Mary Douglas is a symbolic anthropologist who examines how people give meanings to their reality and how this reality is expressed by their cultural symbols. She has believed that humans actively create meanings in their social lives in order to maintain their society. By analyzing these meanings, Douglas attempted to find universal patterns of symbolism.
Douglas gained wide recognition by her publication Purity and danger: an analysis of concepts of pollution and taboo. In the book, Douglas cross-culturally examined people’s definition of impurity and argued that pollutants play an important role in maintaining social structures. For example, in the Lele culture of Zaire, people have rules for protecting themselves from what they define as polluted, such as the following: feces, blood, military groups, milk, used clothing, and sexual intercourse. Another example is the Old Testament, whose dietary rules define dozens of unclean animals. Obviously, these two examples are not about hygiene, but about moral symbols based on people’s concepts of impurity. By defining what is polluted, people classify their social life into two opposite categories: what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. This symbolic system gives moral order to societies. Douglas further argued that in societies where the categories of purity and pollutants are rigid, people have developed secular and religious rituals to keep themselves physically and morally pure. She claimed that these practices enforce the symbolic system and keep order in the society.
Douglas’ analysis on the links between symbolic classifications and social
systems leads to her next book, Natural symbols. In this book Douglas claimed that all societies can be compared by their
two cultural dimensions: group and grid. Group is the degree of division
between insiders and outsiders of a society. Grid refers to rules that
relate individuals to one another. For example, in a society with strong
grid and strong group, individuals are regulated for the sake of the group.
Within the group clearly defined social sectors, such as classes, castes
and age-grades, play specialized roles that are beneficial to the whole
society. This type of society tends to be larger than others and lasts
longer due to less internal conflict. On the other hand, in a society with
low grid and low group, people are viewed more as individuals than as a
part of the group. Due to the lack of group mentality, all social classifications
are negotiable and people can transact and transfer social position freely.
However, this type of society has political laws to regulate individuals.
In such a society, egalitarian individualism is a predominant social value.
As seen in these two examples,
In addition to classic anthropological analysis, Douglas has dealt with contemporary issues such as the following: environmental regulation, religious revivalism, social justice, AIDS and its contamination, consumer society, and aesthetic taste. What is radical about her analysis is that instead of classifying human societies into different categories, that require different analysis criteria, Douglas applies the same principles to all societies.
Barfield, Thomas. 1996 The Dictionary of Anthropology. Malden: Blackwell.
Barnard, Alan, and Jonathan Spencer. 1997 Encyclopedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology. London; New York: Routledge.
Moore, Jerry D. 1998 Visions of Culture : An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Walnut Creek: AltaMira Press.
This page was created by Minnesota State University, Mankato student. Last updated 12/15/03