First published in 1984, this work is a cross-cultural study of the moral and social meaning of food. It is a collection of articles by Douglas and her colleagues covering the food system of the Oglala Sioux, the food habits of families in rural North Carolina, and meal formats in an Italian-American community near Philadelphia. It also includes a grid/group analysis of food consumption.

First published in 1987, " Constructive Drinking" studies the functions drinking plays within society. A series of original case studies deal with a variety of exotic - not just alcohol - from a variety of cultural and geographical contexts.

First published in 1985, Mary Douglas intended "Risk and Acceptability "as a review of the existing literature on the state of risk theory, she instead uses the book to argue risk analysis from an anthropological perspective.

Risk and danger are culturally conditioned ideas. They are shaped by pressures of social life and accepted notions of accountability. The risk analyses that are increasingly being utilised by politicians, aid programmes and business ignore the insights to be gained from social anthropology which can be applied to modern industrial society.
In this collection of recent essays, Mary Douglas develops a programme for studying risk and blame that follows from ideas originally proposed in Purity and Danger. She suggests how political and cultural bias can be incorporated into the study...