Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination

Dirt--and our rituals to eradicate it--are as much a part of our everyday lives as eating, breathing and sleeping. Yet this very fact means that we seldom stop to question what we mean by dirt. What do our attitudes to dirt and cleanliness tell us about ourselves and the societies we live in? 

The contributors to this work expose the interests which underlie everyday conceptions of dirt and reveal how our ideas about it are intimately bound up with issues of race, ethnicity, class, gender, sexuality and the body. Exploring a wide variety of settings--domestic, urban and rural--this original work reveals how attitudes to dirt and cleanliness become manifest in surprisingly diverse ways, including the rituals associated with death and burial; interior and architectural design aesthetics; urban infrastructure, regeneration and renewal; film symbolism; and consumer attitudes to food.

A rich and challenging work that extends our understanding of the cultural manifestations of dirt and cleanliness.

…a useful collection of information about the notions of dirt and cleanliness, not only in the city but the spaces it contains and those around it.  The wide range of contributions certainly makes the case for the notion of dirt and the abject to be of great relevance to spatial theory …-- Street Signs  

Ben Campkin is Lecturer in Architectural History and Theory at the Bartlett School of Architecture, University College London. With Paul Dobraszczyk he is co-editor of "Architecture and Dirt," a special issue of the Journal of Architecture (2007).

Rosie Cox is Senior Lecturer in London Studies at Birkbeck, University of London. She is the author of The Servant Problem: Paid Domestic Work in a Global Economy.

* Acknowledgements * Introduction--Ben Campkin and Rosie Cox * Home: domestic dirt and cleaning * Introduction--Rosie Cox * Linguistic leakiness or really dirty? Dirt in social theory--Carol Walkowitz * Domestic workers and pollution in Brazil--Livia Barbosa * The Visible and the Invisible: (de)regulation in contemporary cleaning practices--Lydia Martens * Bring home the dead: purity and filth in contemporary funeral homes--Kyro Selket * City and Suburb: urban dirt and cleansing * Introduction--Ben Campkin * Degredation and regeneration: theories of dirt and the contemporary city--Ben Campkin * The dirty city and the spoiled suburb: place images of dirt and disorder--Paul Watt *  Dangers lurking everywhere: the sex offender as pollution--Pamela K. Gilbert *  London's gay scene: AIDS stigma and hygiene aesthetics--Johan Andersson *  Spiritual cleansing: priests and prostitutes in early * Victorian London: the case of the Pimlico refuge--Dominic Janes * Mapping sewer spaces in mid-Victorian London--Paul Dobraszczyk * The cinematic sewer--David Pike * Country: constructing rural dirt--Introduction Rosie Cox * Dirt and development: alternative modernities in Thailand--Alyson Brody * Dirty foods, healthy communities--Gareth Enticott * Dirty vegetables: connecting consumers: to the growing of their food--Lewis Holloway, Laura Venn, Rosie Cox, Moya Kneafsey, Elizabeth Dowler, Helena Tuomainen * Dirty cows: perceptions of BSE/CJD--Bruce Scholten * List of contributors * Bibliography * Endnotes * Index *