Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo

Citation

Douglas, M. (1966). Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo. Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Chapter Summary

The book opens with an introduction and runs through ten chapters. The publisher's description presents its subject as the concern for purity, which Douglas identifies as a key theme in every society, and traces its effect on attitudes to society, values, cosmology and knowledge. The Routledge Classics edition (2002) adds a preface by the author assessing the book's continuing significance.

Introduction

The introduction opens the inquiry into ideas of purity, pollution and taboo. The formula most closely associated with the book is that dirt is matter out of place: on this view, what counts as dirt depends on how a society orders things, not on hygiene alone.

Chapter 1: Ritual Uncleanness

The first chapter takes up ritual uncleanness, the idea that certain things or states make a person ritually unfit. It is the starting point for asking why societies treat some things as polluting.

Chapter 2: Secular Defilement

The second chapter turns to defilement in non-religious, everyday settings. Reading it beside the first chapter shows that the book is concerned with ordinary ideas of dirt as well as sacred ones.

Chapter 3: The Abominations of Leviticus

The best-known case study is the Hebrew Bible's dietary prohibitions. In the first edition Douglas argued that the prohibited animals were those that did not fit the Israelites' categories of creation, a reading that treats the laws as symbolic boundary-keeping rather than primitive hygiene or arbitrary tests of obedience. In her 2002 preface she described this explanation as a mistake and proposed instead that the dietary laws model the body and the altar on one another, so readers should treat this chapter together with that preface.

Chapters 4–5: Magic and Miracle; Primitive Worlds

These two chapters widen the frame from the Hebrew Bible case to magic and miracle and to what the author calls primitive worlds. The contents list gives only the titles, so use the chapters themselves for the detailed argument.

Chapters 6–7: Powers and Dangers; External Boundaries

By their titles, these chapters move to the powers and dangers attributed to things that cross or threaten a society's categories, and to the external boundaries of a social group.

Chapters 8–10: Internal Lines; The System at War with Itself; The System Shattered and Renewed

The final chapters turn, as their titles suggest, to lines drawn inside a social system, to a system at war with itself, and to a system shattered and renewed. The publisher's description does not break these chapters down further.

Key Concepts

Introduction and Chapters 1–3

• Purity and pollution: the book's organising pair of ideas, which Douglas treats as present in every society.
• Dirt as matter out of place: the book's best-known formula; dirt is defined by disorder in a classification, not by its physical nature.
• Ritual uncleanness and secular defilement: the two settings in which the book first examines rules about contamination.
• Taboo: a prohibition tied to such classifications, discussed through the dietary laws of Leviticus.

Chapters 4–10

• Symbolic boundaries: the external and internal lines named in the chapter titles, which the book connects to social order.
• System of classification: the framework whose stability, strain and renewal the last chapters examine.

Critical Analysis

Strengths

• A question with wide reach. The publisher stresses that the book connects purity concerns to religion, social theory, values, cosmology and knowledge. That range is why it is read well beyond anthropology.
• A clear, memorable thesis. Reviewers quoted by the publisher praised the writing: New Society called it graceful, lucid and polemical, and the Times Literary Supplement described a mind at work. In 1991 the TLS also listed the book among the hundred most influential non-fiction books published since 1945.
• The author revisits her own argument. The 2002 preface lets readers see how Douglas herself reassessed the Leviticus chapter, which makes the book a useful example of a theory being corrected by its author.

Limitations

• The Leviticus reading is disputed by its author. Because Douglas withdrew her first account of the dietary laws, a reader who takes the 1966 argument at face value will be out of step with her final view.
• A comparative argument, not an ethnography. The contents list is organised by theme, not by a single field site, and the publisher describes the book as an analysis of concepts. Readers who want sustained field data should pair it with an ethnographic monograph.
• Dated vocabulary. The chapter title "Primitive Worlds" reflects the usage of 1966 and needs to be read in its period.

Where It Fits in the Course

In the course on kinship, religion and ritual, Purity and Danger is a primary text that other books discuss. Bielo's Anthropology of Religion: The Basics and Stephenson's Ritual: A Very Short Introduction are short overviews organised around questions and theories, and are the right place to start if the field is new. Stein and colleagues' The Anthropology of Religion, Magic, and Witchcraft is an introductory textbook with ethnographic cases.

Douglas's work pairs naturally with Turner's The Ritual Process, a study of ritual built on Ndembu material, and with Bell's Ritual Theory, Ritual Practice, which surveys how scholars have conceived of ritual and proposes the idea of ritual as practice. Carsten's After Kinship and Lancy's The Anthropology of Childhood address the course's family and kinship side and are not directly about pollution.

How to Use This Book

Purity and Danger suits students who already have a basic map of anthropological approaches to religion and ritual, for instance from a short introduction, and who want a classic theoretical argument. It is a book of ideas, not a textbook, so it rewards slow reading and note-taking.

A practical plan: read the introduction and Chapters 1–2 for the problem and the central formula; then read Chapter 3 together with the author's 2002 preface in the Routledge Classics edition, noting how and why her reading changed. Chapters 4–5 place the argument in a comparative frame. Chapters 6–10 develop it, and are best read in one sitting each, with a short note on how the boundaries described map onto social structure. Ask of each case what is being classified and what counts as out of place.

Pair the book with a short ethnographic study of a ritual, and compare Douglas's emphasis on classification with Turner's emphasis on process.