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Muck and magic

Cultural transformations in the world of farm animal veterinary surgeons

Keele University, UK, l.hamilton{at}ippm.keele.ac.uk

While the presence of muck, dirt and animal detritus is a quotidian and generally unremarkable feature of everyday working life for farm vets, it has special relevance to social scientists seeking to understand how they assemble their professional identities. But the cultural significance of muck and mess as a material condition of working life for vets — and other professionals more generally — has been largely under-theorized by researchers and demands further ethnographic analysis. Drawing on Bourdieu's concepts of symbolic and cultural capital, as well as anthropological insights informed by the sociology of science, this article explores the meanings that one group of farm vets ascribe to muck. The ethnographic account that follows seeks to reveal the ways in which the presence of muck, mess and disorder functions as a cultural artefact bestowing power and prestige that both structures and regulates the vets' social and professional relations.

Key Words: dirty work • veterinary surgeons • agriculture • professionalism • power • identities • symbolic practice

Ethnography, Vol. 8, No. 4, 485-501 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/1466138107083564


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