Cleanliness in the Making of ‘Home’: A Sociology of Fear, Sanitation and Segregation

Webster’s English Dictionary defines sanitation as a ‘process of keeping places free from dirt, infection. disease, etc., by removing waste, trash, and garbage’. As a process it has both micro level and macro level connotations. It is widely believed that the forces of sustainability are essentially generated at the micro level practices; at the level of ‘individual’. In this paper, we are concerned with some micro level dimensions of sanitation which reverb macro level implications, particularly over the structure of stratification in a country like India.

In our own definitions of ‘home’, cleanliness takes a centre place along with other components like safety, comfortability and so on. Apparently, it may look simple and straightforward, but a deeper analysis shows the criticalities and nuances inherent in the entire process of home-sanitation. For example, the notion of sanitation usually involves two actors or two sets of actors – those who want it, and those who ensure it. These two sets of people form two different categories – one, sanitation/hygiene-conscious, urbanite, educated, well-mannered, rational, and in Norbert Elias’ definition ‘civilised’, and the [O]ther, who are considered as dirty, hygiene-indifferent, rural, illiterate, and sub-rational. Sociology of sanitation invites an analysis of the problematic relationships between these two categories of people. This paper argues that in the process of home making, sanitation separates these two categories of people, creates a hierarchy of knowledge regarding sanitising practices and technologies, and the level of satisfaction. It will show how sanitation and segregation, driven by a ‘fear of contamination’, go together and reproduce structural injustice and indignity among a section of tradition-bound Indian population.