Campkin, B;
(2013)
"Placing ‘Matter Out of Place’: Purity and Danger as Evidence for Architecture and Urbanism".
Architectural Theory Review
, 18
(1)
10.1080/13264826.2013.785579.
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Abstract
This paper revisits Mary Douglas’ Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966). A survey of this theory in architecture in the late-twentieth century reveals how it focused attention on relationships between dirt, cleanliness, and the design and organisation of space – an area previously neglected in architectural thought. Dirt remains an important focus within architectural and urban theory, with implications for practice. Yet, the intersections that scholars of the 1980s and 1990s made between Douglas’ work and critical theory, feminist and psychoanalytic writings elicited problems with her structuralist approach that remain unresolved. These are apparent in considering relationships between dirt and cities – indeed, the aphorism Douglas invokes, ‘dirt is matter out of place’, originates in discussions of nineteenth-century urbanisation. To better understand dirt’s relationships with modern and late-modern capitalist cities, Douglas’ insights can be productively read alongside post-structuralist accounts, including the psychoanalytic notion of the abject and recent neo-Marxian scholarship on the production of urban nature.
Type: | Article |
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Title: | "Placing ‘Matter Out of Place’: Purity and Danger as Evidence for Architecture and Urbanism" |
Open access status: | An open access version is available from UCL Discovery |
DOI: | 10.1080/13264826.2013.785579 |
Publisher version: | http://dx.doi.org/ 10.1080/13264826.2013.785579 |
Language: | English |
Additional information: | © 2013 The Author. Published by Taylor & Francis This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. The moral rights of the named author(s) have been asserted. |
Keywords: | Mary Douglas, Dirt, Abjection, Interdisciplinarity |
UCL classification: | UCL UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment UCL > Provost and Vice Provost Offices > UCL BEAMS > Faculty of the Built Environment > The Bartlett School of Architecture |
URI: | https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/1379451 |
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