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Is more cleanliness deepening social gaps?

Hand being washed in soap. Photo: Jacqueline Macou from Pixabay.

Sociologist Tullia Jack's paper questions whether changes meant to increase life quality and provide basic human rights, are actually contributing to deepening social stratification.

Tullia Jack has published the paper ‘Without cleanliness we can’t lead the life, no?’ Cleanliness practices, (in)accessible infrastructures, social (im)mobility and (un)sustainable consumption in Mysore, India on www.tandfonline.com together with Manisha Anantharaman & Alison L Browne.

The paper explores the relationships between access to infrastructures, social mobility and resource consumption in everyday lives through the case of cleanliness in Mysore, Southern India.

As India, a country with a complex relationship with cleanliness, modernizes rapidly, urban infrastructures are increasing even faster than the growing population.

The paper draws on interviews with 28 Mysoreans about cleanliness perceptions and practices. Analysing cleanliness across class, caste and gender reveals that in the globalizing cleanliness cultures of Mysore those who are precarious and have less access to hygiene infrastructures, tend to have to clean more but don’t resist expectations.

The paper argues that, as cleanliness contours citizenship claims, the ‘great unwashed’ are excluded from participating in society and questions whether infrastructures and policies purported to increase the quality of life and provide basic human rights through increasing cleanliness, actually inadvertently contribute to deepening social stratification.

Tullia Jack's personal page here on the Department's website.