Cleanliness and culture : Indonesian histories / Kees van Dijk and Jean Gelman Taylor (eds).

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Preliminary Material / Kees van Dijk and Jean Gelman Taylor -- 1: Soap is the onset of civilization / Kees van Dijk -- 2: Bathing and hygiene Histories from the KITLV Images Archive / Jean Gelman Taylor -- 3: The epidemic that wasn’t Beriberi in Bangka and the Netherlands Indies / Mary Somers Heidhues -- 4: Hygiene, housing and health in colonial Sulawesi / David Henley -- 5: Being clean is being strong Policing cleanliness and gay vices in the Netherlands Indies in the 1930s / Marieke Bloembergen -- 6: Washing your hair in Java / George Quinn -- 7: Tropical spa cultures, eco-chic, and the complexities of new Asianism / Bart Barendregt -- Contributors / Kees van Dijk and Jean Gelman Taylor -- Index / Kees van Dijk and Jean Gelman Taylor.

Available to subscribing member institutions only.

Recent years have shown an increase in interest in the study of cleanliness from a historical and sociological perspective. Many of such studies on bathing and washing, on keeping the body and the streets clean, and on filth and the combat of dirt, focus on Europe. In Cleanliness and Culture attention shifts to the tropics, to Indonesia, in colonial times as well as in the present. Subjects range from the use of soap and the washing of clothes as a pretext to claim superiority of race and class to how references to being clean played a role in a campaign against European homosexuals in the Netherlands Indies at the end of the 1930s. Other topics are eerie skin diseases and the sanitary measures to eliminate them, and how misconceptions about lack of hygiene as the cause of illness hampered the finding of a cure. Attention is also drawn to differences in attitude towards performing personal body functions outdoors and retreating to the privacy of the bathroom, to traditional bathing ritual and to the modern tropical Spa culture as a manifestation of a New Asian lifestyle. With contributions by Bart Barendregt, Marieke Bloembergen, Kees van Dijk, Mary Somers Heidhues, David Henley, George Quinn, and Jean Gelman Taylor. Full text (Open Access)

English.