The Making of a Good White - E-thesis - Helsinki.fi

his body, he takes into account social rules, as the individual and social
margins of the body are conflated. Bodily margins and the image of body
are therefore readily available sources of pollution beliefs. (Douglas
1966: 128.)
While the human body is the strongest metaphor of the society, in the
late nineteenth century illness became the strongest metaphor of structural
crisis (classifying what is considered deviance, such as homosexuality,
as an illness is a good example). Thus illness indicates disorder metaphorically,
literally and politically (Turner 1984: 114). Since the poor
whites were conceptualised as social pathologies, their presence was also
tolerated to the same, varying degree that the mainstream white society
tolerated disorder and illness. For instance, in the 1930s, some concerned
politicians tried to utilize the perceived threat of mixed marriages as an
electoral weapon. In their campaign, working-class Afrikaner women
were represented as particularly inclined towards marrying African men
(Hyslop 1995: 57-59). This insinuated that they were more susceptible to
sexual relations with blacks - allowing them inside their bodies and thus
also in their communities, which indicated vulnerability to racial pollution
and miscegenation.
While some historians have discussed the White South African’s preapartheid
era ‘racial obsession’ as instances of individual and collective
madness (Hyslop 1995: 59; Coetzee 1991: 30), it can also be viewed from
the perspective of drawing of the social boundaries, and creating structure
for social categories.
Concepts of pollution, or purity and dirt are attached to the body and
the cultural regulation of its functions and proper usage. Douglas points
out that purity is a closely controlled concept that fortifies and reflects
the worldview and symbolic order in all human societies. Dirt, therefore,
must be avoided, for it represents danger that attacks the social margins.
(Douglas 1966: 161.) Ideas of purity and dirt reflect cultural ideas and
maintain the symbolic boundaries. While in, say, India the boundaries
between castes system are guarded with ideas of purity and dirt, in South
Africa the (often conflated) boundaries of race and class were also thus
protected.
The transgression of these boundaries offends the social order, and
symbolises chaos and social disorder. For instance ‘wrong’ sexual behaviour
awakes disgust, which is a warning signal and a guardian of the
culturally defined boundaries. 76 The connections between the ideas of dirt
76 Miller (1997) described this aversion in length in the Anatomy of Disgust.
79