Mary Douglas: Critical Introduction

This is the first full length account of the life and ideas of Mary Douglas, the British social anthropologist whose publications span the second half of the twentieth century.
Richard Fardon covers Douglas' family background, and the pervasive influence of her catholic faith on her writings before providing an analysis of two of her most influential works; Purity and Danger (1966) and Natural Symbols (1970). The final section deals with Douglas' more controversial writings in the fields of economics, consumption, religion and risk analysis in contemporary societies. Throughout, Fardon highlights the centrality of Douglas' role in the history of anthropology and the discipline's struggle to achieve relevance to contemporary, western societies.

This is the first full-length account of the life and ideas of Mary Douglas, whom many consider to be the most influential British social anthropologist of the modern era. Richard Fardon covers Douglas' family background, education and early research before providing an analysis of two of her most important works: Purity and Danger (1966) and Natural Symbols (1970). The final section deals with Douglas' often controversial forays across disciplinary boundaries--into Old Testament studies as well as the fields of economics, religion and risk analysis in contemporary societies.

An indispensable aid to further research, Mary Douglas: An Intellectual Biography offers a significant contribution to the history of social anthropology in the second half of the twentieth century and will surely remain the definitive work on its subject for years to come.

Times Literary Supplement

Mary Douglas is one of Britain's best-known and most productive anthropologists, noted not just within the discipline but across a wider range of intellectual activity where she has applied her anthropological insights, ranging from theology and environmental studies, to economics and the study of consumer capitalism. She is also perhaps one of Britain's most controversial anthropologists, whether it be for her forthright rejection of standard utilitarian approaches in the disciplines she has tried to colonize, or for her lifelong search within her own discipline - while many of her colleagues were content to embrace a loosely defined relativism - for a universal explanatory formula for cultural difference. Different though it has been in its theoretical orientation, Douglas's career bears comparison with that of one of the few other women in the discipline to have achieved recognition outside it: the American anthropologist Margaret Mead. In a review some years back of a book on Mead by Robert Cassidy, Douglas was critical of his biographical approach. The book, she wrote, suffered "the usual limitation of hagiography, strong in praise . . . and weak in dealing with the enigmas and problems of a person living in a particular time and place". Douglas was particularly curious to understand why it was that Mead had been so marginal to mainstream American anthropology. "How much did she choose to be an outsider", she wrote; "how much was the choice a response to the opportunity structure she found herself facing - it is impossible to say." Mead's gender was not irrelevant, she suggested. "A man who showed such an early brilliance would have been sought by major institutions which would have forced the conflict of ambition and independence to be played within supporting structures eminently able to bestow awards on their favourites."