Dirt: New Geographies of Cleanliness and Contamination

Abstract

Description 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. 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. Aims 1. To 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. 2. To extend understanding of the cultural manifestations of dirt and cleanliness. 3. To re-evaluate Mary Douglas’s Purity and Danger (1966) in relation to spatial concerns. Questions 1. What do our attitudes to dirt and cleanliness tell us about ourselves and the societies we live in? 2. How might theories of dirt and cleanliness drive investigations of urban space, and inform our understanding of processes of urban degradation and regeneration? 3. Is the notion of dirt as ‘matter out of place’ still helpful in contemporary contexts? Methods The methods underpinning my contributions to this anthology included extensive interdisciplinary critique of existing literature, and the empirical research of two art/architectural projects, Matthew Lloyd Architects Clean up (2006) and Adjaye/Associates ‘Dirty House’ (2002). Dissemination This collection generated 2 international conference sessions and an invitation to collaborate on an urban art/architecture project (London Festival of Architecture, 2006), and to contribute to the Wellcome Trust’s recent Dirt (2011) exhibition catalogue. “Campkin and Cox have given us a fresh approach in a well thought-out collection of articles […] well worth reading” H-Net, Dr. Dolly Jorgensen, Norwegian University of Science & Technology. “[A] broad collection of writing on dirt and culture”, Building Design. A fascinating selection of essays looking at the social history of dirt, Icon.

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