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Dame Mary Douglas, DBE, (born March 25, 1921 - died 16 May 2007) was a British anthropologist, known for her writings on human culture and symbolism. Image File history File links Current_event_marker. ... // The following is a list of notable deaths in 2007. ... The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is a British order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by King George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions; in decreasing order of seniority, these are Knight Grand Cross or Dame Grand Cross (GBE) Knight Commander... March 25 is the 84th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (85th in leap years). ... Year 1921 (MCMXXI) was a common year starting on Saturday (see link for full calendar). ... May 16 is the 136th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (137th in leap years). ... 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the CE era. ... See Anthropology. ... The word culture comes from the Latin root colere (to inhabit, to cultivate, or to honor). ...

Her area was social anthropology; she was considered a follower of Durkheim and a proponent of structuralist analysis, with a strong interest in comparative religion. Cultural anthropology, also called social anthropology or socio-cultural anthropology, is one of four commonly recognized fields of anthropology, the holistic study of humanity. ... David Émile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917) is known as the founder of modern sociology. ... The Major religious groups of the world. ...

Biography

She was born as Margaret Mary Tew in San Remo, Italy to Gilbert and Phyllis Tew; her father was in the British colonial service. Her mother was a devout Roman Catholic and Mary and her younger sister, Patricia, were raised in that faith. After their mother's death the sisters were raised by their maternal grandparents and attended the Roman Catholic Sacred Heart Convent in Roehampton. Mary went on to study at the University of Oxford from 1939 to 1943; there she was influenced by E.E. Evans-Pritchard. Country Italy Region Liguria Province Imperia (IM) Mayor Claudio Borea Elevation 15 m Area 54 km² Population  - Total (as of 2004) 56,903  - Density 936/km² Time zone CET, UTC+1 Coordinates Gentilic Sanremesi or Sanremaschi Dialing code 0184 Postal code 18038 Frazioni San Romolo, Poggio, Bussana, Bussana Vecchia, Coldirodi... The Roman Catholic Church, most often spoken of simply as the Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with over one billion members. ... Roehampton is a place in south London, in the London Borough of Wandsworth. ... The University of Oxford (usually abbreviated as Oxon. ... Edward Evan (E. E.) Evans-Pritchard (September 21, 1902 - September 11, 1973) was a British anthropologist instrumental in the development of social anthropology in that country. ...

She worked in the British Colonial Office until 1947, when she returned to Oxford to take up graduate study she had left. She studied with M. N. Srinivas as well as Evans-Pritchard. In 1949 she did field work with the Lele people in what was then the Belgian Congo; this took her to village life in the region between the Kasai River and the Loange River, where the Lele lived on the edge of the previous Kuba kingdom. The Secretary of State for the Colonies or Colonial Secretary was the British Cabinet official in charge of managing the various British colonies. ... M.N. Srinivas, 1916-1999 Mysore Narasimhachar Srinivas is Indias foremost sociologist. ... Field work is a general descriptive term for the collection of raw data in the natural and social sciences, such as archaeology, biology, ecology, environmental science, geology,geography geophysics, paleontology, anthropology, linguistics, and sociology. ... Lelu is a small island in the Lelu Harbour (in the eastern part of Kusaie) and a district of the island of Kusaie, Micronesia. ... Motto: Travail et Progres (Work and Progress) The Belgian Congo Capital Léopoldville/Leopoldstad Political structure Colony Governor  - 1908-1910 Baron Wahis  - 1946-1951 Eugène Jacques Pierre Louis Jungers  - 1958-1960 Henri Arthur Adolf Marie Christopher Cornelis History  - Established 15 November, 1908  - Congolese independence 30 June, 1960 The Belgian... The Kasai River is a river in central Africa. ... Quba (also known as Guba and Kuba) is a city and a rayon in northeastern Azerbaijan. ... In politics, a country (or in some cases, a group of countries) over which a king or queen reigns, is a kingdom, see: monarchy. ...

In the early 1950s she completed her doctorate, married James Douglas and started a family of three children. She taught at University College, London, where she remained for around 25 years. She tought and wrote in the USA for 11 years. She published on such subjects as risk analysis and the environment, consumption and welfare economics, and food and ritual, all increasingly cited outside anthropology circles. The Front Quad University College London, commonly known as UCL, is one of the colleges that make up the University of London. ...

After four years (1977-81) as Foundation Research Professor of Cultural Studies at the Russell Sage Institute in New York, she moved to Northwestern University as Avalon Professor of the Humanities with a remit to link the studies of theology and anthropology. Her reputation was established by her book Purity and Danger (1966). She wrote The World of Goods (1978) with an econometrician, Baron Isherwood, which was considered a pioneering work on economic anthropology. Northwestern University is a private, coeducational, non-sectarian research university located in Evanston and Chicago, Illinois. ...

She became a Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire in the Queen's New Year's Honours List, published on December 30, 2006. She died on 16 May 2007, aged 86; survived by three children. Her husband had died in 2004. Commanders Badge of the Order of the British Empire The Most Excellent Order of the British Empire is an order of chivalry established on 4 June 1917 by George V. The Order includes five classes in civil and military divisions, in order of seniority: Knight or Dame Grand Cross... December 30 is the 364th day of the year (365th in leap years) in the Gregorian Calendar, with 1 day remaining. ... For the Manfred Mann album, see 2006 (album). ... May 16 is the 136th day of the year in the Gregorian calendar (137th in leap years). ... 2007 (MMVII) is the current year, a common year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar and the CE era. ... shelby was here 2004 (MMIV) was a leap year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar. ...

Contributions to Anthropology

Mary Douglas is best known for her interpretation of the book of Leviticus, and for her role in creating the Cultural Theory of risk. Leviticus is the third book of the Hebrew Bible, also the third book in the Torah (five books of Moses). ... The Cultural Theory of risk, often referred to simply as Cultural Theory (with capital letters), is a theory developed in anthropology and political science to explain risk perception. ...

In Purity and Danger, Douglas first proposed that the kosher laws were not, as many believed, either primitive health regulations or randomly chosen as tests of Jews' commitment to God. Instead, Douglas argued that the laws were about symbolic boundary-maintenance. Prohibited foods were those which did not seem to fall neatly into any category. For example, pigs' place in the natural order was ambiguous because they shared the cloven hoof of the ungulates, but did not chew cud. The circled U indicates that this can of tuna is certified kosher by the Union of Orthodox Congregations. ... This article discusses the term God in the context of monotheism and henotheism. ... This article is about the pig genus. ... A cloven hoof is a type of hoof split into two toes, each encased by a layer of horn. ... Llamas such as this, which have two toes, are artiodactylas -- even toed ungulates Ungulates (meaning roughly hoofed or hoofed animal) make up several orders of mammals, of which six to eight survive. ... Cud is a bolus of semi-degraded food regurgitated from the reticulorumen of a ruminant. ...

Douglas claims that rituals of purity that focus on sexuality are meant to mark the boundaries of the human body, in the same way by which the boundaries of society are marked. Rituals was an American soap opera that ran in syndication from September 1984 to September 1985 in 260 25 minutes episodes. ...

She begins "Purity and Danger" by stating what she considers obvious, that “ambiguous things can seem very threatening” (xi) and claims that “taboo is a spontaneous device for protecting the distinctive categories of the universe… taboo confronts the ambiguous and shunts it into the category of the sacred”. This article is about cultural prohibitions in general, for other uses, see Taboo (disambiguation). ...

Douglas' observations about the differences in traditional African societies' views of risks such as sorcery led her to formulate a functionalist theory of how social structures generate supportive worldviews. She developed this more fully into the Cultural Theory of risk in Risk and Culture, written with political scientist Aaron Wildavsky. The Sorceress by John William Waterhouse Magic and sorcery are the influencing of events, objects, people and physical phenomena by mystical, paranormal or supernatural means. ... The article is about functionalism in sociology; for other uses, see functionalism. ... Aaron Wildavsky (born 1930, died 1993) was a political scientist most noted for his work on risk. ...

While the Cultural Theory of risk has not been hugely important within anthropology, it has made an impact on the inter-disciplinary field of risk perception. Risk perception is the subjective judgment that people make about the characteristics and severity of a risk. ...

Works

• The Lele of the Kasai (1963)
• Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo (1966)
• Pollution (1968)
• Natural Symbols: Explorations in Cosmology (1970)
• Implicit Meanings (1975) essays
• Evans-Pritchard (1980)
• The World of Goods (1979) with Baron Isherwood
• Risk and Culture (1980) with Aaron Wildavsky
• In the Active Voice (1982)
• How Institutions Think (1987)
• Missing persons: a critique of the social sciences (1988) with Steven Ney
• Risk and Blame: Essays in Cultural Theory (1992)
• Thought styles: Critical essays on good taste (1996)
• Leviticus as Literature (1999)
• In the Wilderness: The Doctrine of Defilement in the Book of Numbers (2001)
• Jacob's Tears: The Priestly Work of Reconciliation (2004)
• Thinking in Circles (2007)

References

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

External links

• Sketch from Univ of Pennsylvania as Honorary degree recipient in 2000
• Bibliography
• http://www.guardian.co.uk/obituaries/story/0,,2082621,00.html Guardian obituary]
• http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/obituaries/article1805952.ece London Times obituary]