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- Title
Race, Space and Toilets: 'Civilization' and 'Dirt' in the German Colonial Order, 1890s-1914.
- Authors
Walther, Daniel J.
- Abstract
According to Norbert Elias, the path towards civilization was marked by a change in what became acceptable and unacceptable and by who was associated with each category. This process included appropriate ways and places to defecate and urinate. Such practices became tied to notions of 'dirt,' a concept Mary Douglas equated with anything that challenged norms used to promote social stability. Increasingly, human-waste elimination became associated with offences against modern bourgeois sensibilities of proper behaviour and cleanliness and hence 'civilized' society. Technological advances, scientific knowledge and bourgeois norms were deployed to address these 'offensive' acts by removing them from public view and to justify these actions. In the colonial setting, the disposal of human waste was therefore not only a technical question, but also closely connected to European notions of civilization. There colonial physicians worked to supplant the 'dirty' practices of these 'natural' peoples and the spaces they inhabited through the use of technology and medico-scientific, bourgeois discourses. Doctors utilized educational, surveillance and punitive strategies to supplant indigenous cultural codes of toileting with German understandings of how to 'properly' use these technologies. However, African and Pacific Islander patterns and understandings of toileting continued to challenge German notions of cleanliness and civilization. Ultimately, doctors justified the further colonization of the landscape and indigenous bodies precisely because the latter challenged German notions of hygienic order.
- Subjects
OCEANIA; AFRICA; GERMAN colonies; TOILETS; 19TH century imperialism; IMPERIALISM; TWENTIETH century; HYGIENE -- History; COLONIAL Africa; HISTORY
- Publication
German History, 2017, Vol 35, Issue 4, p551
- ISSN
0266-3554
- Publication type
Article
- DOI
10.1093/gerhis/ghx102