Food preferences and tastes are among the fundamentals affecting human existence; the sociocultural, physiological and neurological factors involved have therefore been widely researched and are well documented. However, information and debate on these factors are scattered across the academic literature of different disciplines. In this volume cross-disciplinary perspectives are brought together by an international team of contributors that includes social and biological anthropologists, ethologists and ethnologists, psychologists, neurologists and zoologists in order to provide access to...
Food preferences and tastes are among the fundamentals affecting human existence; the sociocultural, physiological and neurological factors involve...
First published in 1982, this collection of essays is a reproach to a form of the sociology of religion that treats people as the passive objects of impersonal social influences. In opposition to this, the author seeks to assert an active voice style of thinking about the relations between individuals and their cultural environment, whether in economics, history or literary criticism.
This collection is assembled with the guiding principle that all the essays touch upon the borderland between economic values and personal judgements of quality. Several essays illustrate the theme...
First published in 1982, this collection of essays is a reproach to a form of the sociology of religion that treats people as the passive objects o...
Written in the last two decades of her life, Cultures and Crises finds Mary Douglas developing analyses of critical conditions facing contemporary societies, sometimes in the company of distinguished co-authors across the whole gamut of social sciences.
The essays focus on the collaborative development of 'cultural theory' from the 'grid and group' analysis of the 1970s through to its application and elaboration in her later thought. The material covers questions of culture and institutions, the challenges to culture posed by climate change and the nature of risk in...
Written in the last two decades of her life, Cultures and Crises finds Mary Douglas developing analyses of critical conditions facing contempor...
The range of Mary Douglas's interests had few parallels amongst the leading social anthropologists of the 20th century.
Although inspired by the classics of the discipline of anthropology, her theories were idiosyncratic and her applications of them never predictable.
By bringing together writings in different genres that she composed over the entirety of her career, this volume demonstrates her distinctive style of thought and expression. The topics she addressed ranged freely between family and friends, the demands of domestic routine, her belonging to the...
The range of Mary Douglas's interests had few parallels amongst the leading social anthropologists of the 20th century.
Who is Israel? Who were the priestly authors of the Pentateuch? This anthropological reading of the Bible, by a world-renowned scholar, starts by asking why the Book of Numbers lists the twelve tribes of Israel seven times. Mary Douglas argues that the editors, far from being a separate elite unconcerned with their congregation's troubles, cherished a political agenda, a religious protest against the government of Judah's exclusionary policies. The priestly theology depends on God's Covenant with all the descendants of Jacob, including the sons of Joseph. It would have been unpatriotic, even...
Who is Israel? Who were the priestly authors of the Pentateuch? This anthropological reading of the Bible, by a world-renowned scholar, starts by aski...
Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written is unfamiliar today. So argues Mary Douglas in this controversial study of ring composition, a technique which places the meaning of a text in the middle, framed by a beginning and ending in parallel. To read a ring composition in the modern linear fashion is to misinterpret it, Douglas contends, and today's scholars must reevaluate important antique texts from around the world.
Found in the Bible and in writings from as far afield as...
Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were writt...
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...
Risk and danger are culturally conditioned ideas. They are shaped by pressures of social life and accepted notions of accountability. The risk analyse...
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 wide-ranging 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...
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 s...
One of the most important works of modern anthropology. Written against the backdrop of the student uprisings of the late 1960s, the book took seriously the revolutionary fervour of the times, but instead of seeking to destroy the rituals and symbols that can govern and oppress, Mary Douglas saw instead that if transformation were needed, it could only be made possible through better understanding. Expressed with clarity and dynamism, the passionate analysis which follows remains one of the most insightful and rewarding studies of human behaviour ever written.
One of the most important works of modern anthropology. Written against the backdrop of the student uprisings of the late 1960s, the book took serious...
Written in the last two decades of her life, Cultures and Crises finds Mary Douglas developing analyses of critical conditions facing contemporary societies, sometimes in the company of distinguished co-authors across the whole gamut of social sciences.
The essays focus on the collaborative development of 'cultural theory' from the 'grid and group' analysis of the 1970s through to its application and elaboration in her later thought. The material covers questions of culture and institutions, the challenges to culture posed by climate change and the nature of risk in...
Written in the last two decades of her life, Cultures and Crises finds Mary Douglas developing analyses of critical conditions facing contempor...
