The concept of dirt presupposes an ordering system it violates.

Evidence

Mary Douglas writes: “If we can abstract pathogenicity and hygiene from our notion of dirt, we are left with the old definition of dirt as matter out of place. This is a very suggestive approach. It implies two conditions: a set of ordered relations and a contravention of that order. Dirt then, is never a unique, isolated event. Where there is dirt there is a system. Dirt is the by-product of a systematic ordering and classification of matter, in so far as ordering involves rejecting inappropriate symbols.” — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent, 1611

Categorization

• DEFINE: Douglas’s definition of dirt as ‘matter out of place’ supplies the theoretical lens for reading the WC’s hygiene and better-yards campaigns as ordering projects, linking cleanliness crusades to symbolic boundary maintenance.
• XREF: Connects to earlier chapters’ treatment of cleanliness campaigns and surveillance as self-ordering, potentially relevant to the Addendum article on ‘Complaints About Immodesty’ since both are about moral-bodily ordering. — connects to: Dirt is matter out of place and always signals an underlying order — Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham, Righteous Discontent: The Women’s…, 1611