Während der Corona-Pandemie ist für etliche Berufsgruppen eine enorme Diskrepanz zwischen “Systemrelevanz” und gesellschaftlicher Anerkennung beziehungsweise Wertschätzung deutlich geworden. Dies verweist auf die Frage nach den gesellschaftlichen Bewertungskriterien für Arbeit und...

Historical materialism -- Marxism, class and the service industry -- Service labour and value theory -- Retail and the circulation of commodities -- Monopoly capital and the sales effort -- Two stages of production and realisation -- A Marxist analysis of outsourcing -- Cleaning workers and...

The corporate micro-city Potsdamer Platz: cleaners' presence from below -- Characters from the corporate underworld: Alex, Ali, Luisa, and Marcel -- From feces to flowers: the sweat, shame, disgust, pride and fun of working with dirt -- Separate in the same boat: others and allies among cleaners...

Looking beyond the shiny surface of Potsdamer Platz, a designer micro-city within Berlin's city center, this book goes behind-the-scenes with the cleaners who pick up cigarette butts from sidewalks, scrape chewing gum from marble floors, wipe coffee stains from office desks and scrub public...