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.