ABSTRACT
Purity and Danger is chiefly known and referred to for the concepts described up to this point–dirt as a classificatory anomaly and as a cross-cutting analytical principle to use in rendering traditional and modern beliefs intelligible. For all her influence, Mary Douglas does though provide a good many other insights which are largely overlooked. Douglas identifies four types of social dangers. One of these dangers is when the external boundaries of the system might be breached (war or invasion); another is when the internal lines of the system might be transgressed (such as gender roles); a third includes marginal cases (she gives the example of unborn children that are a danger because they are neither dead nor alive, and are neither known yet to be male nor female); and the fourth danger is contradictions between different parts of the system when it is at war with itself (such as intergenerational conflict).
