Service assistants: tidiness and cleanliness as a means of “doingpolitics” at school

Abstract

The political dimension in schools has been analyzed from diverse disciplines and through its different actors: teachers, principals, mothers, fathers and, to a lesser extent, children and adolescents. However, service assistants - staff in charge of cleaning and building maintenance - have been few studied to address the phenomena and processes that include power relations within educational institutions. Based on research with an ethnographic focus, I will show how through the work of cleaning, order and food preparation, the auxiliaries participate in tensions and disputes that constitute the daily life of a state primary school in the city of Neuquén (Argentina). Aesthetics, as a sensitive manifestation of social life, will be fundamental for understanding the ways in which politics is produced in the school environment.