ABSTRACT
Anthropologist Mary Douglas places her foundational study, Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, within a broadly defined definition of 'culture', and through examinations of several tribal communities draws conclusions analogous to those that can emerge from an analysis of English cultural maintenance, both private and public. While the middle-class housewife at one time was less involved on a physical level with the day-to-day cleaning and maintenance of her household, she was nonetheless responsible for its management. Foucault's theory of regimentation stresses a "double system: gratification-punishment" that, through ascribing "opposing values of good and evil" to observance and nonobservance of social order, encourages complicity in the system through creating a desire for reward. The first generation of mass-marketed volumes on bodily maintenance contains advice that is as dogmatic and as geared toward regimentation as were their predecessors of domestic ingenuity.
