PURITY AND DANGER

In Purity and Danger/ Mary Douglas identifies the concern for purity as a key theme at the heart of every society. In lively and lucid prose she explains its relevance for every reader by revealing its wideranging impact on our attitudes to society values cosmology and knowledge. The book has been hugely influential in many areas of debate from religion to social theory. But perhaps its most important role is to offer each reader a new explanation of why people behave in the way they do. With a specially commissioned introduction by the author which assesses the continuing significance of the work thirtyfive years on this Routledge Classics/ edition will ensure that Purity and Danger/ continues to challenge and question well into the new millennium.PPurity and Danger/ ... shattered my assumptions on just about everything. Silvia Rodgers The Sunday Times//PPProfessor Douglas writes gracefully lucidly and polemically. She continually makes points which illuminate matters in the philosophy of religion and the philosophy of science and help to show the rest of us just why and how anthropology has become a fundamentally intellectual discipline. New Society/Professor Douglas book sparkles with intellectual life and is characterised by a concern to understand ... A rare and exciting spectacle of a mind at work. Times Literary Supplement//PPThe reason why one voice speaks to another remains a mystery but my sense of the world was undoubtedly deeply effected by Mary Douglass Purity and Danger/... Long before the insights of feminist analysis Douglas noted how symbolic systems were centred upon notions of masculinity and femininity and layered upon the human body. Without doubt 25 years of feminist work has enlarged understanding of gender issues beyond the insights of even such an original thinker as Mary Douglas. Nevertheless many of the ideas which have sprouted since can be found in this slim controversial and still highly relevant volume. Leonore Davidoff Times Higher Education//PP/nbsp:STRONGMary Douglas /STRONGwas one of the most distinguished anthropologists of modern times. Natural Symbols/ another of her major works is also available in Routledge Classics.