ABSTRACT
Mary Douglas wrote in a modernist tradition within British anthropology, which, after the devastation of World War I, turned away from Victorian triumphalist ideas that saw human progress as a story of ascent from superstition to modern science. However, Douglas thought Emile Durkheim did not go far enough in turning the anthropological gaze back upon ourselves, and he exempted modern Western culture from the entanglements of thought and social structure he found in traditional societies. Anthropology, Douglas argued, should provide a critical, humane, and sensitive interpretation of other religions and show how they are linked to our own practices. Whether in the Congo or in London, it is impossible to have social relations without symbolic acts. For her, rules about purity, such as those in the Bible, set up "the great inclusive categories in which the whole universe is hierarchized and structured".
