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Pollution and Purity different categories of people: men and women; older and younger persons; parents SJAAK VAN DER GEEST and children; leaders and subjects. Today, University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands systems of political and social inequality are still being bolstered by popular ideas that “Pollution” and “purity” form a classic specific “others” are dirty, smell dirty, have conceptual pair in cultural anthropology, dirty habits, and eat dirty food. Racism and mostly applied to ritual status. The solemn the Indian caste system are obvious exam- and somewhat archaic tone of the two terms ples of dirt-related justifications of social betrays their religious pedigree, but pollution exclusion. Similar mechanisms are employed and purity are basically about very mundane in mutual perceptions of ethnic groups and matters: being dirty and being clean. These in relations between migrants and autoch- everyday experiences lend themselves emi- thones everywhere in the world. People who nently as metaphors to express positive or are different because of sexual practice, bod- negative valuation of nearly everything in ily appearance, disability, occupation, or human lives. Their efficacy as metaphors lies criminal offense suffer the same tarnishing. in the intense visceral emotions of aversion In all these cases “dirty” is a convenient and attraction concerning what is physically derogatory and sometimes even stigmatiz- dirty or clean. “Dirt” and “cleanliness” may ing synonym for “other.” Excluding others in therefore be better terms for an anthropologi- this manner implicitly confirms and rein- cal discourse on everyday experience and the forces the homogeneity and superiority emotions of disgust and desire. (purity) of one’s own group, as Radcliffe- Brown suggested many years ago. Where religion constitutes the ultimate CULTURE DOMAINS legitimization of societal norms and hierar- chy, purity and pollution provide a connec- Nearly everywhere in the anthropological tion between social and religious order and literature it is argued that “dirty” and “clean” disorder. But also within religion, pure versus are used to draw boundaries and make per- polluted prove effective didactics of religious tinent distinctions between what is good approval versus disapproval, of sanctity ver- and bad in some sense or other. That draw- sus sinfulness. Sin brings about a state of pol- ing of judgmental boundaries can be done lution that needs to be cleansed by prayer, in almost any field of human experience: confession, or ritual purification. From reli- social, religious, and moral; and with regard gious impurity it is a small step to morality. to sex and intimacy, gender, health, and “Dirty,” again, is one of the most common “civilization.” qualifications to express moral condemna- In his early work on Andaman society, tion. Disapproving language gathers strength Radcliffe-Brown (1952) demonstrated how and imagination when dirt-related terms taboos and rules to avoid pollution helped to are included. “Shit” and equivalent terms produce and maintain social order between have become popular expletives for negative The Wiley Blackwell Encyclopedia of Health, Illness, Behavior, and Society, First Edition. Edited by William C. Cockerham, Robert Dingwall, and Stella R. Quah. © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. 2 assertions (but – by an interesting twist of less hygienically when they are not language – also for positive avowals). observed by others (Cahil et al. 1985). Gender distinction and gender hostility are cast in terms of dirt and pollution worldwide. Menstruation, pregnancy, and THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES delivery in particular are often seen by men as polluting and therefore dangerous states, Dirt and cleanliness have been the subject of which force women into subordination and theorizing in several anthropological and withdrawal from social life (cf. Meigs sociological perspectives since the beginning 1984). Sex and intimacy are particularly of social sciences. Early evolutionist thinkers prone to metaphors of cleanliness and dirt. in the tradition of Darwin looked upon the When sex transgresses boundaries of per- fear and avoidance of dirt as defense mecha- sonal integrity and violates rules of inti- nisms against sickness and other danger. They macy, dirt and contamination are the first believed there was a hidden rationality in the associations that cause intense feelings of seemingly spontaneous disgust of dirty things disgust and call for cleaning in symbolic as and animals. Religious rules about purity and well as in the literal sense of the term. pollution and taboos on eating certain food or In health and health care, dirt and clean- touching unclean objects or persons were liness have established themselves more medical prescriptions in disguise. Mosaic laws firmly than in any other domain of life. in the biblical texts of Deuteronomy and Hygiene has become the basic principle of Leviticus, for example, were perceived as rules healthy living. Here cleanliness has for healthy living, even though some of these assumed a medical status and dropped its rules do not make any medical sense today. metaphorical identity. Infection, contag- Curtis and Biran (2001), who carried out ion, the touch of dirt – hygiene’s antipode – research in five different locations, present is the origin of many diseases. Unclean five elicitors of disgust: body excretions and water and lack of good sanitation are body parts, certain animals, spoiled food, cer- known to be major killers of people in poor tain categories of “other people,” and breaches societies (Curtis 1998). It should be noted, of morality. Disgust, they write, “is one of the however, that improved hygiene is not nec- mechanisms crafted by natural selection to essarily a motive for building better sani- keep our distance from contagion” (2001, 22). tary facilities. A case study of rural Benin Feces, for example, are mentioned as trans- shows that toilets are primarily seen as sta- mitters of more than 20 diseases. Other peo- tus symbols (Jenkins and Curtis 2005) and ple’s breath, lice and rats, and sexual organs, in Cameroon inhabitants of two communi- all of which score high for human disgust, are ties resist the building of latrines because also common sources of infection. they interfere with their perception of Marvin Harris (1985) added ecological cleanliness and a good life (Ndonko 1993). wisdom to the evolutionary perspective on Yet, one can say that medical hygiene is food taboos and food recommendations. becoming an increasingly important ele- The prohibition of pork, for example, pre- ment in cultures that are caught in the pro- vented the raising of pigs if that would be cess of medicalization. At the same time, detrimental for the environment. In the same hygienic behavior retains a strong social vein, he hypothesized that cannibalism – purpose: it demonstrates civilized man- an abomination in most cultures – became ners. People are known to behave much an accepted form of consumption among 3 the Aztecs who faced a depletion of their “civilization process,” gave dirt a central natural fauna. place as a problem that cultures continu- It was against these evolutionist and mate- ously redefine in a process of refinement rialist interpretations of dirt avoidance that and internalization of civilized manners. Mary Douglas (1970) took a stand. “In chas- One of the characteristics of this refinement ing dirt,” she wrote, “we are not governed by is a moving away from animalistic features anxiety to escape disease, but are positively of humans. Bodily functions and sub- re-ordering our environment, making it con- stances are increasingly seen as dirty and form to an idea” (1970, 12). With her famous are covered and dissimulated. Revealing dictum “Dirt is matter out of place” she them is regarded as uncivilized. Activities rejected the concept of dirt as a fixed quality such as sleeping, sex, and defecation of particular objects, substances, animals, or should only take place in the private human beings and turned dirt into a radically sphere. Better sanitary facilities are seen contextual phenomenon. Absolute dirt, as signs of progress in civilization (cf. therefore, does not exist; it is the context that Goudsblom 1986). determines what/who is clean and what/who Inspired by Douglas’s vision of purity and is dirty. Saliva in my mouth or caught in a pollution, Van der Geest (2007) has added a handkerchief is hygienic, but when it falls on relational dimension to the concept of “mat- the table it is extremely dirty. Conversely, ter out of place.” The strongest feelings of something that is generally regarded as pure, disgust arise in the unwelcome close pres- a glass of wine, becomes dirt when it is spilled ence of others. Shoes on a table may be on a dress. dirty, as Douglas writes, but their presence Douglas’s thesis is that the concepts of dirt on the table becomes really uncomfortable and cleanliness are strong tools to establish if they belong to another person and are order. They point out what is the appropriate placed right in front of us. Thus they place for anything in life. That definition become a disgusting invasion of our per- makes clear why “dirty” and “clean” are such sonal territory; they penetrate our “social convenient tools for drawing boundaries in skin.” The experience of sexual harassment, any cultural domain. The presence of dirt as a the unwanted breach of personal and bodily condition of disorder carries with it a strong integrity, causes the same revulsion but appeal to restore order in social, religious, more intensely. moral, sexual, etc. matters. The metaphor of In conclusion, what is most deeply felt to be dirt helps to formulate the norms and values out of place is what invades our most private of culture. Hygiene, in other words, is a basic domain. Apparently, the dominant guarantor cultural act, not just a medical practice. of social order, at least in Western society, is The psychologist Paul Rozin and col- the boundary between people as individuals.

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