Cleaning : A Cultural Technique

The cultural technique of cleaning

“Cleaning” takes a closer look at everyday life in Western societies. Culture takes place every day: in every household, with every bite, with every piece of clothing; it is negotiated through the products we choose and how we use them. The book sets out to highlight cleaning as a cultural technique through which culture is lived and nature is vanquished, through which hierarchies are created, social rankings manifested, and traditions implemented.Addressing dirt and cleanliness, cleaning agents, equipment, and machines, (clean) surfaces and polluted environments, it interrogates the unwritten cultural rules around cleanliness and order, asking what they reveal about our beliefs and value systems. In 2020, the original German-language edition of this book was published under the title “Putzen. Eine Kulturtechnik”. It triggered tremendous media coverage in German-speaking countries. Among others, the prominent German news magazine “Der Spiegel” and the renowned daily newspaper “Süddeutsche Zeitung” reported extensively on the publication. On May 11, 2025, the “New York Times” published a two-page article about Sonja Stummerer and Martin Hablesreiter, aka honey & bunny. Eve Kahn wrote, “Through performances, installations, lectures, workshops, films, photos and publications, they stir up questions about rules and infrastructure that govern what we eat (or how we clean) and how – and how our appetites (or our cleaning habits) can damage or benefit our bodies and the planet.”