Ideas and practices relating to the notion of dirt a study in the everyday life of urban middle class Bengalis

Abstract

In matters of our everyday life dirt figures quite extensively, yet we hardly consider it as a matter of serious reflection. We downplay their seriousness in estimating their gravity relative to many other aspects of life, viz. work, reading, cooking, dressing etc. Moreover, the scholarship regarding dirt and cleanliness practices is not substantial too. Although the academia is not completely silent about dirt, it still continues to retain dirtand#8223;s marginal status within the realms of social sciences and humanities disciplines. Why is such widespread neglect? Or, is it really ignored always? People are overly cautious about ritual pollution or microbial contagion. Thus a kind of classification of similarly predisposed matters may be proposed here: the ritually impure, the hygienically pathological agents and the mundane or ordinary dirt. With respect to ritual impurity we can sense that, beyond the manifest disapproval of the impure, a lurking horror of some sort is looming large. An almost identical caveat may be placed with regard to the considerations relating to hygiene, the sombreness of which could only be neglected at the cost of health and life. So, a few crucial research questions emerge. newline