eShop USA > Books > Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge Classics)
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of the Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (Routledge Classics)
List Price: $19.95Our Price: $13.57 You Save: $6.38 (32%)Prices subject to change.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Save $5.00 when you spend $25.00 or more on Qualifying Items offered by Amazon.com. Enter code BMLSAVES at checkout.
Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 390
EAN: 9780415289955
Edition: 1
ISBN: 0415289955
Label: TAYLOR
Manufacturer: TAYLOR
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 272
Publication Date: November 15, 2002
Publisher: TAYLOR
Studio: TAYLOR
Related Items: Featured Listmania!
Editorial Review:
In Purity and Danger Mary Douglas identifies the concern for purity as a key theme at the heart of every society. In lively and lucid prose she explains its relevance for every reader by revealing its wide-ranging impact on our attitudes to society, values, cosmology and knowledge. The book has been hugely influential in many areas of debate - from religion to social theory. But perhaps its most important role is to offer each reader a new explanation of why people behave in the way they do. With a specially commissioned introduction by the author which assesses the continuing significance of the work thirty-five years on, this Routledge Classics edition will ensure that Purity and Danger continues to challenge and question well into the new millennium.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating:  - classic work
This is one of the most famous and still relevant works about what are behind any given cultures concepts on cleanliness and impurity. Written in an accesible language so even interested laypersons can benefit from Mary Douglas' scholarly research. If you are intersted in Biblical criticism and/or anthropology - this book belongs in your bookshelf. It is simply a classic.
Rating: - Classic Anthropology
This book is considered a classic and laid groundwork for future anthropological work in religion and belief. Though some of Douglas' positions have been criticized or disputed in later years, this book is important at least in providing a snapshot of anthropology in her time and in understanding some of the fundamentals which underscore more modern research.
Having said that, it can be difficult to read at times, but is immensely interesting and at the least will open your eyes to ... Read More
Rating:  - Who shares your dessert?
Why do we let those close to us lick the same spoon, or eat off the same dish? Why kiss away tears but not snot? How do we learn to live with some filth and yet recoil at other dirt? And how does this all relate to "primitive" ritual, magical belief, and ethical culture?
This book manages to be accessible for the non-anthropologist or historian of religion, yet too densely argued and scattered for the novice. How can it be both? Douglas writes in a no-nonsense style that I enjoyed, when ... Read More
Rating:  - Storytelling
This may be an entertaining book if you want to read stories of foreign cultures and habits, but I don't think it meets the scientific standards of anthropology. The subtitle of the book is "an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo", but this is an overstatement. You will not find any true analysis in it. Every time the author approaches an analytic question or theory, she soon lets go of her thread and diverges into another irrelevant story. While reading this book, I asked myself several ... Read More
Rating: - even if you are not a scholarly type reader this is great
just to learn about a way to look at the world from a new perspective, to figure out why some things make us recoil while others give us delight is reason enough to get this book.
Related Categories:
| |
 |
