the findings that emerged informed the next interviews I conducted (although of
course I was mindful of informant confidentiality). I was also able to present interim
findings to colleagues in seminar and study groups, and to ascertain feedback and contri-
butions from others on my interpretation of the interim findings. Data analysis was also
a somewhat interactive process, therefore, involving interviewees and others (including
academics, licensing officers and policy analysts), a feature of the research process that
enhanced accountability and reflexivity. The transcripts and field notes were therefore
analysed through the course of several readings, initially to discern emergent thematic
codes, and then to substantiate and refine these further until I began to reach thematic
saturation point.
The photographs I took became incorporated into the analysis in three broad ways:
first, I drew on them as data, and subjected them to thematic analysis in a similar way to
the interview transcripts and field notes; second, I showed photographs I had taken to
interviewees, so that the images acted as a source of photo-elicitation, encouraging them
to talk about particular experiences or recollect encounters that they might not otherwise
have articulated; and third, they contributed a kind of aesthetic epistemology to the
research (surrounding myself with the photographs as I analysed the data and wrote
about my findings helped me to retain a ‘feel’ for the setting as I analysed and wrote up
the research).
Through this largely iterative and interactive process, I gradually began to discern
particular themes, and from those, potential empirical, conceptual or theoretical contri-
butions coming out of the research, one of which is a more nuanced understanding of the
ways in which ‘dirty work’ is performed and perceived. As outlined above, the analysis
of the observational, visual and interview data to which we now turn combines Hughes’s
(1951) ‘dirty work’ typology and its subsequent development in the work of Ashforth
and Kreiner (1999), with the anthropological concept of abjection in order to make sense
of what for many, if not most of those who took part, was a simultaneous sense of repul-
sion and attraction to their work and particularly, their place of work.
It’s a dirty job . . . retail sales work in a sex shop as ‘dirty work’
Hughes (1951: 319) defined dirty work as work that carries a physical, social or moral
taint; dirty work ‘may be simply physically disgusting. It may be a symbol of degrada-
tion, something that wounds one’s dignity. Finally, it may be dirty work in that it in some
way goes counter to the more heroic of our moral conceptions’. As Ashforth and Kreiner
(1999) outline in their more recent development of Hughes’s analysis, physical taint
occurs when an occupation is associated with that which is thought to be dirty or disgust-
ing in a material sense, or when it is performed under what are perceived as particularly
‘dirty’ conditions. Social taint occurs when a job involves sustained contact with people
who are stigmatized, or where the worker has a particularly servile relationship to others.
Moral taint occurs when an occupation is regarded as sinful or of dubious virtue, or
where the workers employ methods (being deceptive, intrusive or confrontational, for
instance) thought to be immoral.9 In his original typology, Hughes (1951) emphasizes
that what constitutes ‘dirt’ is very much a social construction, the common denominator
being not the attributes of the jobs themselves or the assumed characters of the people
who perform them, but rather the reactions they provoke. Drawing on Douglas (1966),
Ashforth and Kreiner (1999) also emphasize that the boundaries between the three forms
of taint with which dirty work is associated are relatively blurred, and many occupations
of course carry multiple taints – retail sales work in a sex shop being a case in point.
Although some research on dirty work has acknowledged how the social construction
and perception of worker identity is ‘embedded in quite distinctive class, regional, and
national cultures’ (Ackroyd and Crowdy, 1990: 3), little attention has been paid to the
ways in which dirty work is embedded within the particular locale in which it is per-
formed. For instance, while Tracy and Scott (2006) shift away from the preoccupation
with individual or work group practices that characterizes the majority of research on
dirty work (see Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999), focusing instead on ‘organizational struc-
tures and extra-organizational discourses – such as discourses of masculinity and sexuality –
that may ease or exacerbate the management of dirty work’ (Tracy and Scott, 2006: 8),
their research also stops short of locating the fire-fighters and correctional officers who
took part in their study in the place, space and communities within which they worked,
despite their concluding acknowledgement that ‘taint management does not happen in a
vacuum’ (Tracy and Scott, 2006: 35, emphasis added). Further, following Ashforth and
Kreiner’s (1999) typology of taint management strategies, Tracy and Scott’s (2006: 8)
primary analytical focus is on the ways in which those who perform dirty work develop
Tyler 1487
techniques designed to deflect the negative effects of taint, rather than teasing out the
potential attraction to dirty work (although they do hint at the latter when they refer to the
ways in which fire-fighters equated fun with ‘danger and risk’), a theme developed in a
more sustained way in the research discussed here. In the analysis presented below,
therefore, the aim is both to explore the ways in which the concept of ‘dirty work’ helps
us to make sense of some of the ways in which retail sales work in a sex shop is tainted,
and also to explore how the findings help us to further develop the analysis of dirty work,
by drawing attention to themes that have thus far been overlooked or under-theorized in
its study. As outlined above, these include both the setting of dirty work, and also the
simultaneity of apparently extreme conflicting perceptions of their work, and particularly
of their place of work, which was experienced by those who took part in the research. In
their study of ambivalent feelings in organizational relationships, Pratt and Doucet
(2000) argue that workers often experience opposing perceptions of their work existing
simultaneously, a situation that is not surprising given the economic and cultural contra-
dictions of capitalism, as Costas and Fleming (2009) note in their discussion of organi-
zational dis-identification. In his ethnographic study of distributors for Amway for
instance, Pratt (2000: 456) reported how workers seemed to ‘either love it or hate it’. Yet
our understanding of ambivalence within work organizations remains relatively limited.
While Ashforth and Mael (1998: 95, cited in Pratt and Doucet, 2000: 206) have argued
that the tension between individuation and conformity is a significant cause of organiza-
tional ambivalence, their analysis focuses primarily on worker responses to managerial
attempts to secure employee identification (see also Costas and Fleming, 2009), rather
than developing a broader understanding of how workers make sense of their work and
of the sector and setting in which they are employed. What their analysis does point to,
however, is a relatively unstable dialectic characterized by a simultaneous experience of
attraction and repulsion, one that is arguably both materialized in and mediated by work-
place setting. With this in mind the analysis presented below therefore aims to build on
this insight, teasing out the related themes of simultaneity and setting in the lived experi-
ence of dirty work in this particular sector and locale.
Sex shop work as physically tainted

In contrast to the manual labour performed by building workers in Thiel’s (2007) study
of dirty work and physical capital, retail sex work is primarily dirty in a symbolic rather
than a physical sense (although as with any retail work, aspects of the job such as unpack-
ing and stacking or shelving stock, merchandizing, and cleaning the store involve the
performance of manual labour). Yet, aside from the performance of what might on occa-
sion be relatively physically dirty manual work, there are other important physical ele-
ments to the ‘dirt’ involved. The physically intimate nature of the products on offer
means that the job often involves handling ‘dirt’. Shirley, for instance, described her own
reluctance to touch products that have been used by customers precisely because of this,
an issue rarely encountered in other forms of retail sales work:
You have people trying to return products that have been used in personal areas because they
don’t think they do what it says on the packet and they’re trying to give me something that’s
been inside certain parts of their anatomy and wonder why it’s like ‘Whoa!’, you know?
(Interview with Shirley, June 2009)
Further, while other forms of sexualized commercial exchange between a service pro-
vider and a customer may take place in relative privacy, in quietened or darkened set-
tings physically separated from the general public (such as a strip club, for instance),
encounters such as these in a sex shop take place in the much more open setting of the
shop floor. Many staff reported their difficulty in coping with what they perceived as a
rather abject, boundary-threatening physical transgression. Stewart, for instance,
described how he found it difficult to deal with the idea that customers would mastur-
bate in private viewing booths and then, as he put it, ‘walk out . . . as if everything’s
normal’. For Stewart, echoing the view of many others, this was a physical, symbolic
dilemma rather than a moral one: ‘I mean, I haven’t got anything against it, but I just
think with the set up in here [in a shop], it’s odd really, just a bit dirty’ (Stewart, June
2009, emphasis added).
The physical taint with which retail work in Soho’s sex shops is associated relates not
simply to the physicality of the products on sale, or to the nature of staff-customer inter-
actions, as Shirley and Stewart intimate, but also to the broader social materiality of the
work, and to its spatial context, and particularly to the meanings associated with the
place where it is carried out. As Shirley put it, when she explained to me why she had
chosen not to tell her 80-year-old father where she worked: ‘He lives up in Scotland and
he hasn’t been in this neck of the woods for 30-odd years. He would still remember Soho
as cheap and dirty and he would be worried – not because of what I’m selling; more wor-
ried about me being in Soho’ (Shirley, June 2009).
What these points highlight, therefore, in terms of the application of the concept of
dirty work to the findings outlined here, is that while the work is physically tainted, the
nature of this taint extends beyond that which is ‘simply physically disgusting’ (Hughes,
1951: 319), encompassing a broader social materiality of taint relating to the physical
nature, setting and location of the work involved, one that is intimately bound up with the
social stigma with which the sector and the setting are also associated.
Sex shop work as socially tainted

Those who provide and consume the goods and services on sale in Soho’s sex shops,
particularly because of enduring perceptions of the place as ‘cheap and dirty’, as Shirley
suggests, are also socially tainted. Reflecting on how even long-standing customers
seemed conscious of the social taint attached to frequenting a sex shop, and particularly
one located in Soho, Nathan for instance described how: ‘even regulars who’ve been
coming in the shop for years . . . will never, ever pay on credit card even now . . . It’s
stigma stuff because of what and where we are, a sex shop, and a sex shop in Soho’
(Nathan, May 2009, emphasis added).
In addition to customers’ experiences of a consumption stigma, participants also
described their own experiences of performing stigmatized work, reflecting on the
impact of the social taint with which working in a sex shop is associated on their relation-
ships with others, including casual acquaintances, and friends and family. Michael, for
Tyler 1489
instance, described how a woman came into the shop where he works with a friend and
started chatting to him, but when he asked her if she might like to meet for lunch one day,
he recalls how ‘she wouldn’t do it, and she was really honest. She was like “I’m a bit put
off by where you work. You just have to accept it I suppose, but it was a shame”’ (Michael,
May 2009). Largely as a reflection of the social taint with which commercial sex is asso-
ciated, and in a similar vein to the sex workers described by Sanders (2005) in her study
of sex work, or by Grandy (2008) in her study of exotic dancers,10 many of those who
took part confessed to leading ‘double lives’.11 As Julie explained, ‘I’m proud to work at
this store. The only place I wouldn’t really advertise it so much because I’m a mum of
two is at school because it’s still very taboo. So, there’s some sort of boundary there that
I wouldn’t want to cross’ (Julie, June 2009, emphasis added). While Shirley suggests a
protective paternalism at stake in her decision not to tell her father she now works in
Soho, as she felt he would worry about her safety and security, perceiving Soho to be
‘cheap and dirty’, Julie had decided to conceal the place and nature of her work because
of its assumed transgression of gender roles and expectations, and for those who took
part in the research a sense of working across boundaries, including moral boundaries,
was a common experience.
Sex shop work as morally tainted

The very nature and location of retail sex work in Soho means that it also carries a strong
moral taint, largely because of its association with relatively stigmatized people engag-
ing in what are generally perceived to be immoral, possibly illegal activities, or simply
with the transgression of boundaries, evoked by Julie and others. For the people working
in the sex shops in Soho, most customers are regarded as perfectly ‘normal’ and ‘ordi-
nary’. Customers that are generally perceived to be outside of this ‘norm’, and who are
deemed to be predatory or perverse, and who violate the strong moral code that charac-
terizes the place and sector are a regular and potentially increasing feature, however.
Stephen explained the effects of the moral taint associated with these types of customers
on his experience of the job, and on his perception of self as someone employed within
the industry:
You just get certain types. You get the browsers, you get the people that are wanting to buy
stuff. You get collectors, . . . and then you get the occasional perv, which isn’t pleasant. That’s
really not pleasant . . . Sometimes they touch themselves, or . . . but you’re kind of immune to
it . . . I can put on my very polite face and smile and do whatever because I work on commission.
It’s when you get the perverts, the ones that ask for really nasty stuff . . . mainly kiddie stuff,
and animals [‘What do you do? How do you cope?’] ‘Sorry, out’. Done . . . I just feel a little bit
degraded by stuff like that. (Stephen, July 2009, emphasis added)
In sum, the research indicates that retail sales work in Soho carries physical, social and
moral taints in Hughes’s (1951) terms, largely owing to the long-standing associations of
the sector and the setting with a particular type of work and consumption that trans-
gresses boundaries deemed necessary to the social and moral order; the ‘dirt’ with which
retail sales work in Soho is associated constitutes ‘matter out of place’ (Douglas, 1966),
occupying an abject, ‘boundary threatening’ status to borrow from Kristeva (1982: 4),
ambiguous in its status and ‘in-between’ what are otherwise perceived as distinct social
spheres. What the research findings also suggest, however, is that Soho – the place itself,
and the cultural meanings attached to the place – constitutes both the source of these
multiple taints, as well as an important coping mechanism that workers draw on as they
perform work that, as Stephen describes it, makes him feel ‘just a little bit degraded’.
Place, space and community: Coping with the business of taint

In order to cope with the negating and fragmenting effects of dirty work described above,
Ashforth and Kreiner (1999: 419) argue that dirty workers develop ‘strong occupational
or workgroup cultures’. At the risk of over-simplifying their detailed classification, these
include reframing, recalibrating and refocusing the way in which dirty work is per-
ceived. Reframing dirty work involves transforming the meaning attached to a stigma-
tized occupation, either through imbuing it with positive value – what they call infusing,
or through neutralizing the negative value of the stigma. Most of the people I interviewed
‘normalized’ the work they do, neutralizing the taints with which it is associated. Nathan,
for instance, described how working in a sex shop is ‘no different to normal sales. It’s
just sales . . . you take people’s money and put it in a till. As simple as that’ (Nathan, May
2009). Davina similarly described how ‘basically it’s like working in any other place. It’s
like it’s a normal shop’ (Davina, May 2009). The relative informality of the sector, and
the ethos by which it is underpinned also assists in this normalization strategy. Describing
his decision not to sack a member of staff who was caught masturbating behind the coun-
ter, Nathan reflected, ‘I don’t really care. As long as they’re in every day and they’re
good at their job, we let a lot of things go by really’ (Nathan, May 2009).
Recalibrating dirty work involves adjusting the perceptual and evaluative standards
involved in order to ‘make an undesired and ostensibly large aspect seem smaller and
less significant and a desired but small aspect seem larger and more significant’ (Ashforth
and Kreiner, 1999: 422). Finally, in refocusing, attention is shifted away from the stigma-
tized features of the work, towards elements that are less or non-stigmatized. Hence,
‘whereas reframing actively transforms the stigmatized properties of dirty work and rec-
alibrating magnifies their redeeming qualities, refocusing actively overlooks the stigma-
tized properties’ (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999: 423). Notable examples of the deployment
of these various techniques can be found in studies of nursing and care work emphasiz-
ing the ways in which health care professionals dignify their work through a transforma-
tive emphasis on quality of care, and on the deployment of specialist knowledge and skill
(Bolton, 2005; Chiapetta-Swanson, 2005; Stacey, 2005). Several of the people I inter-
viewed refocused the work they do to emphasize the importance of the advice and guid-
ance they give to customers: ‘people have got a lot invested in it [sex], and a lot of people
aren’t very comfortable coming in, so to get out of them what they want is hard. It’s an
important part of what we do because you’ve got to understand what they want. You’ve
got to be able to read them’ (Toby, May 2009).
In his account of the contested spaces of commercial sex, Hubbard (2004) describes
the spatial interplay between ‘clean up’ strategies and tactical behaviours designed to
challenge and resist such strategies in the regulation and urban governance of the sex
Tyler 1491
industry. Documenting how clean up strategies largely involve a combination of urban

gentrification, heavy policing and the displacement of vice, Hubbard argues that the
introduction of licensing controls for premises associated with commercial sex have
served to regulate the sex industry through the ‘upscaling’ of sex-related businesses
(Hubbard, 2004; Hubbard et al., 2009). In particular, Hubbard and colleagues draw
attention to the ways in which premises licensing, as a ‘field of governance’, provides
a flexible (and also revenue generating) mechanism through which the state is able to
reconcile the demand for ‘adult entertainment’ with urban regeneration. What accounts
such as theirs emphasize is that licensing, as a microcosm of the management and
regulation of the space and place itself, constitutes a site of struggle, in which ‘differ-
ent constituencies fight to have their understanding of what is appropriate . . . legiti-
mated’ (Hubbard et al., 2009: 186). What they also highlight is the significance of
community as the site of this contestation, and this was a recurring theme in the
research I undertook in Soho.
While it would be easy to romanticize the notion of workplace community in Soho, in
order to share some of the pleasures, as well as cope with some of the difficulties of
working in a sex shop, those employed certainly seemed to constitute what Korczynski
(2003), drawing on Hochschild’s (1983) concept of collective emotional labour, describes
as a ‘community of coping’. Korczynski (2003: 55) relates the formation of communities
of coping to the ‘structure of workers’ social situation’ and the findings discussed here
suggest that Soho, the place itself, is an important dimension of this social situation. For
those employed in Soho’s sex shops, the place itself is both an important source of the
various taints with which their work is associated (as Nathan put it, above, ‘it’s because
of what and where we are’) and at the same time, a working community in which ‘eve-
ryone looks after each other’s back’, as Julie put it. Summing up her sense of Soho as a
place to work that is both ‘dangerous’ and ‘a little community’, Julie described how:
Even though Soho has got an image of being . . . Don’t get me wrong – it’s still dangerous in
parts and our shop in particular, because we’re open ‘til 11 o’clock, we do see sort of the after
hours and things that go on there . . . But, believe it or not, it is like a little community and
everybody knows each other and everyone actually looks after each other and it’s all connected.
It is like a little niche sort of like within itself . . . especially the businesses, everybody practically
knows each other and everyone looks after each other’s back, so it is a little community. (Julie,
June 2009)
Hence, the place itself is both a significant source of the multiple taints with which work-
ing in a sex shop in Soho is associated, and shapes the lived experience of those taints in
a number of ways, at the same time as constituting an important resource on which work-
ers are able to draw in order to cope with the degrading or debilitating effects of those
taints. As outlined below, however, the ‘dirt’ with which both the sector and the setting
are associated is also an important source of attraction for those who took part in the
study, many of whom reported being simultaneously repulsed and fascinated by their
work and their place of work, and it is precisely this interrelationship between simultane-
ity and setting that leads us to consider the concept of abjection as a way of understand-
ing the lived experience of the multiple taints outlined above, and in doing so, of further
developing the theoretical study of dirty work.
Dirt and desire: From dirty work to abject labour

As historian Judith Summers (1989: 2) has put it, ‘Soho may not always be pleasant, but
it is never dull’, and for many of those who took part in the research, the very attraction
of the place, the sector and the job itself is precisely its ‘dirt’. Hughes (1951: 314, empha-
sis added) himself hints at the allure of dirty work when he notes, in somewhat passing
fashion, how ‘dirty work may be an intimate part of the very activity which gives an
occupation its charisma’. But it is the concept of abjection, associated most closely with
the work of Julia Kristeva (1982), that captures in a more nuanced way the simultaneous
attraction and repulsion that characterizes the way in which most of the people I spoke to
seem to feel about their work, and particularly their place of work, and the transgression
of boundaries associated with their sector and setting of employment. Julie, for instance,
echoed the sentiments of many others when she described her need to ‘do something dif-
ferent’: ‘I need variety, to be doing something a little bit different . . . and I think I’ve
captured that working here . . . There’s always something going on, so there’s always an
atmosphere, always a buzz’ (Julie, June 2009). Toby went into more detail, reflecting on
his fascination with working somewhere that he experiences as both ‘disgusting’ and
‘really exciting’, evoking a communal ontology and a sense of belonging when he says
‘I feel more at home here than where I live’, that suggests he experiences Soho as a com-
munity of outsiders, one that appears to embody Bataille’s (1970: 1) understanding of
abjection as a process that ‘establishes the foundations of collective existence’:
I like the idea of working somewhere that’s . . . you know, outside of the norm, you get to meet .
. . the sort of people you wouldn’t really want to meet in an ideal world . . . and they’re really
interesting. They’ve got stories to tell. You can’t trust them as far as you’d throw them, but to
chat to they’re interesting . . . That’s another thing about Soho – I always keep a watch in case
you miss something! There’s so much to watch. I love it . . . I feel more at home here than I do
where I live. Because it’s so intimate. It’s quite a small area. Because all the shops know each
other, we all look after each other . . . as a place to work it wakes you up and it gives you stories
to tell. It’s living isn’t it? (Toby, May 2009, emphasis added)
Echoing Toby’s enthusiasm and apparent identification with Soho, Davina (cited above)
describes similarly how much she loves working there, as a place with which she identi-
fies, and which she finds ‘inspirational’:
It’s similar to my own universe of interest [here]. I’m very much into fashion, I’m especially
into [antique] lingerie . . . I’m a collector of it and I’m also into performance art . . . It’s a similar
universe to me. It’s an inspirational place to work in. Yes, it’s seedy and it has an edge but that’s
what makes it exciting. It’s what makes it what it is. (Davina, May 2009)
What each of these participants convey is a sense of positive identification not simply
with their work and particularly their place of work but notably with the taints with
which both are associated, an abject identification shaped by a simultaneous attraction
and repulsion, ‘temptation and condemnation’, that goes beyond the focus on taint
management and coping techniques discussed in the analysis of dirty work to date, or
even simply an ambiguous sense of having ‘mixed feelings about their work groups
Tyler 1493
and organizations’ (Pratt and Doucet, 2000: 204) that research on ambivalence has
tended to focus on. Developing the concept of dirty work by teasing out this theme of
simultaneous attraction and repulsion, we can begin to conceive of retail sales work in
this particular setting as it is described here as a form of abject labour; that is, as a form
of labour in which workers experience a simultaneous compulsion and repulsion – a
fascination – with the various taints with which their work, and in this case, their place
of work, is associated.
In what is perhaps the most sustained theoretical discussion of abjection to date,
namely Kristeva’s (1982: 1) Powers of Horror, abjection (from the Latin ab-jicere mean-
ing ‘the state of being cast out’) is defined as that which ‘disturbs identity, system, order’.
It is that which simultaneously ‘beseeches, worries and fascinates’ (Kristeva, 1982: 1),
threatening lines of demarcation and containment between what is ‘pure’ and what is
‘dangerous’ in Douglas’s (1966) terms. The potentially transformative or transgressive
capacity of abjection lies in what Kristeva describes as ‘the power of horror’ – its ability
to evoke a fascination with what is tainted or perceived as a threat to the established
moral order, an allure that seems to characterize the experiences of those who took part
in the research described here (as Julie, in but one example put it, ‘I need to be doing
something different . . . and I think I’ve captured that working here’). While Kristeva
herself did not engage with the relationship between abjection and labour as it is consid-
ered here, a number of scholars have pointed to the ways in which her ideas might be
drawn upon to shed important light on the nature of this relationship (Cohen et al., 2006;
Dale, 2001; Linstead, 1997), particularly as it is experienced in work that is generally
perceived to threaten social or moral boundaries, as in the case of sex work, for instance
(Brewis and Linstead, 2000), or retail sales work in a sex shop in a sector and setting that
are imbued with multiple taints, because of their associated transgressions and threats to
physical, social and moral boundaries. Crucially, for Kristeva (1982: 68), abjection is
both ‘a universal phenomenon’, an ontological pre-condition as it were, but also one that
‘assumes specific shapes and different codings according to the various symbolic sys-
tems’ in which it takes places. What this suggests is that abjection must be understood
both as constitutive of subjectivity, but also within the specific setting in which it is
experienced; a theme that remains undeveloped in Kristeva’s own writing, and in subse-
quent analyses of work and organization that have drawn on her ideas (Brewis and
Linstead, 2000; Dale, 2001; Linstead, 1997).
Drawing on the concept of abjection, and specifically Kristeva’s writing on ‘the power
of horror’, the experiences described above suggest, in this respect, both an identification
with Soho (the place, the sector and its people) that goes beyond simply reframing, rec-
alibrating or refocusing dirty work (Ashforth and Kreiner, 1999) and which, instead,
seeks to retain the ‘edge’ with which their work, and crucially, their place or work, is
associated, at the same time as being repelled, even repulsed by many aspects of it. Yet
this simultaneity involves a fascination that goes beyond mere ambivalence (Pratt and
Doucet, 2000), and is one that in order to understand its complexity and intensity, must
be placed within the context of the sector and setting within which this particular type of
work is performed. Doing so arguably enables us to begin to understand the ways in
which, in this particular case, the dialectical relationship between attraction and repul-
sion is mediated by and materialized through work place and community. This is why,
for those who took part in the research, Nathan’s summation seems a particularly apt way
of capturing the complexity of feelings, experiences and identifications that might be
described as abject labour in this particular setting: ‘it’s the best job in the world, and an
absolute nightmare, usually in the same day. It’s fascinating, really fascinating . . . but
yeah, there are things about it that I absolutely hate and sometimes these are the same
things that I love about it’ (Nathan, May 2009, emphasis added), and why the concept of
abject labour takes the theoretical analysis of dirty work forward, encouraging us to rec-
ognize not only the pains but also the pleasures, the dirt and the desire, or what Kristeva
calls ‘the power of horror’, associated with its performance. Understanding this interre-
lationship between simultaneity and setting is important because, in terms of refining our
empirical and theoretical understanding of dirty work, it helps us to begin to tease out
interconnections between the meanings attached to particular types of work, and the
specific locations in which they take place. Not only does doing so help us to understand
more about the social materiality of dirty work, it also brings to the fore the importance
of place, both as the source of multiple taints, but also as a socio-cultural resource on
which workers draw in order to cope with the negating effects of taint on their working
lives and identities; place in this instance simultaneously accentuates and alleviates the
effects of tainted work. More than this, however, shifting our conceptual lens away from
dirty work towards a focus on abject labour enables us to recognize the simultaneity of
attraction and repulsion – and the sense of fascination that this engenders –for those who
undertake dirty work in this particular sector and setting.
Concluding thoughts
Hughes (1951) ends his initial discussion of dirty work by inviting sociologists to think
more about its performance, yet writing nearly 50 years later, Ashforth and Kreiner
(1999: 413) note how ‘just as dirty work has been marginalized in society, so too has it
been neglected in the organizational literature’, and with one or two notable exceptions,
it is fair to say that another decade or so on, the relative marginalization of dirty work in
the study of what Hughes calls ‘the drama of work relations’ continues. With this in
mind, this article has outlined various ways in which retail sales work in sex shops
located in London’s Soho is experienced by those who perform it as physically, socially
and morally tainted. In doing so, it has extended the analysis of dirty work by consider-
ing not only the repulsion but also the attraction of dirty work for those who undertake
it, focusing particularly on the role of place and community in dealing with the demands
and taints associated with working in a sex shop, arguing that integrating Hughes’s
(1951) typology with Kristeva’s (1982) concept of abjection helps us to make sense of
the pleasures, as well as the pains of performing dirty work in this particular setting. In
this sense, the analysis presented emphasizes that both the stigma and the attraction of
taint is inexorably bound to and embedded within the place where dirty work is per-
formed, themes that to date have been under-explored in the study of dirty work.
In terms of the limitations of the research on which this article is based, on reflection
I have no doubt that my undertaking the research as a middle-class, white, heterosexual,
married woman had a significant impact upon the research process (on one occasion for
instance, I was mistaken for a licensing inspector). On the one hand, it may well have
Tyler 1495
been the case that had I been younger or older, less middle class in my locution or conven-
tional in my presentation of self, or more ambiguous about my sexuality, or openly gay,
particularly if I had been a man, respondents may well have taken me more into their con-
fidence and the data I gathered may have been richer. On the other hand, however, I rarely
got the feeling that a participant was ‘holding back’, or felt uncomfortable with me or the
research. On the contrary, most of those who took part were very enthusiastic about, and
interested in the research, and seemed happy to be involved, and to maintain an on-going
dialogue with me, and often a sustained contribution to the research as a result. That said,
of course it is important to reflect on the extent to which those who took part may have
been more inhibited (in the use of sexually explicit language or descriptions, for instance,
or in recalling experiences that may reflect badly on them or their employer) in conversa-
tion with a researcher. It is of course difficult in any research to assess how the presence of
a research ‘outsider’ affects the performance of those studied; further research with people
holding ‘insider’ status (for instance, working as an employee) or simply playing a longer-
term role may shed further light, or even contradict, the findings presented here. Also, Soho
is a dynamic place, and the environment in which sex shops there are operating is rapidly
changing; it may well be the case that even a year or so after conducting the fieldwork,
some of its findings may be out of date. Another potential weakness in the analysis is the
tendency to homogenize the data, and to lose sight of important variations within the set-
ting and the sector, and between individual participants. Future research could of course
examine variations in more depth and over a longer period of time.
In their expansion of Hughes’s (1951) original typology, Ashforth and Kreiner (1999)
effectively argue that the various taints associated with dirty work result in a denial of
recognition of dirty workers themselves and of the work they perform. This lack of vali-
dation is particularly true, they note, for dirty workers in low prestige occupations.
Nevertheless, their account emphasizes how dirty workers are able to create and sustain
positive work role identities, largely, they believe, as a result of the resources provided
by strong organizational or occupational cultures to reframe, recalibrate and refocus the
meaning of dirty work, that is ‘to foster enobling ideologies’ (Ashforth and Kreiner,
1999: 428). Yet their focus on work role and identity leaves the question of work place
relatively neglected. In the research discussed here, the place of work was found to be
particularly important both to the taints with which working in a sex shop in Soho is
associated, and also to the various taint management techniques deployed. A focus on the
place itself also shifted our analytical concern away from the physical, social and moral
taints of dirty work, enabling us to tease out the pleasures with which it is associated, and
to reconceptualize retail sales work in this particular setting as it is explored here as a
form of abject labour. This offers a more compelling theoretical lens through which to
understand identity construction and the performance of dirty work in a neglected sector,
and setting, of work, teasing out the ways in which the allure of simultaneous attraction
and repulsion was constitutive of work identities and lived experiences, and highlighting
the relationship between meaning and materiality in this respect. More work needs to be
done, however, to consider the experience of abject labour in other sectors and settings,
and to consider the relationship between abjection and place in a more sustained way.
In sum, this article is based on an ethnographic account of the work experiences of 14
people employed in sex shops in contemporary Soho, a sector and a setting that has been
thus far neglected in empirical studies of work. It has drawn on and extended Hughes’
concept of dirty work and its subsequent development in the work of Ashforth and
Kreiner in two important respects. First, the analysis draws attention to the important
role of place both in shaping the various taints with which ‘dirty work’ is associated, and
in explaining how workers manage these taints individually and collectively, as well as
helping us to appreciate why some workers – in this case retail sales staff employed in
Soho’s sex shops – are attracted to performing dirty work in a sector and a setting con-
sidered ‘dirty’. Hence, the analysis presented emphasizes that dirty work must be under-
stood contextually, that is, as fundamentally embedded within the space, place and locale
within which it is performed, a theme that has thus far remained marginal in the study of
dirty work, and indeed of work more generally. Second, building on this emphasis on the
importance of place and locale, the article extends the way in which dirty work has been
understood thus far by drawing on Kristeva’s (1982) concept of abjection to emphasize
not only the taint but also the attraction of dirty work for those who perform it, a theme
that is also currently under-developed empirically and theoretically in the study of dirty
work. In this sense, the article further extends the inroads that the concept of abjection
has made into the theoretical analysis of work, developing Hughes’s (1951) dirty work
typology by focusing on the importance of place and pleasure in the study of dirty work.
In this respect, the research has drawn attention to the ways in which a simultaneous
attraction and repulsion to the work itself and to their place of work shapes the experi-
ence of tainted work, as well as the ways in which those who perform it cope with the
stigma with which their work and workplace is associated. Hence, in order to capture the
materiality and meanings associated with the work experiences described here, we need
to shift our analytical lens away from ‘dirty work’ towards abject labour embracing, to
paraphrase Kristeva (1982: 5), the temptation of condemnation in our understanding of
work identities and settings that carry multiple taints.
Acknowledgements
Earlier versions of this article were presented at various seminars and international conferences,
and I am especially indebted to the organizers and contributors for their thought-provoking
comments, suggestions and questions. Insights provided by the three anonymous reviewers, and
particularly by Karen Ashcraft in her editorial capacity, are also gratefully acknowledged. I am
especially grateful to those men and women who work in Soho’s sex shops who generously shared
their time, thoughts and experiences with me, and also to representatives from Westminster City
Council for their interest in the project, and for their assistance.
Funding
This research received no specific grant from any funding agency in the public, commercial, or not-
for-profit sectors, but was generously supported by the School of Business and Economics at
Loughborough University.
Notes
1 As Kristeva (1982: 65) herself puts it, drawing on Bataille, abjection ‘is the underpinning of
any organization constituted by exclusions and hierarchies’.
2 While, as Brewis and Linstead (2000: 3) emphasize, ‘the way that sex work is understood
varies according to the particular historical moment and the cultural milieu in which it is
Tyler 1497
located’, the term ‘sex work’ is generally taken to refer to the commercial exchange of sex-
ual interaction or ‘selling sex for money’ (Sanders, 2005: 10) involving work in a range of
markets and settings, including licensed saunas, brothels, working premises, escort services,
working from home and of course, on the street (see Sanders, 2005).
3 There are of course some interesting parallels here with Illich’s (1981) term ‘shadow work’,
a concept he used to describe the servile labour undertaken in commodity-intensive societies
in order to satisfy contrived desires.
4 Stephen Fry (2008: 11) puts it in a similar way in his Foreword to Bernie Katz’s collection
Soho Society – ‘Soho’s public face of drugs, prostitution and seedy Bohemia . . . has always
hidden a private soul of family, neighbourhood, kindness, warmth and connection’.
5 In 1982 and 1986 new licensing laws were brought into effect giving Westminster City
Council, under whose administration Soho falls, the power to fix the number of sex shop
premises that would be allowed to operate in the district. Anyone who wanted a license to
run a sex shop could apply by completing an application form and paying the necessary (non-
returnable) application fee. In 1996, the City of Westminster Act was introduced allowing
Westminster City Council to serve an immediate closure notice on any sex shop operating
without a license. Under the terms of this Act, the police have the power to ‘raid’ unlicensed
premises – a practice that involves entering them without prior warning and seizing their
stock. In practice, unlicensed shops tend to stock goods, mainly pornographic DVDs, with
a total value of no more than the cost of the license. Because the profit margin on DVDs is
particularly high, this means that unlicensed shops can still carry a relatively large amount
of stock and stay within the cost of a license (personal communication with Environmental
Health Case Officer, August 2010).
6 Judith Summers (1989: 157) describes a residents’ meeting held at St Ann’s church in
November 1895 where it was noted that ‘our respectable workers are in many cases being
literally driven out of house and home to make room for the traders in vice who can afford
to pay exorbitant rents’. As Summers puts it, ‘if Soho was not to lose the families that were
its life-blood, something drastic would have to be done . . . it was time for the first “Clean
Up Soho” campaign’. Most recently this has taken the form of a pre-Olympic ‘clean up’ (see
Hamilton, 2009) – a project that has been counter-balanced by a local initiative called ‘I Love
Soho’, sponsored by local businesses concerned to retain the ‘heart’ of Soho through the skil-
ful marketing of its café culture.
7 At the time of writing, there are estimated to be 14 licensed sex shops and fewer than five
unlicensed shops operating in Soho (personal communication with Senior Licensing Officer,
July 2010).
8 Although some stores in Soho clearly identify themselves – for instance, through their prod-
uct range, merchandizing and staffing, as well as through the interior design of their shops
– as ‘gay lifestyle’ stores, and a very small number are stores that market their products
primarily to women (the latter referred to disparagingly by some participants as ‘novelty
shops’) or that are specialist shops (specializing in S/M for instance), most sex shops in Soho
(deliberately) elide a classification of sexuality, catering instead for a wide range of tastes and
practices, and in this sense are arguably microcosmic of the community as a whole.
9 An interesting example of the latter is provided by Godin’s (2000: 1396) study of mental health
nurses, which describes the chemical, administrative and legal techniques used to restrain patients
who are perceived as a nuisance or as dangerous as ‘the dirty work of coercive control’.
10 Grandy also describes how the dancers in her study distanced themselves from the stigma
associated with their work by projecting their own disgust onto clients in order ‘to minimize
the stigma associated with . . . their spoiled identities’ (Grandy, 2008: 176).
11 See also Costas and Fleming’s (2009: 355–356) discussion of ‘the spatially divided self’.
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Melissa Tyler is a Reader in Management at the University of Essex. Her work on gender and femi-
nist theory, sexuality and the body, and emotional and aesthetic forms of labour has been published
in various international journals and edited collections. Melissa is an Associate Editor of Gender,
Work & Organization, and a co-editor (with Philip Hancock) of International Journal of Work,
Organization and Emotion. Her current research is on feminism, embodiment and retro-marketing;
emotional and aesthetic labour in the children’s culture industries; and gender, ageing and sexual-
ity in the workplace. [Email: mjtyler@essex.ac.uk]

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418849 HUMXXX10.

There looms within abjection . . . an elsewhere as tempting as it is condemned. (Kristeva, 1982:

In the shadows: Sex and place in the study of work

Soho . . . the (other) square mile

On a bench in Soho Square: Researching sales-service

Sex shop work as physically tainted

Sex shop work as socially tainted

Sex shop work as morally tainted

Place, space and community: Coping with the business of taint

industry. Documenting how clean up strategies largely involve a combination of urban

Dirt and desire: From dirty work to abject labour

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