Dealing with Dirt: Servicing and Repairing Cars

This paper explores the significance of dirt in the work of technicians whoservice and repair private cars. Rather than being useful in understanding howdirt is dealt with, the historical and anthropological analyses of dirt areshown to be overly concerned with cultural significance and the idea that dirtis no more than ‘matter out of place’. Such accounts suppress the more commonsense approach that dirt is unpleasant to human beings and is to be avoided ifpossible. In work such as garage servicing and repairs, dirt has to beconfronted and dealt with pragmatically, according to the consequences of itspresence, rather than symbolically according to its cultural meaning. Thewriting of Sartre on slime provides a more persuasive explanation both for theambivalence towards ambiguous materials of slime and dirt and for the moralconnotations that attach to them. Everett Hughes's account of a ‘moral divisionof labour’ in which distinctions are made concerning dirty work fits with someof the visible hierarchical distinctions in the garage setting. But it is thevariability of practices, both between garages and between technicians in asimilar setting, that suggests dealing with dirt is a practical matter that isnot prescribed by ritual or cultural significance.