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1 - The Corporate Micro-city Potsdamer Platz

Cleaners’ Presence from Below

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 May 2022

Jana Costas
Affiliation:
European University Viadrina Frankfurt (Oder)
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Summary

This chapter explores how the spatial segregation of Potsdamer Platz is not a matter of architectural design, but rather a particular social mapping that interrelates with status. Potsdamer Platz is designed to reinforce status hierarchies that separate the upperworld and underworld. Whereas the upperworld is shiny and spacious, the underworld is dark, labyrinthine, cramped and malodorous. These worlds have distinct populations: shoppers, tourists, white-collar workers and wealthy residents above, cleaners and other workers below. The cleaners have access to the upperworld for the purpose of cleaning it, but the people from above cannot enter the underworld. It remains hidden, buried spatially and discursively, making cleaners into an invisible “presence from below.” However, cleaners experience themselves and their place at Potsdamer Platz not just as an invisible presence from below. They are part of a workers’ scene that extends from the corporate underworld to the upperworld. The underworld is also more than a dark and sticky space for them. They turn to it as a place of social encounters, of taking breaks and withdrawing from the gaze of managers and clients alike.

Type
Chapter
Information
Dramas of Dignity
Cleaners in the Corporate Underworld of Berlin
, pp. 12 - 38
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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