Work · Sociology & Social Theory
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
Comparative study of ideas of pollution, from the Lele to the food laws of Leviticus and modern hygiene: dirt is the by-product of a system of classification; purity rules guard its boundaries, while anomalies are avoided as dangerous or honoured in ritual.
Introduction
Purity and Danger appeared in 1966 and grew out of lectures from the late 1950s, among them a lecture at University College London on “the abominations of Leviticus”. Douglas starts from Lord Chesterfield’s phrase that dirt is “matter out of place” and argues that rules of purity are neither primitive hygiene nor mere superstition but ways of keeping experience in order. Chapters on the dietary laws of Leviticus 11, on the Lele, whose pangolin cult honours an anomalous animal, and on beliefs about the margins of the body develop the claim that the body can stand for any bounded system. The book became a classic far beyond anthropology, with readers in religious studies, literary theory and philosophy, among them Kristeva and Butler.
Connections
Builds on
- The Elementary Forms of Religious Life1912 · Émile Durkheim
Taken up in
- Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology1970 · Mary Douglas
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