Paper short abstract:

Dirt as matter out of place is a key theme in anthropology since Purity and Danger (1966). This paper follows Ngubane (1977) on notions of vulnerability to help understand how the Mun use earths, clays, ash and dung to negotiate the uncertainty of environmental threats and the trauma of illness.

Paper long abstract:

The Mun are a transhumant pastoral community. Migration occurs twice a year, and this exposes the community to great threats and is considered a time of much uncertainty. They negotiate this, however, through the use of gidangi and holi clays to ritually anoint the community. This paper focuses specifically on the notion of gidangi meaning 'grey', 'dirty' or 'polluted'. Why, in times of poor health or in places of high rates of infectious diseases do the Mun chose to anoint themselves with clays, and why would they select a 'dirty' or 'polluting' clay? To answer this, I found Douglas's notion of pollution and dirt were not helpful; instead, I have found an ecological grounding in earth, mud, ash, dung and clay much more revealing.

Despite what Douglas suggests, gidangi things and people are not classificatorily ambiguous, nor is gidangi in opposition to something sacred or profane. Furthermore, my findings are phenomenologically informed and compliment instead the work of the South African Zulu anthropologist, Harriet Ngubane (1977). She based her framework of 'pollution' on the issue of vulnerable people and states: children, the bereaved, outsiders or newly delivered mothers. By focusing on vulnerability within the context of the environment, rather than the sacred and profane, Ngubane incorporates an ecology of health into her concept of 'pollution'. This is much more 'modern' in the sense that it can also be understood in line with 'naturalist' causation of illness, such as germ theory, and epidemiological studies of disease (Green 1999).