Douglas mary

Father Mary Douglas, nee Margaret Mary Tew, served in the British colonial administration, her mother was a devout Catholic, and Mary and her sister were brought up according to this belief. Douglas attended Catholic school, and then, from 1939 to 1943, she studied at Oxford .

She worked in the Ministry of Colonial Affairs until 1947, and then returned to Oxford to continue her studies. She studied with the sociologist from India M.N. Shrinivas and Evans-Pritchard . In 1949, she carried out field studies of the Lele people in the territory of the then Belgian Congo , in the Kasai River region.

In the early 1950s, Douglas received her doctoral degree and married James Douglas. He was also a Catholic and belonged to a colonial family. They had three children.

Douglas has taught at University College London for over 25 years. Since 1977, she has been teaching and writing in the USA for 11 years (at the Russell Sage Institute in New York and Northwestern University, as a professor of culturology and a professor of the humanities, respectively). She has published work on topics such as risk analysis and the environment, consumption and welfare economics, food and ritual; at the same time, her works became increasingly popular outside of anthropological circles. The work “Purity and Danger” , published in 1966, won Douglas scientific reputation.

In 1978, the World of Goods , written in collaboration with the Econometrician Baron Isherwood, was published , which was the first work in the field of economic anthropology.

In 2006, she was declared Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire. She died on May 16, 2007 in London at the age of 86 from cancer complications, surviving her husband for three years.

The book “Purity and Danger” written in 1966 is considered the main text in social anthropology.

The work explores the verbal designations and meaning of dirt in various contexts. According to Douglas, something that is not in place is considered dirty. (Here Douglas is repelled by William James .) An attempt is made to distinguish between the sacred, the clean and the unclean in different societies and at different times. A complex reading of ritual, religion, and lifestyle makes it possible to cast doubt on Western ideas of pollution, emphasizing the role of context and social history.

Douglas, for the first time, suggests that the laws of kashrut are, contrary to popular belief, neither primitive rules for maintaining health, nor arbitrary regulations for testing the loyalty of Jews to God. Instead, according to Douglas, these laws were aimed at maintaining a symbolic border.

Later, in the preface to the new 2002 edition, Douglas abandoned the initial explanation of the kashrut rules. She suggested that “the dietary laws in a complex way reproduce the body as an altar and vice versa” ^[6] , because of the land animals the Israelis were allowed to eat only those that could be sacrificed, animals that depend on the cattleman. Thus, Douglas concludes that animals that should cause disgust are not truly unclean, because “a rational, just, compassionate biblical God [could not] be so inconsistent as to create hideous creatures” ^[7] .

Douglas is known for his work on the interpretation of the book of Leviticus , as well as participation in the creation of a cultural theory of risk .

• 1963: The Lele of the Kasai ( Lele Kasai )
• 1966: Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo ( Purity and Danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo )
• 1968: Pollution ( Pollution )
• 1970: Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology ( Natural Symbols: Cosmology Research )
• 1975: Implicit Meanings: Essays in Anthropology ( Implicit Values: Essays on Anthropology )
• 1975: Jokes , in Rethinking Popular Culture (Contemporary Jokes , Reconsidering Popular Culture: Contemporary Views in Cultural Studies )
• 1979: The World of Goods with Baron Isherwood ( World of Goods , co-authored with Baron Isherwood)
• 1980: Evans-Pritchard ( Evans-Pritchard )
• 1980: Risk and Culture with Aaron Wildavsky (Co- Risk and Culture , co-authored by Aaron Wildavsky)
• 1982: In the Active Voice
• 1986: How Institutions Think ( How Social Institutions Think )
• 1988: Missing Persons: a critique of the social sciences with Steven Ney ( Missing People: A Critique of the Social Sciences , in collaboration with Stephen Neh)
• 1992: Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory ( Risk and Prosecution: Essays on the Theory of Culture )
• 1993: In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers ( In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Desecration in the Book of Numbers )
• 1996: Thought styles: Critical essays on good taste ( Styles of thought: critical essays on good taste )
• 1999: Leviticus as Literature ( Leviticus as literature )
• 2002: Constructive Drinking: Perspectives on Drink from Anthropology ( Constructive Drinking: A Perspective on Drinking from Anthropology )
• 2004: Jacob's Tears: The Priestly Work of Reconciliation ( Jacob's Tears: Priestly Conciliation Work )
• 2007: Thinking in Circles ( Thinking in Circles )

Russian editions

• Douglas M. Risk as a judicial mechanism / Trans. A.D. Kovalev // THESIS. - 1994. - № 5. - p. 242-253.
• Mary Douglas. Purity and Hazard: Analysis of the ideas of defilement and taboo / Trans. from English R. Gromova, edited by S. Bankkovskaya; get up Art. and comm. S. Bankovskoy. - M .: CANON-press-C, Kuchkovo field. M., 2000. 288 p. ISBN 5-93354-007-2
• Bankovskaya S. Mary Douglas // Sociological Review . 2007. t. 6. № 3. C. 118-126.

• Richard Fardon, Mary Douglas: an Intellectual Biography (1999) (Richard Fardon. Mary Douglas: intellectual biography .)

• Bibliography (English, Fr.)
• Article on M. Douglas (2007) (not available link)
• Brief Scientific Biography M. Douglas (English)
• An article dedicated to the 80th birthday of M. Douglas (scientific biography) (eng.)
• Note about M. Douglas from 2000 (Eng.)
• Obituary in The Guardian (English)
• Obituary in The Times (eng.)
• Obituary in The Toronto Star (English)
• Interview with M. Douglas on Youtube (2006) (English)