World of Cleanliness: Tai Yai Outsourced Cleaning Labors in Chiang Mai

Abstract

The world of cleanliness is the conceptual framework in which this research paper presents the relationship between subcontract, Tai Yai outsourced cleaning labor, and sensory interactions in cleaning services. The author uses sociological miniaturism and institutional ethnography as research methods to collect field data based on the working and living conditions of workers under the commercial cleaning regime in educational community areas. It revisits the concept of cleanliness as a means of subjectivity and social relations. The development of the era formulates standards and sensory experiences of cleanliness through the employment of cleaning workers. This sense of cleanliness under the ceiling (social order) has become a determinant of the socio-economic value of the cleaning workforce. It is abjection that leads to the process of managing the body that looks unclean and things that are seemingly out of place in space and time with state and capital mechanism. Through the debate on cleanliness based on usable areas and schedules, this research paper suggests that flexible employment has isolated Tai Yai cleaning labors from space and time, which deeply affects the perceived value of cleaning labor as less than the budget value in outsourcing cleaning service.