Purity and Danger

Purity and Danger

Cover of the first edition
Author Mary Douglas
Original title Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
Country United Kingdom
Language English
Subject Social anthropology
Publisher Routledge and Keegan Paul
Publication date
 1966
Media type Print
Pages 196 pp.
ISBN 0-7100-1299-3
OCLC 50333732
Preceded by The Lele of the Kasai
Followed by Natural Symbols
Part of a series on
Anthropology of religion
Social and cultural anthropology

Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo is a 1966 book by the anthropologist and cultural theorist Mary Douglas. It is her best known work. In 1991 the Times Literary Supplement listed it as one of the hundred most influential non-fiction books published since 1945. It has gone through numerous reprints and re-editions (1969, 1970, 1978, 1984, 1991, 2002). In 2003 a further edition was brought out as volume 2 in Mary Douglas: Collected Works (ISBN 0415291054).

Summary

The line of inquiry in Purity and Danger traces the words and meaning of dirt in different contexts. What is regarded as dirt in a given society is any matter considered out of place. (Douglas took this lead from William James.) She attempted to clarify the differences between the sacred, the clean and the unclean in different societies and times. But this does not entail judging religions as pessimistic or optimistic in their understanding of purity or dirt—e.g., as dirt-affirming or otherwise. Through a complex and sophisticated reading of ritual, religion, and lifestyle, Douglas challenged Western ideas of pollution, making clear how the context and social history is essential.

As an example of this approach, Douglas first proposed that the kosher laws were not, as many believed, either primitive health regulations or randomly chosen as tests of the Israelites' commitment to God. Instead, Douglas argued that the laws were about symbolic boundary-maintenance. Prohibited foods were those that did not seem to fall neatly into any category. For example, pigs' place in the natural order was ambiguous because they shared the cloven hoof of the ungulates, but did not chew cud.

Later in a 2002 preface to Purity and Danger, Douglas went on to retract this explanation of the kosher rules, saying that it had been "a major mistake." Instead, she proposed that "the dietary laws intricately model the body and the altar upon one another." For instance, among land animals, Israelites were only allowed to eat animals that were also allowed to be sacrificed: animals that depend on herdsmen. Douglas concluded from this that animals that are abominable to eat are not in fact impure, but rather that "it is abominable to harm them." She claimed that later interpreters (even later Biblical authors) had misunderstood this.

Influence

The historian of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown states that Purity and Danger was a major influence behind his important 1971 article The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, which is considered one of the bases for all future study of Early Christian asceticism.[1]

In Powers of Horror (1980), where Julia Kristeva elaborates her theory of abjection, she recognizes the influence of Douglas’s “fundamental work,” while criticizing certain aspects of her approach.[2]

Reviews

See also

References

  1. ↑ Brown, Peter (1998). "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity, 1971-1997". Journal of Early Christian Studies. 6: 359–63.
  2. ↑ Kristeva, Julia, Trans. Leon Roudiez (1982). Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Colombia University Press: 65-67.

Bibliography

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