Before yesterday, my home was the safest place possible, and any place outside the comfort of my home put me at risk of getting infected. This was until my sister broke social distancing to see her boyfriend, who was heading through town to go to his job. Her boyfriend had just traveled from a major city across the country, stopping briefly in our hometown. Now every room in my home feels unclean and unsafe from getting the virus, the one place where I thought I could find safety in has been tainted. —An observation from a team member  ¹

by Audrey Colgin

In this new world, where individuals weigh the risks and rewards of routine interactions, like seeing their friends and going to the grocery store, daily rituals need to change. One of these rituals was the concepts of objects and people being clean and unclean. In this article, I will apply the ideas from “Ritual in the OR” by Pearl Katz to the experiences of individuals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Katz explains the rituals of surgeons and nurses in the operating room. They have specific protocols of what tools and parts of individuals are clean, sanitary, and dirty and contaminated. These concepts change throughout the procedure and can be abandoned entirely if in an emergency. These rituals exist to keep the risks of infection low (Katz 1981). In the COVID-19 pandemic, although it is a different situation and different type of infection, individuals have had to change their daily behaviors and patterns to feel safe from infection.

Katz argues that all rituals have aspects that are arbitrary and defines rituals as, “standardized ceremonies in which expressive, symbolic, mystical, sacred, and non-rational behavior predominates over practical, technical, secular, rational, and scientific behavior, although anthropologists have acknowledged that rational, technical acts may occur as part of ritual behavior” (Katz 1981). For example, one may go to the grocery store and feel like the individuals around you are infectious and feel extremely wary about how much space is between you and these individuals and then when hiking and running on trails one makes no effort to socially distance. The individuals on the paths feel “clean,” whereas the individuals in the grocery store feel “unclean” and, therefore, unsafe from the virus. One person described his experience in a hardware store.  He explained how he had to wait in line for an extended period to get in the store and how the store made each individual get a cart and how that made him feel.

However, I was not happy since now I had to touch something that had been touched and potentially contaminated with others when I did not see the need to for one item. Also, the guy in charge of wiping down the carts did not always do a thorough job and seemed to be going through the motions at times which increased my anxiety while pushing the cart. As social distancing was still novel the fear of touching anything was dominant in my behavioral responses.

The germs on a shopping cart are not something that people are usually hyper-aware of, but because of the virus, for this individual, the shopping cart is now unclean and therefore unsafe. Even though someone had wiped down the cart with a disinfectant wipe, the heightened awareness of uncleanliness caused more cation and distress. The caution that this individual took is not misinformed, but it could be understood as somewhat arbitrary. For example, he spoke of the shopping cart being “unclean,” but did not express concern about the registers.  He found the self-check-out fascinating and praised the changes, not commenting on the potential dirtiness or germs located there. The self-check-out is another surface that could be just as susceptible to touching and therefore getting the virus. Like in “Ritual in the OR,” where once someone had used a scalpel, it was no longer sanitary but also no longer clean in some stages of the operation, but in others, it was clean, but still not hygienic. (Katz 1981) This ritual is similar to the fear of germs on some items in a store but not others because it is somewhat arbitrary.

Our professor, Sarah Hautzinger, talked about her experience going to home depot on two consecutive days. She talked about the inconsistencies in the person at the cash register’s protective gear and how she and her husband felt about it.

The first day, the checker in the self-checkout station wore a face mask and rubber gloves and appeared very conscious of maintaining a meter’s distance when possible. The second day, the checker wore no protective gear. Tim had a problem with scanning something, she took the scanner gun out of his hand and scanned the item, then handed it right back to him. He felt compromised and took special pains when he arrived back home, undressing and leaving his clothes outside, and then walking directly into the shower.

The cashier’s breaching of the ritual of social distancing made these individuals uncomfortable because as soon as the scanner gun had been picked up by the cashier it had become contaminated, making Sarah’s husband feel like he had been “compromised.” Although it is possible that other contaminants were present on the machinery or the items being purchased, the act of watching this unprotected individual made it unclean. The ritual of assuming cleanliness had been broken by watching the cashier touch it. Then a new ceremony of decontamination had to ensue in order for the person to feel less at risk for infection. If this event hadn’t happened, I wonder if this individual would have showered, because most likely all the things in the store still hadn’t completely been disinfected.

The ritual of social distancing and protective gear has been created to encourage safety. This ritual separates some things as clean and, therefore, safe and others as unsafe and dirty. The inconsistencies in the routines of social distancing and what is clean or unclean can sometimes confuse and create more distress for individuals when others do not interpret the rules in the same way. I think the rituals of what is clean and dirty will be changed from this pandemic for a long time; I believe that individuals will continue to stay more aware of the germs around them and keep the rituals of cleanliness.

Notes on Observation:

This testimony directly relates to my application of Katz’s framework of what is clean and unclean. At this time, home is the safest possible place, but what happens when that safety is breached? When now, staying home is at risk of your personal health, but leaving the house now puts the people around you at risk. What is the appropriate response when you or someone in your household has breached social distancing? How do you preserve the cleanliness and lower the risks of infection in your own home? These are all questions individuals have to struggle with in order to preserve their safety, because often you can’t social distance from the people you live with, and the breach of social distancing in some capacity is somewhat inevitable in our society. ¹

References Cited:
Katz, Pearl. 1981. “Ritual in the Operating Room.” Ethnology 20(4): 335-350.