ABSTRACT
Mary Douglas's impact on the way we understand human culture in both Western and non-Western societies is profound. The Telegraph described her as "perhaps the leading British anthropologist of the second half of the 20th century", while The Guardian called her "the most widely read British social anthropologist of her generation". However, just because Douglas's key arguments about dirt, purity, and holiness are now nearly universally used does not mean they are always used properly. Douglas is best known for her work on systems of taboo, dirt, and people's need for classification, as well as her celebrated 1966 book Purity and Danger, which changed the thinking of a readership both within the academic world and far beyond it. The ideas Douglas explores in Purity and Danger first emerged in her doctoral thesis on the Lele, which she published in 1963 as The Lele of the Kasai.
