
Urban Pollution
Cultural Meanings, Social Practices
Berghahn Books (Publisher)
1st Edition
Published on 1. August 2010
Book
Hardback
216 pages
978-1-84545-692-4 (ISBN)
Description
Re-examining Mary Douglas' work on pollution and concepts of purity, this volume explores modern expressions of these themes in urban areas, examining the intersections of material and cultural pollution. It presents ethnographic case studies from a range of cities affected by globalization processes such as neoliberal urban policies, privatization of urban space, continued migration and spatialized ethnic tension. What has changed since the appearance of Purity and Danger? How have anthropological views on pollution changed accordingly? This volume focuses on cultural meanings and values that are attached to conceptions of 'clean' and 'dirty', purity and impurity, healthy and unhealthy environments, and addresses the implications of pollution with regard to discrimination, class, urban poverty, social hierarchies and ethnic segregation in cities.
Reviews / Votes
"...this volume offers a range of useful accounts of cultural construction of pollution, deployed as an idiom in the ordering and negotiating of social relations in a range of urban settings. The illustration of how assertions of pollution are racialized, gendered, and classed, and the range of debates in which pollution is deployed as a discursive as well as material form, usefully broaden the frame of urban and environmental anthropology." ? Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute"[These essays] are of high academic quality and present often penetrating ethnographic and historical insight into the negotiation of (im)purity in a variety of cultural contexts. They offer a stimulating and engaging read." ? Aidan Davison, University of Tasmania
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Oxford
United Kingdom
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Library binding
Illustrations
16 Illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 240 mm
Width: 161 mm
Thickness: 16 mm
Weight
496 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-84545-692-4 (9781845456924)
DOI
10.3167/9781845456924
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions

E-Book
08/2010
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€26.99
Available for download

E-Book
08/2010
1st Edition
Berghahn Books
€24.49
Available for download
Persons
Eveline Duerr is Professor at the Institute of Social and Cultural Anthropology, Ludwig- Maximilians-University, Munich. She has conducted fieldwork in Mexico, the USA and Germany, and also in New Zealand while she was Associate Professor at the Auckland University of Technology. Her research focuses on urban anthropology, cultural identities and representations.
Content
List of Figures
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction: Cultural and Material Forms of Urban Pollution
Rivke Jaffe and Eveline Duerr
Chapter 2. 'Tidy Kiwis/Dirty Asians': Cultural Pollution and Migration in Auckland, New Zealand
Eveline Duerr
Chapter 3. Private Cleanliness, Public Mess: Purity, Pollution and Space in Kottar, South India
Damaris Luethi
Chapter 4. The Jungle and the City: Perceptions of the Urban among Indo-Fijians in Suva, Fiji
Susanna Trnka
Chapter 5. Gendered Fears of Pollution: Traversing Public Space in NeoliberalCairo
Anouk de Koning
Chapter 6. The Choice between Clean and Dirty: Discourses of Aesthetics, Morality and Progress in Post-Revolutionary Asmari, Eritrea
Magnus Treiber
Chapter 7.Using Pollution to Frame Collective Action: Urban Grassroots Mobilisations in Budapest
Szabina Kerenyi
Chapter 8. Cleanness, Order and Security: The Re-emergence of Restrictive Definitions of Urbanity in Europe
Johanna Rolshoven
Chapter 9. Social Equity and Social Housing Densification in Glen Innes, New Zealand: A Political Ecology Approach
Kathryn Scott, Angela Shaw and Christina >Bava
Chapter 10. Afterword: Impure Thoughts on Messy Cities
Aidan Davison
Notes on Contributors
Index
Acknowledgements
Chapter 1. Introduction: Cultural and Material Forms of Urban Pollution
Rivke Jaffe and Eveline Duerr
Chapter 2. 'Tidy Kiwis/Dirty Asians': Cultural Pollution and Migration in Auckland, New Zealand
Eveline Duerr
Chapter 3. Private Cleanliness, Public Mess: Purity, Pollution and Space in Kottar, South India
Damaris Luethi
Chapter 4. The Jungle and the City: Perceptions of the Urban among Indo-Fijians in Suva, Fiji
Susanna Trnka
Chapter 5. Gendered Fears of Pollution: Traversing Public Space in NeoliberalCairo
Anouk de Koning
Chapter 6. The Choice between Clean and Dirty: Discourses of Aesthetics, Morality and Progress in Post-Revolutionary Asmari, Eritrea
Magnus Treiber
Chapter 7.Using Pollution to Frame Collective Action: Urban Grassroots Mobilisations in Budapest
Szabina Kerenyi
Chapter 8. Cleanness, Order and Security: The Re-emergence of Restrictive Definitions of Urbanity in Europe
Johanna Rolshoven
Chapter 9. Social Equity and Social Housing Densification in Glen Innes, New Zealand: A Political Ecology Approach
Kathryn Scott, Angela Shaw and Christina >Bava
Chapter 10. Afterword: Impure Thoughts on Messy Cities
Aidan Davison
Notes on Contributors
Index