Mary Douglas's "Purity and Danger: An Analysis of
Concepts of Pollution and Taboo" explores the cultural notion of dirt
and its symbolic meanings. She follows Emile Durkheim in defining dirt
as that which is out of its place (ketchup in fine in the bottle or on the
plate, but not on my shirt). What Douglas does is to tie this distinction to
the distinction between the scared and the profane (a long held interest of
structuralist anthropology). Uncleanliness, she holds, is a cultural matter
determined by actual and symbolic power
structures.
"Purity and Danger" is an inquiry into
different notions of dirt in different cultures, demonstrating the contingent
and socially determined nature of what's clean and what's not. For example,
Douglas studies the Jewish Kosher laws, arguing that they separate the easy
categorized and thus understood from the threatening undetermined (Douglas
later retracted this understanding of Jewish laws, see Douglas's "Purity and Danger" and Power
Structures).
Douglas further
argues (especially in chapter 2 of the book) is that, unlike previous notions
in anthropology, the distinction between the scared and the profane did not
disappear in modern times but rather manifested itself in other 'secular' terms
of clean and unclean and our perception of what constitutes contamination. Douglas
also holds that these notions bear an analogous form of the specific social
order of a group. What makes for "dirt" is that which is considered anomalous
and transgressive of normal bounds. This makes the symbolyic meanings of
contamination socially dependant and thus relative.
Here you can find
summaries of the first two chapters of Mary Douglas's "Purity and Danger:
Chapter 1: Ritual Uncleanness
chapter 2: Secular Defilement
"Purity and Danger" was inspired by
the work of Emile Durkheim such as Elementary Forms of Religious Life, the Sacred and the Profane or "The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle
or Mana" and was itself inspiration for works such as
"Powers of Horror" by psychoanalyst Julia Kristeva.
This was a short summary of Purity and Danger by Mary Douglas. see here for and extended summary.
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