Bio: (1921–2007) British anthropologist. Mary Douglas graduated from the Sorbonne in French civilization and later studied politics, philosophy, and economics at Oxford University. During the Second World War, she worked in the Department of Colonial Affairs in the British government and that experience spiked her interest in anthropology. Douglas got her PhD, based on fieldwork in the African Congo among the Lele people, from Oxford University in 1951. She lectured at Oxford University, University of London, Northwestern University, Princeton University, and University College London, and worked as the director for research on culture at the Russell Sage Foundation. A year before her death she was made a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire.

Her theoretical approach was influenced by the structural-functionalism of Evans-Pritchard, the functionalism of Durkheim, and the structuralism of Lévi-Strauss. However, she rejected Lévi-Strauss’s approach to the analysis of myths. Douglas focused on the individual’s symbolic understanding of the world and the interaction of that understanding with the culture and its institutions. Her work left major influence on various disciplines – sociology, anthropology and ethnology, political science, psychology, ecology, economics, religious studies, and risk analysis.

                                    Anthropology of Africa

Douglas, in the first part of her career, starting with her first field study in Congo and her PhD thesis ‘A Study of the Social Organization of the Lele of the Kasai’, focused on the anthropology of Africa. She was a contributor to edited books on African anthropology - African Worlds: Studies in the Cosmological Ideas and Social Values of African Peoples (1954, ed. Daryll Forde), Markets in Africa (1965, eds. Paul Bohannan and George Dalton), and Men, Culture and Society (1957, ed. Shapiro). Douglas wrote two monographs on Africa: Peoples of the Lake Nyasa Region (1950) and The Lele of the Kasai (1963). The Lele of the Kasai paint a picture of matriarchal and politically anarchical Lele people, their geographical and human environment, and their badly performing economy and related poverty. Social roles in the Lele society were not fixed but were continuously negotiated over. She also focused on the symbolism of the pangolin, the animal that lacks teeth, but has scales, and is treated as an anomaly that disrupts social and mental order, and hence was the subject of plenty of rituals among the Lele people. Douglas believed that the religious beliefs of Lele and other African peoples were not irrational, as they have to be understood in their entirety and how they connect to, and serve to preserve, the social, economic, and symbolic order of a group.

                                      Purity and Danger

In the book Purity and Danger (1966), Douglas further develops her ideas and presents her theory of social order based on opposite categories of purity and impurity. She specifically focuses on “taboos” - things, beings, and practices to be avoided or scorned. Religious and other cultural beliefs proscribe beliefs of both pollution and cleanliness and place strict rules that, if followed, ensure moral and physical purity. Douglas rejects the evolutionary explanation that posits that cultures and societies go through evolutionary stages in which magical thinking is emblematic of the least developed stage, religious thinking in intermediary stages, and scientific thinking encompasses the highest evolutionary stage. In contrast to those theories, Douglas states that every society needs similar rules of purity to protect social rules and integrity of hierarchical social order, and thus creates specific taboos that protect that order. Mental cathegories that culture imparts upon an individual are reflection of social order and its categories. Analogues to that, human body reflects social body, hence rules that prohibit bodily transgrasions actually serve to protect from social transgressions.

One part of the book Purity and Danger examines, what she calls, “the Abominations of Leviticus”, which refers to taboos and rules from the third book of the Old Testament – the Book of Leviticus. In Leviticus there are dietary taboos on eating pigs, shellfish, and some wild animals; a ban on homosexual behavior, taboos regarding menstruation, and leprosy, prohibition of mixing fibers of different origins in the same clothing; etc. All those prohibitions present the same kind of danger of crossing the boundaries of mental categories organized in a coherent system. Animals that are anatomically anomalous from their counterparts and escape distinct taxonomical definitions (pigs differ from other ongulates, and shellfish from fish) are forbidden because they break those mental boundaries.  

                                         Natural Symbols

In Douglas’ subsequent book Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (1970) she expands on the ideas of the previous book and presents a universal theory that can be applied to relations between the human body and social body, in all societies. She starts by introducing the conceptual pair of ‘grid’ and ‘group’, as the basis of the symbolic system of classification of societies. The concept of grid refers to internal social borders, that is, to what degree is status of an individual in a society depends on social distinctions and divisions, like hierarchies, race, gender, or ethnicity. The concept of the group refers to external borders of society, that is, to what degree are individuals motivated by individualist goals or by the common good of the whole society. Cultures can vary in the intensity of both group and grid. A hierarchical society that avoids stranges would have a ‘high grid’ and ‘high group,’, while, on the other hand, an egalitarian society that welcomes strangers would have a ‘low grid’ and ‘low group.’ Societies that have high intensity of both variables will have many taboos, while societies with low intensity in both variables would have few taboos. Societies where one variable is high and other variable is low, would have taboos related to functioning of the variable that is high.

                                             Later Works

In her later work, Douglas focused on applying her theory to various topics. In the article “Taking the Biscuit: the Structure of British Meals”, in New Society (1974) Douglas and her student Michael Nicod explore British working-class food habits. They argue that the structure of meals and specific food (like biscuits) eaten by the members of the British working class were used as symbolic reinforcement of social boundaries and hierarchies, hence, that was the reason for working-class people's resistance to change their eating habits. One of the articles in Douglas’ book Implicit Meanings (1975) deals with humor as an inversion of taboo, as jokes are used to focus on forbidden topics joyfully, hence releasing tensions related to boundaries and in that way serving to preserve social order.

Douglas researches consumerism and consumer choices in the book The World of Goods: An Anthropological Approach to the Theory of Consumption (1978), co-written with the econometrist Baron Isherwood. In the book Risk and Culture: An Essay on the Selection of Technological and Environmental Dangers (1982), co-written with the political scientist Aaron Wildavsky, Douglas and Wildavsky explore the relationship between society and social risks – poverty, environmental degradation, HIV/AIDS – and argue that perception of the risk is a reflection of a society as it signals a lack of confidence in political authority and generates accusations against that authority; which all resembles the situation in African villages, where insecurity and lack of confidence produce accusations of witchcraft. Douglas in How Institutions Think (1986) researches decisions made by bureaucracies in institutions.  

In the books In the Wilderness: the Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (1993) and  Leviticus as Literature (1999), Douglas returns to the analysis of the Old Testament. In these books, she departs from her Durkheimian roots, as she focuses more on religion as a human need in itself, and not solely on the social function religion plays.

Main works

Peoples of the Lake Nyasa Region (1950);

The Lele of the Kasai (1963);

Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966);

Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (1973);

“Taking the Biscuit: the Structure of British Meals”, in New Society (1974);

Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology (1975);

The World of Goods: Towards an Anthropology of Consumption (1978);

“High Culture and Low review of Pierre Bourdieu’s La Distinction”, in Times Literary Supplement (1981);

Risk and Culture: Essays on the Selection of Environmental Dangers (1982);

How Institutions Think (1986);

In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (1993);

Leviticus as Literature (1999).