ABSTRACT
The cultural anthropologist Mary Douglas has been a pivotal figure in sociocultural analyses of risk, and she is the primary exponent of and influence in ‘cultural/ symbolic’ perspectives on risk. Douglas’ approach to risk is best understood as part of a trajectory of theorizing on the body, selfhood and the regulation of contamination and danger that she began three decades ago, in which the symbolic aspects of judgements about danger, pollution and Otherness were identified. Risk, for Douglas, is a contemporary western strategy for dealing with danger and Otherness. Much of her writings on risk seek to explain why it is that some dangers are identified as ‘risks’ and others are not. Her main explanations revolve around the importance for social groups, organizations or societies to maintain boundaries between self and Other, deal with social deviance and achieve social order. As such, her approach and those of her followers may be described as taking a functional structuralist approach to risk.
