{"id":17978,"date":"2015-04-24T08:57:43","date_gmt":"2015-04-24T13:57:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=17978"},"modified":"2017-09-17T18:09:24","modified_gmt":"2017-09-17T23:09:24","slug":"a-sociology-of-dirt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2015\/04\/24\/a-sociology-of-dirt\/","title":{"rendered":"A Sociology of Dirt and Disorder"},"content":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday.<\/em><\/p>\n

Beautiful:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Flickr Creative Commons, Rowena Waack<\/a><\/p>\n

Disgusting:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Flickr Creative Commons, Brendan Wood<\/a><\/p>\n

Dirt:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Flickr Creative Commons, Mark O’Rourke<\/a><\/p>\n

Soil:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Flickr Creative Commons, JaulaDeArdillo<\/a><\/p>\n

In the classic book, Purity and Danger<\/em><\/a> (1966), Mary Douglas points to the social construction of dirt. She writes:<\/p>\n

There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in the eye of the beholder.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

If dirt and dirtiness is socially constructed, what do things we identify as dirt, filth, rubbish, and refuse have in common?<\/p>\n

Douglas suggests that dirt is really a matter of disorganization. Literally, that a thing becomes dirt or garbage when it is out-of-place. \u201cDirt,\u201d she writes, \u201coffends against order.”<\/p>\n

Eliminating it is not a negative movement, but a positive effort to organise the environment.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I chose the images above to try and illustrate this idea. Hair in the drain, like dirt on our hands, is out-of-place. It doesn\u2019t belong there. In both cases, our reaction is disgust. Hair on the head, in contrast, is beautiful and becoming, while dirt outside is life-giving soil and part of the beauty of nature.<\/p>\n

Images royalty free from Getty<\/a>. Originally posted in 2009.<\/em><\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Flashback Friday. Beautiful: Flickr Creative Commons, Rowena Waack Disgusting: Flickr Creative Commons, Brendan Wood Dirt: Flickr Creative Commons, Mark O’Rourke Soil: Flickr Creative Commons, JaulaDeArdillo In the classic book, Purity and Danger (1966), Mary Douglas points to the social construction of dirt. She writes: There is no such thing as absolute dirt: it exists in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":66397,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[251,329,2123,293],"class_list":["post-17978","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-hair","tag-emotion","tag-environmentnature","tag-social-construction"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/files\/2009\/12\/151.png","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=17978"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71727,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/17978\/revisions\/71727"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/66397"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=17978"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=17978"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=17978"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}