Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

Cover of the first edition
Author	Mary Douglas
Language	English
Subject	Social anthropology
Publisher	Routledge and Kegan Paul
Publication date	1966
Publication place	United Kingdom
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
Two ancient anthropomorphic figures from Peru
Basic concepts Afterlife Animism Augury Communitas Comparative religion Divination Divine language Evolutionary origin of religion Fetishism Great Spirit Henotheism Initiation Laying on of hands Liminality Magic Mana Monotheism Nympholepsy Oracle Pilgrimage Polytheism Rite of passage Ritual Sacred language Sacred–profane dichotomy Sacred site Shamanism Soul dualism Superstition Theories about religion Totem Transtheism Veneration of the dead
Case studies Magic Coral Gardens and Their Magic Treatise on the Apparitions of Spirits and on Vampires or Revenants Neo-Paganism Ritual Angakkuq Babaylan Bobohizan Bomoh Bora Dukun Miko Jhākri Pawang Slametan Wu Revitalization movements Cargo cult Ghost Dance Handsome Lake
Related articles The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Purity and Danger Myth and ritual Archaeology of religion and ritual Poles in mythology Lived religion Elite religion
Major theorists Augustin Calmet Akbar S. Ahmed Talal Asad Joseph Campbell Mary Douglas Émile Durkheim Mircea Eliade Arnold van Gennep René Girard E. E. Evans-Pritchard James Frazer Fustel de Coulanges Clifford Geertz Robin Horton Claude Lévi-Strauss Robert Marett Steven Ozment Roy Rappaport Saba Mahmood Marshall Sahlins Melford Spiro Stanley Tambiah Victor Turner Edward Burnett Tylor Daniel Martin Varisco Anthony F. C. Wallace
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Social and cultural anthropology
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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.

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 that lead from William James.) She attempted to clarify the differences between the sacred, the clean and the unclean in different societies and times, but that did not entail judging religions as pessimistic or optimistic in their understanding of purity or dirt, such as dirt-affirming or otherwise. Through a complex and sophisticated reading of ritual, religion and lifestyle, Douglas challenged Western ideas of pollution and clarified how context and social history are essential.

As an example of that approach, Douglas first proposed that the kosher laws were not, as many believed, either primitive health regulations or randomly-chosen 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, the place of pigs 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 and said 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 allowed to eat animals only if they were allowed to be sacrificed as well: animals that depend on herdsmen. Douglas concluded from that that animals that are abominable to eat are not in fact impure but that "it is abominable to harm them". She claimed that later interpreters (even later Biblical authors) had misunderstood this.

A historian of Late Antiquity, Peter Brown, stated that Purity and Danger was a major influence in his important 1971 article "The Rise and Function of the Holy Man in Late Antiquity", which is considered to be one of the bases for all subsequent study of early Christian asceticism.^[1]

In Powers of Horror (1980), Julia Kristeva elaborates her theory of abjection and recognises the influence of Douglas's "fundamental work" but criticises certain aspects of her approach.^[2]

• — (1966). Purity and danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo (1st ed.). Routledge & Kegan Paul. LCCN 66073266. OCLC 4881280.
• — (1966). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. New York City: Frederick A. Praeger, Inc. LCCN 66023887. OCLC 1617121.
• — (1984). Purity and danger: An analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo. London: Ark Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0-7448-0011-1. OCLC 12451903.
• — (1996). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Mary Douglas: Collected Works. Vol. 2. London: Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-06608-2. OCLC 39189620.
• — (2002-09-12). Purity and danger: An analysis of concept of pollution and taboo. Routledge Classics. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-28995-5. (with new preface by Mary Douglas)
• — (2003). Purity and danger: An analysis of concept of pollution and taboo. Routledge Classics. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9780203361832. ISBN 978-0-203-36183-2. OCLC 7390553996. Excerpt
• — (2003). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. Mary Douglas: Collected Works. Vol. 2. Routledge. ISBN 978-0-415-29105-7. OCLC 54401333. Excerpt
• — (2013-06-17). Purity and danger: An analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo (ebook). Mary Douglas: Collected Works. Vol. 2. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315015811. ISBN 978-1-31501581-1.

• Sacred contagion

• Richard Fardon, Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography (London: Routledge, 1999), ch. 4.