Abstract
Largely taboo in ‘Westernized’ nations, spitting in public remains common in many parts of the world. Public health campaigns ‘beyond the West’ tend to stress that spitting in public spreads diseases and is also, in essence, disgusting, uncivilized and deviant. After considering the evidence for such public health concerns, we draw on research carried out in China and India to argue that public spitting is experienced by many in those countries as unproblematic and that anti-spitting campaigns often represent misguided ideas of the ‘civilizing process’ transposed from the global North. This chapter frames opposition to spitting through ‘disruptive cosmopolitanism’ and ‘inverted cultural relativism’ where indigenous elites, in Eliasian fashion, look beyond their own cultural mores to contrasting Western sensibilities and seek to impose them on their own people.
Developing: An ironic signification that alludes to the ways in which societal ‘progress’ in relation to civility and notions of ‘becoming’ civilized are connected to broader political and economic notions of development.
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Notes
- 1.
This includes Anglophone countries such as Australia and New Zealand in Australasia rather than the traditional ‘West’, the former being an especially early adopter of anti-spitting legislation (Saunier 2008).
- 2.
While there has been at least one widely reported case in the media of disease transmission from spitting in this way ‘Policewoman, 35, dies after thug spat in her face: Ukrainian officer contracted tuberculosis while arresting criminal’ (Joseph 2016), the evidence is anecdotal, doesn’t consider possible alternative routes and of course fits with widespread assumption and acceptance of such transmission that has influenced arrest and sentencing for decades.
- 3.
‘Street’ in this sense means large public concourses such as outside Central Station in Shanghai where rural migrant workers (such as construction site workers) and other ‘city’ workers disembark/embark trains daily; public parks; indoor shopping centers; the central business district; commutable suburbs; markets; a school; universities; city bus and train stations; ‘smart’ privileged areas and ‘run-down’ poorer areas; roads adjoining each.
- 4.
Paan is routinely sold throughout Mumbai from roadside stalls and shops. On one observed stretch of road over approximately one quarter of a mile over thirty separate paan vendors were counted. It is usually prepared in front of the purchaser and ordered to taste. Consisting essentially of a betel nut leaf wrapped around areca nut slices and held together with a slaked lime paste, it is routinely flavored with tobacco and a mix of other spices, sweeteners and, for example, menthol. It has ‘… for thousands of years has been chewed throughout India as a mild stimulant, a palate cleanser and breath freshener’ (Burke 2010). Gutka is a manufactured mild stimulant commonly containing crushed areca nut, tobacco, catechu, paraffin wax, slaked lime and sweet or savory flavorings and is sold in packets for chewing in a similar fashion to paan—it is also spat out.
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Coomber, R., Moyle, L., Pavlidis, A. (2018). Public Spitting in ‘Developing’ Nations of the Global South: Harmless Embedded Practice or Disgusting, Harmful and Deviant?. In: Carrington, K., Hogg, R., Scott, J., Sozzo, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Criminology and the Global South. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-65021-0_25
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