Nagle formatted with page numbers v.2           The  Job  is  in  the  Field:  Notes  from  Municipal   Anthropology   Robin  Nagle             Abstract   The  Department  of  Sanitation  in  New  York  City  is  a  mayoral  agency  with  a   key  role  in  municipal  government,  but  it  also  has  the  attributes  of  a   powerful  corporation.  With  an  annual  budget  in  excess  of  a  billion  dollars,   it  hires,  monitors,  and  replaces  private  vendors  and  contractors  for  a  host   of  essential  services,  balances  the  often  conflicting  demands  of  several   unions,  and  answers  to  a  watchful  but  perpetually  critical  public.  As  the   Department's  anthropologist-­‐in-­‐residence  since  2006,  my  work  has   included  consulting,  advocacy,  collaboration,  education,  and  organizing   various  projects  focused  on  the  interface  between  Sanitation  and  that   larger  public.  These  efforts  have  helped  me  understand  the  urban   environment  from  the  perspective  of  those  who  keep  it  clean,  while  also   letting  me  become  intimately  acquainted  with  the  complex  dynamics  of  a   workforce  that  is  generally  scorned  even  while  it  is  fundamental  to  the   well-­‐being  of  the  metropolis  it  serves.  This  paper  considers  the  model  of   anthropologist-­‐in-­‐residence  as  I've  structured  it  within  the  DSNY,   discusses  contributions  to  an  anthropology  of  organizations,  and  explores   the  possibility  of  similar  relationships  between  anthropologists  and  other   public  and  private  institutions.         Page  1  of    17     JBA  6(1):  41-­‐57   Spring  2017     ©  The  Author(s)  2017   ISSN  2245-­‐4217   www.cbs.dk/jba     Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      42   Keywords     Bureaucracy,  organizations,  solid  waste  management,  public  institutions,   urban  studies     Of/for/with   Since  2006,  I  have  been  the  anthropologist-­‐in-­‐residence  for  New  York   City’s  Department  of  Sanitation  (DSNY).  The  Department  is  a  municipal   government  agency,  not  a  private  business  or  corporation,  and  no  one   within  it  ever  requested  my  help  as  a  consultant  or  as  an  advisor;  rather,  I   asked  to  learn  about  it  and  then  to  become  part  of  its  structure.  I  created   the  title  “anthropologist-­‐in-­‐residence”  to  anchor  my  place  in  Sanitation   after  I’d  been  doing  ethnographic  research  with  the  Department  for  four   years.  As  far  as  I  know,  it’s  a  unique  position  in  anthropology  and  in   government.     Though  I  invented  the  role,  wrote  a  proposal  to  explain  it,   advocated  for  it,  and  was  delighted  when  it  was  adopted,  I  was  slow  to   understand  its  full  range  of  privileges  and  limitations.  The  status  “in   residence”  has  much  potential  for  anthropology,  to  the  mutual  benefit  of   the  discipline  and  the  host  organization,  but  it  creates  an  essential   responsibility  and  a  perpetual  challenge:  I  am  always  striving  to  balance   an  anthropology  of  the  DSNY  with  an  anthropology  for  it.  Those  aims  are   sometimes  contradictory.  As  I’ll  show  in  this  essay,  the  conflict  is  resolved   by  forging  a  continually  collaborative  anthropology  with  the  organization.       Just  say  no   Until  recently,  garbage  was  considered  a  curious  focus  for  social  science.   The  assumption  even  among  anthropologists  was  that,  if  it  belonged  in   the  discipline  at  all,  it  was  the  purview  of  archaeology  (see  Martin  and   Russell  2000;  Cantwell  and  Wall  2003:  227-­‐241;  Rathje  1984;  Rathje  and   Murphy  1992).  Investigating  it  from  a  socio-­‐cultural  perspective  seemed   to  have  occurred  to  few  scholars.1  When  I  talked  to  professional  solid   waste  managers,  they  were  puzzled  that  an  academic  not  trained  in  civil   or  chemical  engineering,  urban  planning,  materials  science,  or   environmental  economics  would  want  to  learn  about  trash  systems.  They   were  especially  perplexed  that  I  wanted  to  study  the  cultural   underpinnings  and  social  patterns  of  municipal  sanitation  work.     But  I  knew  that  New  York’s  Sanitation  Department  had  rich   ethnographic  potential.  A  quasi-­‐military  urban  subculture,  its   approximately  9,000  members  serve  8.4  million  people  through  a  tightly                                                                                                                   1  Thompson  1979  and  O’Brien  1991  are  early  exceptions  from  anthropology  and   sociology,  respectively.                                                                                                                                                                                          Nagle  /  The  Job  is  in  the  Field       43   structured  operation  across  more  than  6,000  miles  of  streets,  six  and   seven  days  a  week,  twelve  months  a  year.2  It  marshals  an  annual  budget   of  $1.6  billion  and  moves  roughly  13,000  tons  of  discards  every  day  while   simultaneously  attending  to  constant  and  unpredictable  demands  from   the  larger  city.3  Depending  on  whether  the  job  is  done  well  or  badly,   Sanitation  safeguards  or  endangers  public  health,  enhances  or   compromises  basic  quality  of  life,  and  makes  or  destroys  the  careers  of   various  powerbrokers.4  Despite  this,  the  Department  and  its  employees   are  generally  scorned,  even  though  its  mission  is  fundamental  to  the  well-­‐ being  of  the  metropolis  it  serves  and  even  though  the  job  of  sanitation   worker  is  one  of  the  most  hazardous  occupations  in  the  nation  (BLS   2014).  The  agency  is  rigidly  hierarchical,  has  a  stark  division  between   uniformed  and  civilian  job  titles  (there  are  roughly  7,000  of  the  former,   2,000  of  the  latter),  and  thoroughly  distrusts  outsiders—especially   outsiders  who  want  to  write  in  detail  about  this  particular  “tribe.”     I  first  approached  the  DSNY  with  a  research  proposal  in  the  late   1990s.  I  told  Department  officials  that  I  wanted  to  learn  its  dynamics  and   daily  rhythms  from  the  perspective  of  those  who  drive  municipal  garbage   trucks  and  pick  up  New  York’s  household  refuse—that  is,  by  working   with  the  city’s  ground  troops  in  its  perpetual  war  on  grime.  My  goal  was   to  show  the  elemental  realities  of  labor  that  I  believe  is  the  most   important  in  any  urban  arena.   There  are  two  main  reasons  for  its  primary  significance.  If  urban   solid  waste  management  isn’t  effective,  public  health  is  soon   compromised  to  the  point  where  people  start  suffering  diseases  that  have   been  held  in  check  for  decades.  Reformer  and  journalist  Jacob  Riis   observed  in  1902  that  clean  streets  and  regular  garbage  collection  had   “saved  more  lives  in  the  crowded  tenements  than  a  squad  of  doctors.”   Today  the  job  is  done  well  enough  to  let  the  public  forget  that  Riis’s  claim   is  just  as  true  now  as  it  was  a  century  ago.     Economic  well-­‐being  is  equally  dependent  on  competent  garbage   handling  systems:  if  we  can’t  discard  what  we  no  longer  want,  we  risk                                                                                                                   2  Street-­‐mile  calculations  depend  on  many  variables.  Mechanical  brooms  (street   sweeping  vehicles)  clean  a  street  along  one  curb  at  a  time,  but  streets  have  a  curb   on  two  or  more  sides.  When  planning  a  broom  route,  a  single  street-­‐mile  must  be   calculated  as  at  least  two  curb-­‐miles.  Snow  plows  cover  approximately  one  lane   at  a  time;  for  plowing,  one  mile  of  a  four-­‐lane  avenue  is  measured  as  four  lane-­‐ miles.     3  The  budget  figure,  for  fiscal  year  2016,  comes  from  the  Council  of  the  City  of   New  York  (2015).  The  household  waste  collected  by  the  DSNY  is  roughly  a  third   of  New  York  City’s  daily  total.  The  other  two  thirds  are  made  up  of  commercial   waste  and  a  category  called  C&D,  for  construction  and  demolition  debris.     4  I  write  Sanitation  (upper-­‐case  S)  and  not  sanitation  (lower-­‐case  s)  because  I’m   referring  specifically  to  the  Department  of  Sanitation  by  name,  not  to  a   homogenized  or  generic  idea  of  sanitation  as  infrastructure  or  civic  concern.   Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      44   being  overwhelmed  by  our  stuff.5  And  in  a  more  basic  measure,  garbage   that  is  not  wrestled  into  stasis—trash  for  which  there  is  no   management—signals  general  decay,  lack  of  order,  impending  chaos.  It   carries  big,  bad  symbolic  weight.     The  Department,  I  explained  to  Sanitation  bosses,  stands  between   New  Yorkers  and  those  collective  horrors.  If  the  public  more  fully   understood  the  job  and  were  better  acquainted  with  the  people  who  do  it,   I  argued,  some  of  the  persistently  negative  attitudes  toward  the  DSNY   might  shift.  In  short,  I  was  trying  to  convince  Department  brass  that  my   research  of  Sanitation  would  result  in  benefits  for  them.     My  investigation  fit  into  larger  concerns  about  climate  change  and   the  likelihood  that  Homo  sapiens  will  or  will  not  survive  the   Anthropocene.6  If  we  are  to  change  the  way  we  inhabit  a  world  marked  by   an  increasingly  tempestuous  environment  and  by  ever-­‐widening   disparities  between  the  planet’s  wealthiest  and  poorest  citizens,  we  in   richer  nations  must  understand  all  the  consequences  of  the  way  we  live.   This  includes  scrutiny  of  large-­‐scale  industrial,  economic,  and  political   processes,  and  it  must  also  focus  on  the  multiple  costs  borne  by  individual   human  beings.  These  have  been  tallied  in  many  ways  in  many  sources,7   but  it  seemed  to  me  that  one  important  perspective  was  glaringly  absent.   Though  efficient  solid  waste  management  is  an  absolute  necessity  for  any   healthy  municipality,  there  was  scant  research  on  the  workers  and                                                                                                                   5  Someone  who  has  particular  trouble  discarding  or  otherwise  letting  go  of  things   (broadly  defined)  and  instead  holds  onto  them  obsessively  and  excessively  is   called  a  hoarder.  Hoarding  behavior  can  be  stressful,  disruptive,  and  even   physically  harmful.  See  Lidz  2003  for  a  nonfiction  account  and  Doctorow  2009   for  a  novel  about  the  Collyer  brothers,  a  famous  and  tragic  example  of  extreme   hoarding  in  New  York  City.  From  2009  to  2013,  a  reality-­‐television  series  called   “Hoarders”  profiled  the  plight  of  hoarders  across  the  United  States.  See  Frost  and   Steketee  2010  for  a  study  of  hoarding  behavior  as  a  component  of  mental   disability.  In  2013,  “hoarding  disorder”  was  added  to  the  DSM-­‐V  (the  most  recent   edition  of  the  Diagnostic  and  Statistical  Manual  of  Mental  Disorders,  a   comprehensive  compendium  published  by  the  American  Psychiatric   Association).  The  Oxford  Handbook  of  Acquiring  and  Hoarding  was  published  in   2014.   6  The  label  Anthropocene  refers  to  the  profound  impact  of  human  activity  on  the   global  environment  and  asserts  that  such  activity  is  now  a  permanent  part  of   Earth’s  geological  record.  Stratigraphers,  geologists,  and  environmentalists,   among  others,  are  still  debating  whether  or  not  it  should  be  the  official   designation  for  the  contemporary  era.  For  an  overview,  see  Monastersky  2015.   For  a  concise  argument  in  favor  of  the  term,  see  Stager  2011:  4-­‐12.  See  Hann   2016  for  a  discussion  of  anthropological  engagement  with  the  idea.   7  To  name  only  a  few  examples,  see  Bales  2004  on  international  human  rights   violations  and  economic  injustice;  Kolbert  2014  on  the  growing  possibility  that   environmental  devastation  will  result  in  human  extinction;  McKibben  2013  on   the  importance,  and  personal  toll,  of  environmental  activism;  Rivoli  2006  on  the   global  exploitations  of  labor  and  ecology  that  stand  behind  a  commodity  as   humble  as  a  t-­‐shirt;  Rogers  2010  on  the  tie  between  capitalism,  greenwashing,   and  anti-­‐environmental  politics.                                                                                                                                                                                          Nagle  /  The  Job  is  in  the  Field       45   managers  who  create  and  maintain  such  systems  (exceptions  include   Corteel  and  Le  Lay  2011,  Perry  1998  and  Reno  2009,  2016).8  I  wanted  to   address  that  gap  by  learning  from  the  people  charged  with  keeping  North   America’s  largest  city  clean—or,  as  one  source  phrased  it,  keeping  it  alive   (Ukeles  2002).     Because  my  goals  were  straightforward  and  because  I  wanted  to   tell  a  positive  story,  I  assumed  my  proposal  would  be  accepted  with   enthusiasm.  Research,  as  I  imagined  it,  would  take  several  months  in   locations  across  the  city,  and  of  course  I’d  be  welcomed  wherever  I  went.   It  didn’t  occur  to  me  that  there  would  be  no  interest  in  my  idea  and  no   need  for  my  project.  I  didn’t  realize  that  I  was  the  umpteenth  person  with   an  of/for  Sanitation  proposal;  my  anthropology  bona  fides  did  nothing  to   help  me  stand  out  from  a  crowd  of  similarly  enthusiastic,  similarly   clueless  journalists,  students,  and  documentary  film  makers.   In  hindsight,  I  wonder  at  my  naïveté.  I  was  not  new  to   ethnographic  research,9  but  my  attitude  toward  Sanitation  was  that  of  an   inexperienced  first-­‐timer.  It  was  a  classic  dilemma  of  fieldwork  access:   without  an  insider  advocate  to  champion  my  cause,  or  even  just  a   Sanitation  acquaintance  who  could  vouch  for  me,  no  one  within  the  DSNY   had  any  reason  to  welcome  me.10  When  the  Department  still  did  not   embrace  me  or  my  project  after  many  months  of  communication,  I  was   confused  and  discouraged.  I  didn’t  yet  understand  the  culture  of   bureaucracy.       Models  and  flaws     Max  Weber  charted  the  territory  a  century  ago.  He  wasn’t  the  first  (Karl   Marx  and  John  Stuart  Mill  were  among  those  who  preceded  him),  and  of   course  much  has  been  done  since,  but  his  insights  still  hold.11  In  its  truest   form,  Weber  argued,  a  bureaucracy  is  organized  around  a  “fixed  and   official  jurisdictional  area”  with  responsibilities  distributed  across  a   transparent  hierarchy  that  abides  by  uniformly  applied  rules.  It  keeps   meticulous  records;  jobs  and  promotions  are  given  according  to  clearly                                                                                                                   8  Solid  waste  refers  to  various  forms  of  garbage  or  trash  and  is  distinct  from   human  waste,  which  is  called  sewage.  Reid  1991  is  an  able  history  of  Parisian   sewer  workers;  more  recently,  sewer  workers  in  Montpellier  where  the  subject   of  an  ethnography  by  Jeanjean  2006.   9  Nagle  1997.     10  On  the  importance  of  an  insider  advocate,  and  its  potential  pitfalls  when  trying   to  gain  access  to  a  field  site,  see  Fetterman  1998:  33-­‐34.  Fine  2013  discusses  the   problem  of  trust  in  the  context  of  a  hierarchical  work  place;  his  experiences  in  a   restaurant  kitchen  were  very  similar  to  mine  once  I  was  finally  allowed  to  start   fieldwork.     11  There  is  a  rich  literature  of  bureaucracy  studies,  but  a  review  is  beyond  the   scope  of  this  paper.   Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      46   delineated  metrics  of  appropriate  skill  (rather  than  according  to  who   knows  or  owes  whom,  or  according  to  sacerdotal  or  royal  decree).   Management  requires  training  in  specialized  functions,  and  officials   charged  with  running  the  bureaucracy  owe  it  their  “full  working   capacity”—that  is,  theirs  is  not  a  part-­‐time  job  or  mere  honorific  title   (Weber  1958  [1946]:  196-­‐198).   New  York  City’s  Department  of  Sanitation  fits  this  model   perfectly—except  when  it  doesn’t.  The  Department’s  jurisdictional  area   seems  clear:  it  is  in  charge  of  garbage  collection,  street  cleaning,  and  snow   removal.  Those  responsibilities  are  a  subset  of  the  city’s  obligation  to   safeguard  public  health  by  protecting  its  residents  from  the  many  hazards   that  trash  would  unleash  if  left  untended.  But  the  problem  of  garbage  in   New  York  is  delegated  according  to  its  source  and  context.  The  public  at   large  doesn’t  generally  understand  that  garbage,  as  a  category  of  material   and  as  a  management  challenge,  is  handled  by  different  entities   depending  on  its  genesis  and  where  it  accumulates.  The  DSNY  is   concerned  with  household  waste,  which  accounts  for  only  a  third  of  the   city’s  total.  The  other  two-­‐thirds  are  made  up  of  commercial  waste   (generated  by  restaurants,  stores,  businesses,  etc.)  and  what’s  known  as   C&D,  or  construction  and  demolition  debris.  More  than  200  private   carting  companies  pick  up  the  city’s  C&D  and  commercial  waste.  And   while  a  single  public  agency  manages  municipal  household  waste,  it’s  not   responsible  for  all  public  trash.  When  left  behind  in  New  York  City’s   parks,  garbage  is  the  burden  of  the  Department  of  Parks  and  Recreation.   In  the  subway  system,  it’s  cleaned  up  by  the  Metropolitan  Transit   Authority.  Highway  litter  belongs  to  the  Department  of  Transportation.     But  the  very  matter  at  the  heart  of  Sanitation’s  purpose—refuse— presents  deeper  problems.  Garbage  does  not  respect  jurisdictional   boundaries,  nor  does  it  submit  to  mechanisms  of  bureaucratic  control.  It   is  in  such  perpetual  motion  that  waste  managers  use  the  language  of   water:  waste  streams  flow  from  specific  waste  sheds.  Like  water,  waste   spreads  to  fill  the  space  allowed  it,  and  it  regularly  breaches  its   containments.  Sometimes  Sanitation’s  basic  mission  feels  like  plugging   holes  in  a  dyke  that  has  so  many  leaks  it’s  about  to  burst.  The  Department   has  no  power  to  stem  the  deluge—the  source  originates  far  upstream   from  any  single  municipal  system—but  the  public  often  demands  that  the   DSNY  do  more  to  reduce  the  amount  of  trash  that  New  Yorkers  create.   That’s  rather  like  asking  the  neighborhood  mortician  to  lower  his   community’s  mortality  rate.  Imagine  if  any  public  agency  were  charged   with  legislating  and  monitoring  the  minute  details  of  our  daily   consumption  habits  and  concomitant  disposal  behaviors.  It  would  be  the   ultimate  imposition  of  government  bureaucracy  on  private  life.  Indeed,   when  curbside  recycling  was  reintroduced  to  New  York  in  1989  (the  first   effort  was  in  the  1890s),  the  press  reported  city-­‐wide  grumbling  along  the   lines  of  “How  dare  the  government  tell  me  what  to  do  with  my  trash!”                                                                                                                                                                                          Nagle  /  The  Job  is  in  the  Field       47   Weber  could  not  have  anticipated  the  troublesome  nature  of  the  material   that  forms  Sanitation’s  jurisdictional  area,  nor  could  he  have  predicted   the  public’s  hostility  toward  that  material  and  toward  the  Department   itself.     Another  of  Weber’s  requirements  concerns  record-­‐keeping.   Sanitation’s  is  meticulous,  but  it’s  also  situational  and  short-­‐lived.  Details   about  who  worked  where,  for  how  long,  with  what  result,  in  which  piece   of  equipment  (itself  given  a  paper  trail  that  tracks  consumption  of  petrol,   motor  oil,  hoist  fluid)  are  noted  with  extreme  care,  as  are  facts  about  the   weight  and  dumping  location  of  each  truckload  of  garbage.  But  the   ledgers  that  hold  these  data  are  saved  only  a  few  years.  State  and  city   laws  about  record-­‐keeping  schedules  aren’t  flouted  so  much  as  they   aren’t  taught;  in  part  because  the  DSNY  is  very  good  at  getting  rid  of   things,  and  because  there  is  no  training  within  the  agency  about  what  to   do  with  documents  over  time,  files  and  paperwork  that  could  or  should  be   preserved  are  often  lost.  This  is  not  a  trivial  problem.  The  history   contained  within  archival  material  tells  intimate  details  that  cannot  be   conveyed  by  any  other  means.  Grand  architectural  monuments  are  meant   to  stand  against  time,  but  the  stories  that  inspired  their  creation  are  often   forgotten.  Archives,  in  contrast,  can  help  us  understand  a  narrative  arc  of   history  that  anchors  us  to  the  past  and  that  one  day  will  reveal  us  to  our   descendants.  When  a  wealth  of  Department  information  comes  into  being   and  then  disappears,  along  with  it  goes  the  chance  for  a  more  thorough,   nuanced,  and  informative  history  of  the  agency,  of  the  city  it  serves,  and  of   larger  forces  at  play  across  a  range  of  economic,  political,  and   infrastructural  arrangements.     Here’s  one  more  way  in  which  the  Department  both  follows  and   departs  from  the  Weberian  model.  Promotion  opportunities  are   determined  with  carefully  crafted  measures  of  competence,  just  as  Weber   says  they  should  be,  but  those  measures  are  contentious.  Ethnic  and   gender  disparities  in  various  job  titles  are  corrected  by  lawsuits,  by  court   orders,  and  by  decisions  at  the  upper  echelons  of  Department  leadership.   When  people  are  promoted,  their  new  titles  require  them  to  master  new   forms  of  expertise  and  competence,  but  training  and  support  are   sometimes  insufficient.  The  transition  from  sanitation  worker  to   supervisor  is  especially  stressful.  It’s  the  first  step  up  the  ladder  for   uniformed  employees,  and  is  the  moment  when  workers  are  yanked  into   the  managerial  class.  If  a  person  can’t  make  it  as  a  supervisor,  all  future   promotional  opportunities  in  the  uniformed  ranks  are  closed.     Labor  issues  in  general  provide  challenges.  Because  the   Department  stands  as  management  in  relation  to  unionized  sanitation   workers,  officers,  chiefs,  and  civilian  personnel,  it  must  always  balance  its   policies  with  the  varied  and  sometimes  contradictory  demands  of  its  well-­‐ organized  labor  force.  The  work  has  been  structured  as  an  on-­‐going   military  campaign  since  1895,  but  unlike  a  conventional  army,  most  ranks   Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      48   have  shop  stewards  and  business  agents  representing  their  interests.  The   influence  of  the  sanitation  workers’  union  in  particular,  6,000  or  so   members  of  Teamsters  Local  831,  far  exceeds  its  modest  size.     In  short,  Weber’s  ideal  can’t  account  for  changes  in  political  whim,   histories  of  policy  accumulation,  or  forces  external  to  the  Department’s   immediate  mission  but  regularly  complicating  its  day-­‐to-­‐day  routine.   More  importantly,  from  my  perspective,  Weber  neglects  the  influence  of   human  volition.  Organizational  success  depends  on  managers  having  a   combination  of  “incentives,  culture,  and  authority”  (Wilson  1991:  365).   These  three  essentials  are  not  always  available  in  Sanitation,  but  their   absence  can  be  overcome.  Within  any  institutional  setting  are  individuals   whose  choices  can  invigorate  or  discourage  colleagues,  inspire  or  demean   subordinates,  support  or  undermine  superiors,  facilitate  or  obstruct   work.  Specific  people  refused  to  answer  when  I  first  knocked  on   Sanitation’s  door,  and  then  some  of  those  same  people,  reacting  to  slightly   altered  circumstances,  let  me  in.  Observing  their  access  to  and  exercise  of   a  casual  but  all-­‐controlling  power  was  enlightening.       An  awkward  fit   Any  corporate  or  municipal  or  academic  organization  of  any  appreciable   age  and  size  follows  a  cardinal  rule  of  communication:  when  an  unusual   request  crosses  their  desks,  bureaucrats  will,  with  few  exceptions,  just   say  no.  If  the  idea  is  outside  the  parameters  of  business-­‐as-­‐usual,   resembles  no  other  model  of  successful  work,  comes  from  an  unknown   source  who  lacks  internal  advocates,  and  guarantees  no  positive  outcome   (that  is,  has  no  relevant  deliverables),  there  is  no  motive  for  anyone   within  the  organization  to  approve  it.  On  the  contrary:  because  both  the   petitioner  and  her  proposal  represent  several  different  but  simultaneous   forms  of  risk,  there  is  clear  motive  to  turn  her  down—or,  even  more   cautiously,  to  deny  her  a  firm  yay  or  nay.     A  change  of  leadership  can  significantly  alter  an  organization’s   internal  culture.  My  request  to  do  research  with  the  DSNY  languished  in   administrative  purgatory  for  a  long  time.  After  a  mayoral  election,   however,  the  old  guard  left,  and  among  the  new  players  were  people  who   knew  people  I  knew—in  other  words,  I  suddenly  had  insider  advocates.   More  than  two  years  after  I’d  first  reached  out  to  the  Department,  I  was   granted  my  first  face-­‐to-­‐face  meeting  with  a  Sanitation  official  who  had   the  authority  to  approve  my  plan.  By  then  I  was  wise  to  the  ways  of   municipal  decision-­‐making:  the  official  didn’t  give  me  a  green  light,  but   because  he  didn’t  turn  me  down,  I  considered  the  conversation  a  success.     Old  bureaucracies  can  embrace  new  ideas,  but  it  helps  if   institutional  uncertainties  are  alleviated,  if  the  potential  utility  of  the   innovation  is  made  clear,  and  if  the  newcomer  (who  happens  to  be  the   one  with  the  new  idea)  can  prove  herself  trustworthy.                                                                                                                                                                                            Nagle  /  The  Job  is  in  the  Field       49   I  spent  the  summer  and  early  fall  of  2002  in  the  Sanitation   official’s  office  reading  through  a  collection  of  archival  material.  By   October  I’d  shown  enough  credibility  to  be  allowed  a  single  half-­‐hour  visit   to  a  Sanitation  garage  at  the  end  of  a  day  shift,  where  I  was  permitted  to   interview  one  worker  while  under  the  watchful  eye  of  the  garage   superintendent.  It  was  the  first  of  what  became  a  regular  series  of  visits,   which  grew  into  less  formal,  more  social  connections  with  Sanitation   workers,  officers,  and  civilian  employees,  which  opened  the  possibility  for   access  to  other  corners  of  the  Department.     In  a  really  big  organization,  a  researcher  can  only  go  so  far  as  a   participant  observer.  After  two  years  of  fieldwork,  I  had  established  a   good  rapport  with  DSNY  personnel  around  the  city,  but  by  then  I  realized   that  I  needed  to  go  deeper.  I  took  the  required  civil  service  exams,  cleared   various  medical  hurdles,  learned  to  drive  a  garbage  truck,  passed  the  road   test  for  my  commercial  driver’s  license,  and  was  hired  as  a  uniformed   New  York  City  sanitation  worker.  Some  friends  inside  the  Department   were  delighted  by  my  choice  and  encouraged  me  throughout  the  many   steps  of  the  hiring  process,  but  not  everyone  was  pleased.  As  one  chief   said  to  me,  “We  take  this  job  so  our  children  don’t  have  to  take  jobs  like   this.”  No  matter  how  many  times  I  tried  to  explain  my  motives,  it  made  no   sense  to  him  that  a  college  professor  wanted  to  be  a  sanitation  worker.  He   couldn’t  see  that  there  was  no  other  way  for  me  to  learn  what  I  needed  to   know.     And  it  was  quite  the  education.  For  the  few  months  I  was  in  title,  I   drove  collection  trucks,  operated  mechanical  brooms,  and  plowed  snow;   through  that  process,  I  crossed  the  line  from  both  of  and  for,  and   established  a  genuine  with.  The  experience  gave  me  insights  that  I  never   would  have  had  otherwise,  and  it  distinguished  me  from  the  many  other   would-­‐be  chroniclers  of  Sanitation  life.  They  came  and  went.  I  came,   stayed,  and  joined  the  force.       Bureaucracies  must  assign  everyone  within  them  a  place  and  a   definition.  When  I  took  the  job  of  sanitation  worker  and  then  resigned,  I   generated  a  fresh  round  of  confusion.  If  I  were  just  a  researcher,  why  did  I   take  the  job  in  the  first  place?  If  I  were  really  a  sanitation  worker,  why  did   I  leave  it  after  only  a  short  time?  Where  did  I  fit  within  the  DSNY,  anyway,   and  what  was  my  project  really  about?  The  bureaucratic  categories  of  city   government  had  no  pre-­‐existing  slot  for  a  roaming  scholar.  Lack  of  clarity   about  the  anthropologist’s  context  and  classification  is  anathema  to   healthy  ethnographic  research,  especially  in  an  organization  as  complex   and  tightly  knit  as  Sanitation.  I  needed  a  fixed  position  within  its   institutional  framework.  I  also  needed  a  title  that  I  wouldn’t  have  to  quit,   that  would  let  me  be  an  anthropologist,  and  that  would  serve  the   Department.  The  model  for  a  solution  was  close  at  hand.       Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      50   In  residence   When  the  artist  Mierle  Laderman  Ukeles  first  became  a  mother,  she   chafed  at  the  messy,  isolated  tedium  of  childrearing.  It  was,  she  realized,   basic  maintenance  work:  repetitive,  mundane,  invisible,  and  essential  to   the  well-­‐being  of  what  was  maintained—in  this  case,  her  family.  But  what   if  that  labor  were  understood  differently?  Did  it  have  to  be  separate  from   her  identity  as  an  artist?  Why  not  designate  maintenance  work  as  a  form   of  art?  She  introduced  her  idea  in  her  now-­‐famous  “Maintenance   Manifesto,”  a  fiery,  articulate  demand  that  the  world  recognize  the  false   separation  between,  on  the  one  hand,  process,  development,  and   creativity,  and,  on  the  other  hand,  tending,  caring,  nurturing,  shepherding:   the  basic  tasks  of  maintaining.12  There  can  be  no  revolution—or  even   survival—without  both.     Her  first  project  in  the  new  genre  was  with  maintenance  workers   at  a  branch  of  the  Whitney  Museum  in  downtown  Manhattan.  A  glowing   review  in  the  Village  Voice  suggested  that  perhaps  this  innovative  art   form  meant  the  Department  of  Sanitation  could  qualify  for  funding  from   the  National  Endowment  for  the  Arts  (Bourdon  1976).  According  to   Ukeles,  a  few  days  later  she  received  a  phone  call  from  Sanitation’s   commissioner,  who  asked  her,  “How’d  you  like  to  make  art  with  10,000   workers?”  “I’ll  be  right  down,”  Ukeles  replied.  Her  first  piece  with  the   DSNY  was  a  performance  work  called  “Touch  Sanitation.”  For  eighteen   months  between  1979  and  1980,  she  visited  every  Department  facility  in   the  city,  shook  hands  with  every  sanitation  worker  on  the  force,  and  said   to  each  one,  “Thank  you  for  keeping  New  York  City  alive.”  Shortly   thereafter  she  was  named  the  Department’s  artist-­‐in-­‐residence,  an   unsalaried  position  she  has  held  ever  since.13     By  the  time  I  found  myself  without  location  or  definition  within   the  DSNY,  I  had  known  Ukeles  for  several  years.  I  asked  if  she  thought  the   Department  had  room  for  both  an  artist  and  an  anthropologist.  When  she   embraced  the  idea,  I  suggested  it  to  Sanitation’s  leadership.  After   Department  lawyers  scrutinized  my  proposal  to  make  sure  the   arrangement  would  not  impose  any  obligations  upon  nor  create  risks  for   Sanitation  or  for  the  city,  I  was  named  the  DSNY’s  anthropologist-­‐in-­‐ residence  (like  the  artist,  also  unsalaried).  The  title  gave  me  a  place   within  Sanitation’s  institutional  scaffolding—it  was  understood  that  I   would  be  part  of  the  Office  of  Public  Affairs—and  gave  me  a  classification,                                                                                                                   12  For  the  full  text  of  “Maintenance  Manifesto,”  see   http://sites.moca.org/wack/2007/07/25/mierle-­‐ukeles-­‐manifesto-­‐for-­‐ maintenance-­‐art-­‐1969/   13  Ukeles’  example  has  inspired  at  least  one  other  waste  management   organization  to  host  artists.  Recology,  the  company  responsible  for  collecting  San   Francisco’s  municipal  and  commercial  waste,  has  had  an  artist-­‐in-­‐residence   program  since  1990.  http://www.sfrecycling.com/index.php/about-­‐air                                                                                                                                                                                          Nagle  /  The  Job  is  in  the  Field       51   even  if  few  people  inside  the  organization  knew  anything  about   anthropology.  The  title  also  gave  the  Department  bragging  rights;  as  the   Commissioner  for  Public  Affairs  pointed  out  to  various  media  sources,   Sanitation  is  the  only  government  agency  in  New  York  with  its  own  in-­‐ house  social  scientist  (see,  for  example,  McGrath  2006  and  Haberman   2008).     In  common  usage,  to  reside  somewhere  means  to  occupy,  live   within,  or  inhabit  a  place.  To  be  “in  residence”  can  have  the  same   connotation,  but  it’s  also  used  to  mean  “formally  affiliated  with.”   Residency  programs  are  often  found  in  arts  organizations  (Res  Artis  in   the  Netherlands  has  an  international  list)  and  in  academic  settings  (there   are  hundreds  of  examples  around  the  world).  They  can  take  many  forms,   but  broadly  speaking,  an  individual  “in  residence”  is  hosted  by  an   organization  that  provides  time  and  space  for  her  to  pursue  a  creative   endeavor;  in  exchange,  she  may  offer  lectures,  workshops,  classes,  or  an   exhibition,  or  simply  acknowledge  the  organization’s  support  when  work   results  from  the  residency.  Whatever  its  particulars,  the  arrangement  is   meant  to  serve  both  parties.   Concern  about  of  versus  for  had  been  put  aside  long  before  I   invented  my  new  title,  but  an  anthropologically  informed  and   institutionally  formalized  relationship  between  myself  and  Sanitation   makes  the  with  explicit  and  clarifies  the  mutual  benefit  of  our  association.   It  lets  me  create  a  permanent  affiliation  with  my  research  site  and  stay   involved  in  the  life  of  the  Department  for  the  long  term.  It  also  amplifies   my  voice.  Part  of  my  responsibility  to  Sanitation  is  to  communicate  on  its   behalf  whenever  and  however  possible.  Journal  articles  and  scholarly   publications  can  reach  my  fellow  academics,  but  that  by  itself  is  too   narrow.  My  association  with  the  DSNY  arouses  curiosity  in  places  far  from   the  academy.  I  give  public  lectures  in  many  venues,  speak  regularly  to   various  media,  and  in  2013  did  a  TED  talk.  This  has  a  triple  impact.  I  am   representing  sanitation  work  in  general  and  New  York  in  particular;  I  am   also  putting  anthropology  into  the  world  through  an  unusual  context,  and   that  lets  me  proselytize,  directly  and  indirectly,  for  the  discipline.   For  its  part,  the  DSNY  is  pleased  that  my  work  consistently   addresses  themes  fundamental  to  its  overall  message,  and  newcomers  to   the  Department  find  my  insights  helpful  in  understanding  the  culture  of   the  world  they’ve  just  joined.  There  have  even  been  signs  that  my  basic   message  about  Sanitation’s  importance  in  the  life  of  the  city  is  beginning   to  spread  (Bobrow  2016;  Hennessy  2014;  Mann  2014;  Newman  2014).         Partnership   After  more  than  a  decade  of  anthropological  trial  and  error  with   Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      52   Sanitation,  I  see  possibilities  for  fruitful  new  partnerships  between   academics  and  various  bureaucratic  organizations.  As  anthropologists,  we   build  our  careers  around  research  that  we  hope  creates  insightful   understandings  of  the  mess  and  beauty  of  human  culture  as  a   foundational  “actant”  (pace  Latour)  across  the  globe.  What  if  some  of  that   effort  supported  the  just  and  sustainable  efficacy  of  public  authorities?     Bureaucracies  in  any  context  are  often  concentrated  nodes  of   mundane  power.  It  can  seem  at  times  as  if  bureaucrats  exist  simply  to   invent  pointless  new  forms  of  control  (du  Gay  2000).  When  a  disgruntled   public  clamors  for  less  government,  the  demand  is  partly  a  protest  against   intrusive,  confusing  impositions  of  bureaucracy  made  manifest  in  many   forms  (using  all  meanings  of  that  word).  Errors  on  the  part  of  government   functionaries  can  seem  like  intentional  gestures  of  disrespect,  but  more   often  than  not  they  are  “simple  but  ineluctable  failures  to  communicate”   (Kafka  2012:12).  That’s  where  anthropologists  come  in.  If  our  work  is   clearly  relevant  to  causes  bigger  than  our  disciplinary  affiliations  and   academic  careers,  many  bureaucratic  institutions  might  be  eager  for  us  to   help  them  articulate  and  achieve  goals,  measure  impact,  even  help  build  a   brighter  organizational  future.  Anthropology  could  have  a  vital  and   creative  role  in  a  variety  of  settings  where  it  currently  has  no  presence.   The  key  to  such  an  arrangement  is  to  be  aware  of  its  potential  limitations   while  making  good  use  of  its  privileges.     A  primary  constraint  comes  from  the  relationship  itself.  My  bond   with  Sanitation  is  like  a  form  of  kinship:  loyalty  prevents  me  from  writing   about  some  elements  of  the  job,  though  no  one  in  the  Department  ever   articulated  such  a  rule.  Because  I  am  their  in-­‐house  social  scientist,   whenever  I  speak  or  write  about  Sanitation,  I’m  also  speaking  and  writing   on  the  agency’s  behalf.  I  don’t  dissemble  when  telling  Sanitation  stories,   but  I  don’t  necessarily  share  my  opinion  when  asked  about  politically   sensitive  DSNY  concerns.  In  other  words,  my  scholarly  work  is  not   entirely  my  own.  If  a  more  orthodox  anthropologist  would  argue  that   therefore  my  research  is  incomplete,  I’d  counter  that  all  social  science  is   incomplete,  especially  if  we  are  guided  by  the  precept  to  do  no  harm.     Then  there’s  the  way  in  which  a  long-­‐term  connection  to  a  single   institutional  field  site  can  alter  the  researcher’s  perspective.  I  no  longer   speak  only  as  an  anthropologist.  That’s  no  hardship:  like  many  of  my   colleagues,  I  aim  to  be  an  anthropologist  in  service  of  the  larger  world.   Without  a  specific  focus,  however,  that  goal  is  too  vague  to  be  meaningful,   so  I  concentrate  my  efforts  on  the  slice  of  the  world  that  is  the  DSNY.  This   perspective  allows  me  a  meta-­‐level  view  of  the  entire  organization  and   the  city  it  serves,  while  at  the  same  time  it  helps  me  understand  fine-­‐ grained  details  of  particular  events,  places,  and  controversies.  The  duality   is  enhanced  by  deep  knowledge  of  the  institution’s  history  and  by  noting   how  changes  in  any  part  of  the  organization  affect  the  dynamic  of  work  in   other  areas.  The  dual  perspective  also  implies  a  dual  obligation.  One  of  my                                                                                                                                                                                          Nagle  /  The  Job  is  in  the  Field       53   tasks  is  to  translate  Sanitation  to  the  larger  world,  and  another  is  to   translate  Sanitation  back  to  itself.     The  people  of  the  DSNY  continually  teach  me  new  insights,   perspectives,  and  logistical  details  about  themselves,  their  work,  and  the   city  they  serve,  and  I  share  those  lessons  with  many  audiences.14  Readers   and  listeners  are  often  astonished  to  realize  how  little  they  know  about,   and  how  completely  they  take  for  granted,  an  infrastructure  on  which   their  lives  depend.  They  are  equally  startled  to  see  that  the  effectiveness   of  the  system  requires  the  skill  of  an  eclectic  sub-­‐culture  of  talented  men   and  women  whom  they  had  never  before  considered.  In  some  cases,  it’s  a   revelation  that  inspires  a  new  attitude  toward  the  Department,  and  helps   members  of  the  public  understand  that  there  are  many  ways  to   collaborate  in  the  success  of  Sanitation’s  mission.15   Another  element  of  this  is  to  be  vigilant  for,  and  offer  corrections   of,  media  reports  about  the  DSNY  that  are  misleading  or  just  plain  wrong.   These  are  especially  common  when  the  Department  is  accused  of  failing   to  fulfill  some  part  of  its  mandate.16  The  speed  of  journalistic  output  in   the  age  of  the  internet  has  allowed  more  news  through  more  venues  than   was  possible  even  half  a  decade  ago,  but  as  a  result,  misinformation  is   created  faster  and  travels  farther  than  ever  before.  Sanitation  is  not  given   much  affection  even  when  there  is  no  negative  press,  but  when  a   derogatory  story  gets  widespread  attention,  the  public  responds  with   venom—and  they  don’t  just  write  angry  letters  to  the  editor  or  spew   bilious  comments  on  a  web  page.  Sanitation  workers  across  the  city  have   been  verbally  insulted,  spat  upon,  threatened  with  guns,  had  their  cars   vandalized.  Bad  press,  and  especially  sloppy  bad  press,  can  have  violent   consequences.17   The  other  side  of  my  dual  perspective  is  to  translate  the   Department  back  to  itself.  I  am  one  of  the  few  people  in  the  DSNY  with   access  to  and  knowledge  of  the  entire  structure  of  the  job.  Though  I  will   always  be  a  beginner  in  an  organization  as  historically  rich  and                                                                                                                   14  I  chose  to  publish  my  book  Picking  Up  with  a  trade  press.  It  speaks  to  my   fellow  anthropologists,  but  it  was  intended  to  reach  beyond  the  confines  of  the   academy.  As  of  mid-­‐2015,  my  TED  talk  has  had  more  than  1.5  million  views.  See   http://bit.ly/1rgOGti.   15  This  speaks  to  a  growing  trend  of  encouraging  more  fully  collaborative   relationships  between  public  administration  and  the  public  at  large  (Trudeau   2011).   16  It’s  a  problem  not  unique  to  Sanitation;  large  government  agencies  “are   imperfect,  vastly  complex,  usually  reliable,  and  noticeable  only  when  they  break   down”  (Goodsell  1994  [1983]:  4).   17  The  DSNY  was  the  target  of  public  fury  incited  by  grossly  inaccurate  press   coverage  of  the  Christmas  Blizzard  of  2010;  Goldenberg  2010  is  one  typical   example.  For  more  complete  details  about  that  storm  and  its  aftermath,  see  Nagle   2014:  200-­‐209. Journal  of  Business  Anthropology,  6(1),  Spring  2017      54   strategically  complex  as  Sanitation,  I  often  know  more  than  people  who   have  been  on  the  job  for  decades  but  have  only  worked  in  a  few  locations   or  at  a  single  rank.  Department  personnel  in  general  do  not  always   understand  the  full  implications  or  large-­‐scale  consequences  of  their   work.  When  I  give  talks  at  DSNY  benevolent  society  meetings  or  in   training  classes  for  new  hires,  I  try  to  illuminate  less  obvious  elements  of   Sanitation’s  role  in  the  city  and  to  explain  the  sometimes  mysterious   connections  between  different  agency  bureaux.  More  recently  I’ve  been   suggesting  that  some  bureaux  within  the  agency  should  consider   including  uniformed  workers  when  planning  structural  changes  to  the   job.  Managers  in  charge  of  such  projects  have  a  habit  of  concentrating   almost  exclusively  within  their  own  enclaves  of  expertise.  When  their   efforts  are  not  unanimously  applauded,  this  group  takes  it  as  proof  that   “the  uniforms”  (as  sanitation  workers  and  officers  are  called)  are  an   ungrateful  lot.   Whatever  their  title,  wherever  they  are  located  within  the  DSNY,   however  much  they  grumble  about  each  other,  all  Department  personnel   are  constantly  striving  to  balance  the  requirements  of  their  pre-­‐defined,   historically  situated,  sometimes  institutionally  calcified  jobs  with  their   own  unique  creativities.  They  insist  on  themselves,  despite  and   sometimes  against  the  weight  of  the  bureaucratic  power  that  would   dictate  the  minutiae  of  their  professional  lives.  My  job  as  their   anthropologist  is  to  continue  blending  the  of  and  the  for  into  a  mutual   with,  as  well  as  to  keep  reminding  them  that  they’re  doing  the  most   important  work  in  the  city.  Not 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 and  Why  They   Do  It.  New  York:  Basic  Books.                                     Robin  Nagle  is  the  author  of  Picking  Up:  On  the  Streets  and  Behind  the   Trucks  with  the  Sanitation  Workers  of  New  York  City  (Farrar,  Straus  and   Giroux,  2014),  an  ethnography  of  the  DSNY.  She  teaches  anthropology  and   environmental  studies  at  New  York  University  and  is  anthropologist-­‐in-­‐ residence  for  New  York  City’s  Department  of  Sanitation.