In 2008, the United Nations declared that the world’s population has become predominantly urban for the first time in human history. Living in cities and increasing housing density has always meant exposure to microbes, viruses, and the proliferation of animals that are attracted to human waste. But our ideal metropolis is orderly and sanitized, with nature subdued and compartmentalized. Jerolmack’s (2008)^[1] concept of “imaginative geographies” suggests that in modern, Western society, people construct “firm” boundaries between “nature and culture”. Cities are often associated with nature put in place. While modern urban planning policies focus on the need for green spaces in cities, these are usually controlled environments that do not encroach on private spaces with sights, sounds, or smells. However, it is important to remember that nature is about more than just patches of greenery and trees to provide shade. It encompasses ecosystems that may include elements that are often considered disruptive. This aspirational asepsis in towns is not new. Since the mid-19th century, disgust and anxiety about the dirt and smell of the urban environment had become a central feature of middle-class identity in the country’s big cities^[2]. The “modern constitution” shows our Western predilection to keep separate, or culturally purify, the human and the nonhuman^[3]. In other words, there are fairly standardized views of what kind of animal belongs in what kind of space. But no matter how hard we try to put nature in place, there are certain aspects we cannot control.

Good Animals versus Bad Animals – Who Decides?

In the introduction to his 2012 volume Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories, historian Peter Atkins^[4] notes that urban animals have generally been seen as belonging to one of four categories: (a) “useful animals”, for traction or meat; (b) “those that can be appreciated”, such as garden songbirds; (c) “those that are desirable”, e.g. pets; and, finally, (d) what he describes as “species that have transgressed”, such as rats, cockroaches, and pigeons, and are considered vermin because they ‘have no place’ in the city. Also, Arluke and Sanders‘ (1996)^[5] describe the sociozoological scale that suggests that humans rank animals according to “how well they…’ fit in’ and play the roles they are expected to play in society”. So-called good animals, such as pets and farm animals, “fit in” because they benefit humans and are therefore accorded “a high moral status”. Those labeled ‘bad’ do not fit in, can be literally out of place, contradict ideas of goodness, and have no productive or beneficial qualities. The latter is often denigrated and associated with harmful characteristics that may or may not be objectively real.

Tora Holmberg^[6] describes in Urban animals: Crowding in zoocities that urban animals are often subject to the complaint; they transgress systems of geographical, legal, and cultural order as they roam the city in ways that are often perceived as uncontrolled. But they are also objects of care, conservation practices, and biopolitical interventions. What, then, are the ‘more-than-human’ experiences of life in a city? What does it mean to consider spatial formations and urban politics from the perspective of human/animal relations?

An Anthropological Inquuiry into Cockroaches

The questions mentioned above are the focus of my doctoral research. I am studying the infrastructure that is associated with the presence of cockroaches in cities, including the legal and juridical issues that regulate when and how cockroaches should be controlled, the use of chemical substances, the classist or gendered discourses surrounding cockroaches, how these insects affect our relationships with others (particularly our neighbors), the experiences of those who work in pest control, and the cultural classification of pests versus non-pest animals. My thesis is based on ethnographic research, where I have used participatory and non-participatory observation, interviews, informal in situ discussions, and analysis of documents such as urban plans, zonal pest regulation laws, and others. In this article, I will be focusing on the narratives of people who have encountered cockroaches in Bucharest and their personal experiences of living with them in their apartments. Through this research, I aim to understand how our perception of what is “natural” and our disgust towards it is largely shaped by our cultural beliefs and practices.

My research focuses on kitchen and sewage cockroaches, insects perceived as filthy, useless to the ecosystem, and disruptive to our well-being. They are animals out of place, a kind of living pollution in the sense of Mary Douglas^[7].

They [the cockroaces] are some very fast enemies, who are not liked by anyone, who disgust me very much, and who ruin my experience of living in a block and my experience of living in Bucharest. But I don’t want to move out of town because of them. – woman, 41 years

I chose to focus specifically on two types of cockroaches – kitchen and sewer cockroaches because these species are known for being almost universally disliked. While spiders and other insects may be perceived as cute or harmless in interviews, kitchen, and sewer cockroaches are generally seen as disgusting by most people.

“There are also cockroaches that I don’t dislike, I don’t know exactly what they are called, I call them George [a common man name in Romania] because at one time there was a page called Primăria Munikipiului București [a Facebook group that mocks the local administration in Bucharest] and it had George as its mascot – it’s that bug that if you kill it smells bad – to me, they seem friendly and even nice, harmless, they are nice, that is, if I see them I don’t have that impulse to run away or kill them, but I save them whenever I can. Then there are the spiders with very long legs and tiny bodies, I don’t necessarily have a bad thing with those either. But with kitchen cockroaches, ah, I cannot even look at them. – woman, 26 years

Contrary perhaps to general perceptions, the cockroaches I refer to are not disease vectors, they are merely mechanical carriers (they can carry diseases on their legs). These “pests” create “discomfort or even nausea” when they “transgress the boundary between civilization and nature” by entering sidewalks and homes. Private space isn’t private anymore because of the bugs’ ability to spread. But in some ways, cockroaches can be perceived as maintaining connections between neighbors.

Cockroaches in the context of the block of flats have developed a new side to me and a new hatred for neighbors, hatred… I don’t like them that much. They throw all that crap out the window and it ends up on my windowsill. It would have bothered me anyway, but it annoys me to the point of exasperation that because of this I get cockroaches. – woman, 23 years

I had to wait for my neighbor to die so we could get rid of cockroaches. It’s fierce to put it this way, but it was a nightmare. – man, 24 years old

Cockroaches not only cause discord but also suggest how we relate to others. The elderly or those in precarious situations are often blamed for the appearance of cockroaches, assumed not to be able to maintain a hygienic apartment. Having cockroaches in one’s apartment is also stigmatized, and it feels like an insult to their hygiene management. Women, in particular, feel the need to emphasize the care they take of their home even if they have cockroaches. People often try to hide the fact that they have cockroaches or that they have seen them in another apartment.

The first time I saw cockroaches was at this person’s house in the bathroom and I didn’t know if I should say a word or not because there were enough of them that I think he would have known about them, but so many that I didn’t know if he was doing anything with them and I chose to quietly wash my hands, shut up and continue our conversation there and because at 17 years old you only judge, I judged the person because apartment or kitchen cockroaches are usually from. …dirty or unclean places or that’s what I noticed they come from. – woman, 20 years

Chemical Warfare

As I emphasized before, in most of my interviews, people view cockroaches as a disgusting, sometimes traumatizing experience to have. Disgust can lead to disproportionate reactions; it often seeks to remove, even eradicate, the disgusting source of threat. I’ll do anything to make them go away. I don’t care how harmful it is, I can’t live to see cockroaches crawling around my apartment every night. – man, 25 years old

The discussion of the chemical warfare we wage against what we consider to be harmful is wonderfully summarized in Rachel Carson^[8]‘s 1962 book Silent Spring. The issue she raises is that although we know how damaging the devastation caused by DDT has been, chemical pesticides are as widespread as ever. DDT, the abbreviated name for Dichlor-Diphenyl-Trichloroethane is an insecticide that has been used since the 1940s as a contact toxicant. First synthesized by a German chemist in 1874, the properties as an insecticide were discovered in 1939. In Romania, it has been used since the 1940s and banned since 1985. Carson offers a broader perspective on the ease with which we use certain chemicals (which may pass FDA scrutiny but over the years can prove very harmful) and are made to look attractive and easy to use. It warns of the storage of toxic materials in the body and the delayed effects (impossible to anticipate).

Very few respondents care about this – fear or the need to get rid of cockroaches outweighs concerns about the toxicity of the sprays used. One respondent tells of methods her grandmother used to get rid of cockroaches, methods she is not willing to use, but wants an immediate solution. My grandmother didn’t use these special anti-roach solutions but she used to dip bread in a solution that I don’t remember the name of, some boron or boric acid and she used to dip bread crumbs in jarheads and put them in the corners in the kitchen and the bathroom and the aim was that when the cockroaches ate the bread they would swell up in their bellies from the substance and the stuff would explode there. And it worked. The next day I’d find a bunch of dead animals with their feet up – that’s how they kept it under control, so to speak, so there wouldn’t be any more – woman, 30 years old.

How do we deal with Cockroaches in our Daily Lives

Because of the cockroaches, we changed the way we live in our apartment. It is insane.  We stay in the house at 22 degrees and sleep with socks on because I’ve seen that if the temperature is lower they [the cockroaches] do not come. We had a friend over last night, that was the only reason our heater went from 22 to 25 degrees. After he left, the cockroaches came. I cannot believe that. I ended up living in a cold apartment so they won’t come. Also, I want to install air conditioning in the living room but I’m really scared. Scared that if we have more holes in the walls, the cockroaches might come to other rooms. – woman, 28 years old

I have no memories of cockroaches from my childhood, although my mother tells me that she struggled with them when I was young. However, three years ago, my boyfriend and I moved into our first rented apartment, where we unfortunately had to deal with a cockroach infestation. We tried various methods to get rid of them, including sprays and covering the vents, and even hired specialist firms, but nothing seemed to work. Eventually, we decided to move out of the apartment when one evening, while napping on the living room couch, I woke up to find a cockroach on my face. This incident made me pay much more attention to other people’s stories of having cockroaches in their apartments. And suddenly it seemed like almost everyone had dealt with it at some point. Baader-Meinhof Phenomenon (something you’ve noticed or recently learned suddenly seems to appear everywhere) or not, it seemed to be an experience shared by extremely many people in Bucharest.

Cockroaches influence the way we choose our housing, the way we behave in our own homes, our relationships, our fear management, etc. Not once have I heard from estate agents that one of the most common questions is whether there are cockroach problems in the flat or block. One respondent’s family friends took out a bank loan to buy a flat in the Lujerului area and after less than a year they discovered cockroaches they can’t get rid of – they’ll be paying up to 50 years to fight these social enemies.

Couple dynamics can also be affected by the presence of cockroaches. One respondent confessed that she has frequent arguments with her partner because he does not take the appearance of cockroaches seriously and leaves unwashed dishes in the sink and does not help her in trying to identify the source of the cockroaches.

The appearance of cockroaches in the house in some households involves not only humans but also the rest of the animals in the house. It has been the hardest because I too am afraid of cockroaches, and my boyfriend is afraid of cockroaches, until now I have only lived with people who were not afraid and whom I could rely on. I love love love my boyfriend, but it’s really funny; we rely on our cats. Lots of scenes where everyone sits on a kitchen stool with a slipper in hand and guides the cats to the bug to flush it out.

Personal fears and traumas related to cockroaches are also related to the appearance of cockroaches in different poses in cartoons. Many respondents remember depictions of cockroaches in movies or cartoons, where the cockroach was always the villain. Sometimes this also influences how the fear of killing them sets in. For example, some people say that they don’t want to kill them because more cockroaches will come and take revenge, or that sometimes it seems that instead of a killed cockroach, a bigger one will appear.

But besides perceptions and thoughts, the most egregious statements in the discussion are those related to behavioral changes – changes that take root and alter over very long periods. For example, a respondent may not do the dishes (from anywhere, not just home from home) if more than 3-4 dishes get dirty or if more than 10 minutes pass since they were left in the sink. When he had cockroaches in his apartment, it was very common to find them in the kitchen sink. I can’t wash them. I’m scared because I’ve been there, I’m scared they’re going to come out of there, climb on me, and kill me. Another respondent confessed that she could not sleep at night because she was afraid that cockroaches would appear in her room. She always left the lights on in the house and always had the feeling that she had cockroaches on her, although she had only seen two cockroaches in the apartment at one time.

Why studying cockroaches as an anthropologist

I often get surprised looks when I mention that I’m studying cockroaches for my anthropology Ph.D. It’s understandable, as it seems to be a trivial topic and not directly related to human experiences. But the creatures we call pests have accompanied us through a century in which housing and health officials, environmentalists, and pesticide advocates alike have promised modern, healthy living environments. Pests have violated such notions of modernity as long as we have underestimated their unruliness, their relationship to urban politics, and the niche created for them by social inequality^[9]. Being closely linked to waste in the cultural imaginary, urban animals that feed on garbage can be considered and treated as garbage. Although in theory we are equally exposed, pests tend to be abundant in the poorest and most crowded, urban poor neighborhoods. But pests are not just attached to physical conditions such as the presence of trash or foundations in poor condition – they have also proliferated due to racial segregation, underfunded home inspection programs, and cultural stigma that has caused residents to try to hide infestations. Future research could investigate the social, political, economic, and cultural factors that influence why some species are of greater concern than others.

REFERENCES:

^[1] Jerolmack, C. 2008. “How Pigeons Became Rats: The Cultural-Spatial Logic of Problem Animals.” Social Problems 55:72–94.

^[2] Davie, Neil. (2017). ‘An unbidden guest at your table’: Purity, danger and the house-fly in the middle-class home, c. 1870-1910. Cahiers victoriens et édouardiens, (85 Printemps)

^[3] Michael, Mike. 2004. “Roadkill: Between Humans, Nonhuman Animals, and Technologies.” Society and Animals 12(4):278–98.

^[4] Atkins, Peter J. (2012). Animal Cities: Beastly Urban Histories. Routledge.

^[5] Arluke, A., and C. R. Sanders. 1996. Regarding Animals Philadelphia, PA: Temple University

Press

^[6] Holmberg, Tora. (2015). Urban animals: Crowding in zoocities. New York: Routledge.

^[7] Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger. Routledge. London

^[8] Carson, R. (1962). Silent spring. New York, Fawcett Crest

^[9] Biehlar, D.D. (2013). Pests in the City: Flies, Bedbugs, Cockroaches, and Rats. University of Washington Press. Seattl