ABSTRACT
Mary Douglas's project in Purity and Danger is Durkheimian, which is to say it looks to how beliefs are socially constructed and the social function they serve. In Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo, Mary Douglas cleverly applies to something as common and omnipresent as dirt, disorder, and mess a framework for how the social order ritually renews and rejuvenates itself. For one, Douglas's Purity and Danger is mainly known for her two detailed studies of Jewish dietary law and the pangolin cult of the Lele. Both pork and pangolin are forbidden, Douglas argues, because they fall outside classificatory frameworks. Second, though Douglas criticizes authors such as James Frazer for making broad distinctions between "primitive" and "modern" people, she herself draws a seemingly similar distinction between unified and compartmentalized experience. Third, another question that might be asked is whether Douglas has defined "ritual" so broadly as to be meaningless.
