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Dear Colleagues, I wanted to remind you of today's seminar at 4pm with Lucy Pickering (University of Glasgow) No White Water Lilies: Toilets, Bodies and Counterculture in Hawai'i See abstract below. I also wanted to alert you to the change of room. Today's seminar will be held in room 711 not 706. Apologies for this. All welcome. Kirsteen Abstract: Defecation has received limited attention within the social sciences and humanities. Toilets not a great deal. Urination even less. However, examining the practice of composting faeces and 'pee[ing] on any tree' by white, West Coast US 'hippies' and 'drop-outs' living in Hawai'i suggests that the disposal of excreta is never simply disposal. Rather, it entails engagement with the state, one's own body and sense of placedness. Through looking at the everyday defecatory practices of hippies and drop-outs in Hawai'i, this paper seeks to examine the interplay of the acts of defecation and urination with the materiality of toilets themselves. Each depends on the other, and both exist in relation to various others: other toilet designs, other communities, other people. As such, it becomes possible to extend beyond Douglas' argument that 'dirt is matter out of place' to explore the notion that - at least in relation to toilets - 'dirt is relations out of place'. By placing relationships at the heart of this analysis of defecation and urination, this paper provides fertile ground for the exploration of embodiment at its most base level, as site of generative action and social critique. Dr Kirsteen Paton Researcher (TRAGIC project) and Lecturer Sociology School of Social and Political Sciences Room S1005 Adam Smith Building 40 Bute Gardens University of Glasgow G12 8RS Tel. 0141 330 5070