Cleanliness and Cleaning Services: Social Hygiene, the Economy of Invisible Labor, and Postmodern Aesthetics

Introduction: Cleanliness as a Social Construct and Industry

The concept of "cleanliness" is far from the binary opposition of "dirty/clean." It is a complex socio-cultural construct historically defined by religious taboos, medical paradigms, class differences, and aesthetic ideals. Cleaning services, which emerged in response to urbanization and the division of labor, are not just providers of domestic services, but also agents of social hygiene, status markers, and operators of "invisible labor" in the post-industrial economy. Their evolution reflects shifts in understanding privacy, health, and the organization of urban space.

1. Historical Genealogy: From Ritual Impurity to the Hygiene Modern

In archaic societies, cleanliness was primarily a ritual category (e.g., the concept of "miasma" in Ancient Greece or "haram" in Islam). Professional cleaners often belonged to lower, "unclean" castes (Japanese "burakumin," Indian "dalits"), creating a paradox: those who ensured cleanliness were themselves considered socially "polluted."

A turning point occurred in the 19th century with the triumph of the hygiene modern. The works of Louis Pasteur and Robert Koch linked dirt to diseases. Cleanliness became a matter of public health and state policy. Municipal services for waste collection and street cleaning appeared (in London after the Great Stink of 1858). In the Victorian era, domestic servants, whose duties included cleaning, became a symbol of the middle class, and their ritualized labor a demonstration of control over the "wild" nature of matter within the home.

2. Cleaning as an Industry: The Economy of Outsourcing and Precariat

In the second half of the 20th century, there is an industrialization of cleanliness. Professional cleaning companies replace domestic servants. This was the result of several processes:

• Feminization of labor and the entry of women into the market: Domestic work was delegated to paid specialists.

• Outsourcing in the corporate sector: Building owners transferred cleaning functions to specialized firms to reduce costs.

• Urbanization and the growth of commercial real estate: There was a mass demand for the maintenance of shopping centers, airports, business centers.

Interesting fact: In Japan, there is a unique phenomenon of "tokai" — ultra-fast stadium cleaning by volunteer fans after a match. This action, nurtured since school, is more than a hygienic practice; it is a collective ritual of discipline, respect for place, and social solidarity, demonstrating how cleanliness is embedded in the national cultural code.

The modern cleaning industry creates a global precariat — an army of low-paid, often migrant workers with unstable employment. Their labor, performed at night or early in the morning, remains structurally invisible to the day society, allowing, in the view of sociologist Arlie Russell Hochschild, to maintain the illusion of "self-cleaning" spaces.

3. Social Hygiene and Symbolic Purification

Cleaning services perform the function of social hygiene far beyond the fight against bacteria.

• Cleaning after emergencies and crime: There are specialized teams for trauma scene cleanup. They not only remove biological contaminants but also conduct symbolic purification of the space, returning it to social circulation, erasing the traces of trauma and death. Their work balances on the border of medicine, criminology, and ritual.

• Public space policy: Regular cleaning of streets and parks in modern megacities is an instrument of control over the public sphere. It creates an image of a safe, orderly, "civilized" city and implicitly prevents the accumulation of marginal groups (homeless) for whom "filthy" spaces are a habitat.

4. Technological Revolution and the Aesthetics of Sterility

Modern cleaning is experiencing a technological transformation:

1. Robotization: Automatic floor cleaning machines, robot vacuums (iRobot Roomba), and even drones for facade cleaning. They not only increase efficiency but also dehumanize the process, finally separating the idea of cleanliness from human labor.

2. Ecologization: Use of biodegradable chemicals, steam cleaning technologies, closed-loop water consumption cycles. Cleanliness must now be "green."

3. Aesthetics of sterility: In the era of pandemics (COVID-19), cleanliness has become a synonym for safety. Visible, demonstrative cleaning (hand sanitizing, wiping surfaces in the eyes of customers) has turned into a performative act intended to instill trust. Cleaning protocols in hospitals, clean rooms, and pharmaceutical production have been brought to the level of almost ritual rigor, where control over microparticles is comparable to religious precepts about cleanliness.

Conclusion: Cleanliness as a Mirror of Social Relations

Cleaning services are not a technical industry, but a social institution in which the key contradictions of modernity are reflected as in a drop of water: between visible and invisible labor, between private and public, between hygiene and social exclusion. Their work maintains the fundamental illusion of order and control over the chaotic materiality of the world.

The future of cleanliness is likely to lie in the intensification of this paradox: on the one hand, full automation and "smart" self-cleaning surfaces, on the other — the growing demand for ethical, personalized cleaning with decent working conditions, where cleanliness will be an intentional choice, not the result of exploitation of invisible workers. Understanding cleaning as a complex socio-technical system allows us to see in everyday cleaning deep cultural codes and power relations that determine what is considered clean, who has the right to ensure it, and at what cost.

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