Associate Professor SAKAI, Tomoko
Associate Professor SAKAI, Tomoko
- Academic Degree
- Ph.D in Sociology, University of Bristol
- Expertise
- Anthropology
- Research Theme
- Everyday ethics of dirtiness, disorder, life and danger
Everyday ethics of dirtiness, disorder, life and danger
This research is aimed at exploring a new dimension of ethics through the elucidation of phenomena and experiences of “dirtiness” and impurity, both of which are symbolic of life but also of danger. Modern societies have attempted to sanitize, control, and quarantine dirtiness, be it physical, spatial, or social⁄moral. However, in everyday life, humans react to encounters with foreign substances and dirtiness in many different ways: sometimes they may become tense, sometimes tolerant, and at other times they may transform themselves. This research describes and analyses these reactions through examples such as secretions of one's own and of intimate people, drink⁄food and pollution, and changing lifestyles in light of awareness of disaster prevention. Furthermore, the field of morality and ethics, which deals with ideas of virtue and acceptable conduct, is in fact inseparable from concepts of cleanliness⁄dirtiness and purity⁄impurity. Why is this so? Can dirtiness be incorporated into neoliberalism, which is a system based on the desire to commodify⁄market everything in the world? These are some of the important questions explored in this research.