Every natural symbol - derived from blood, breath or excrement - carries a social meaning and this work focuses on the ways in which any one culture makes its selections from body symbolism. Each ...person treats their body as an image of society and the author examines the varieties of ritual and symbolic expression and the patterns of social ritual in which they are embodied.Natural Symbols is a book about religion and it concerns our own society at least as much as any other. It has stimulated new insights into religious and political movements and has provoked re-appraisals of current progressive orthodoxies in many fields. As a classic, it represents a work of anthropology in its widest sense, exploring themes such as the social meaning of natural symbols and the image of the body in society which are now very much in vogue in anthropology, sociology and cultural studies.In this reissue and with a new Introduction, Natural Symbols will continue to appeal to all students of anthropology, sociology and religion.
Many famous antique texts are misunderstood and many others have been completely dismissed, all because the literary style in which they were written is unfamiliar today. So argues Mary Douglas in ...this controversial study of ring composition, a technique which places the meaning of a text in the middle, framed by a beginning and ending in parallel. To read a ring composition in the modern linear fashion is to misinterpret it, Douglas contends, and today's scholars must reevaluate important antique texts from around the world.
Found in the Bible and in writings from as far afield as Egypt, China, Indonesia, Greece, and Russia, ring composition is too widespread to have come from a single source. Does it perhaps derive from the way the brain works? What is its function in social contexts? The author examines ring composition, its principles and functions, in a cross-cultural way. She focuses on ring composition in Homer'sIliad, the Bible's book of Numbers,and, for a challenging modern example, Laurence Sterne'sTristram Shandy, developing a persuasive argument for reconstruing famous books and rereading neglected ones.
First published in 1982, this collection of essays is a reproach to a form of the sociology of religion that treats people as the passive objects of impersonal social influences. In opposition to ...this, the author seeks to assert an active voice style of thinking about the relations between individuals and their cultural environment, whether in economics, history or literary criticism.
This collection is assembled with the guiding principle that all the essays touch upon the borderland between economic values and personal judgements of quality. Several essays illustrate the theme from the place of economics in anthropology and the place of economic behaviour in sociological and cultural criticism. The essay on 'Cultural bias' suggests a systematic method of analysis for investigating social influences on judgement and choice.
Historians as well as anthropologists have contributed to this volume of studies on aspects of witchcraft in a variety of cultures and periods from Tudor England to twentieth-century Africa and New ...Guinea. Contributors include: Mary Douglas, Norman Cohn, Peter Brown, Keith Thomas, Alan Macfarlane, Alison Redmayne, R.G. Willis, Edwin Ardener, Robert Brain, Julian Pitt-Rivers, Esther Goody, Peter Rivière, Anthony Forge, Godfrey Lienhardt, I.M. Lewis, Brian Spooner, G.I. Jones, Malcolm Ruel and T.O. Beidelman. First published in 1970.
Media representations and practices that have emerged out of contemporary wars have been well documented by a wide array of books and articles. These treatments, however, have been less attentive to ...how cultural constructions of military personnel and war itself figure in the depiction of the incursions in Iraq and Afghanistan. In Post-Feminist War , Mary Douglas Vavrus argues that all of these identity categories are integral to our understanding of those fighting, saved, or victimized by war. She considers two important questions: how the construction of gender, race, and class in media are productive of régimes of truth regarding war and military life, and how such constructions may also intensify militarism. By examining news and documentary media produced since September 11, 2001, Vavrus demonstrates that news narratives that include women use feminism selectively in gender equality narratives, which tend to reinforce historically resonant gender, race, and class identity constructions. She ultimately asserts that such reporting advances post-feminism, which, in tandem with banal militarism, subtly pushes military solutions for an array of problems women and girls face. 
Risk and Blame Douglas, Professor Mary
1992, 20020503, 2002, 1994, 2002-05-03, 19920101
eBook
Risk and danger are culturally conditioned ideas. They are shaped by pressures of social life and accepted notions of accountability. The risk analyses that are increasingly being utilised by ...politicians, aid programmes and business ignore the insights to be gained from social anthropology which can be applied to modern industrial society. In this collection of recent essays, Mary Douglas develops a programme for studying risk and blame that follows from ideas originally proposed in Purity and Danger . She suggests how political and cultural bias can be incorporated into the study of risk perception and in the discussion of responsibility in public policy.
First published in 1982, this is one of Mary Douglas' favourite books. It is based on her meetings with friends in which they attempt to apply the grip/group analysis from Natural Symbols. The essays ...have been important texts for preparing grid/group exercises ever since. She is still trying to improve the argument of Natural Symbols and is always hoping to find better applications to illustrate the power of the two dimensions used for accurate comparison.
First published in 1987, Constructive Drinking is a series of original case studies organized into three sections based on three major functions of drinking. The three constructive functions are: ...that drinking has a real social role in everyday life; that drinking can be used to construct an ideal world; and that drinking is a significant economic activity. The case studies deal with a variety of exotic drinks
Objective To explore patients’ perceptions of health‐care built environments, to assess how they perceived health‐care built facilities and designs. To develop a set of patient‐centred indicators by ...which to appraise future health‐care designs.
Design Qualitative and quantitative methodologies, including futures group conferencing, autophotographic study, novice‐expert exchanges and a questionnaire survey of a representative sample of past patients.
Setting and participants The research was carried out at Salford Royal Hospitals NHS Trust (SRHT), Greater Manchester, UK, selected for the study because of planned comprehensive redevelopment based on the new NHS vision for hospital care and service delivery for the 21st century. Participants included 35 patients who took part in an autophotographic study, eight focus groups engaged in futures conferencing, a sample of past inpatients from the previous 12 months that returned 785 completed postal questionnaires.
Results The futures group provided suggestions for radical improvements which were categorized into transport issues; accessibility and mobility; ground and landscape designs; social and public spaces; homeliness and assurance; cultural diversity; safety and security; personal space and access to outside. Patients’ autophotographic study centred on: the quality of the ward design, human interactions, the state and quality of personal space, and facilities for recreation and leisure. The novices’ suggestions were organized into categories of elemental factors representing patient‐friendly designs. Experts from the architectural and surveying professions and staff at SRHT in turn considered these categories and respective subsets of factors. They agreed with the novices in terms of the headings but differed in prioritizing the elemental factors. The questionnaire survey of past patients provided opinions about ward designs that varied according to where they stayed, single room, bay ward or long open ward. The main concerns were limitation of private space around the bed area, supportive of privacy and dignity, ward noise and other disturbances.
Conclusions Patients perceived sustainable health‐care environments to be supportive of their health and recovery. The design indicators developed from their perspectives and from their considerations for improvements to the health‐care built environment were based on their visions of the role of the health‐care facilities. These were homely environments that supported normal lifestyle and family functioning and designs that were supportive of accessibility and travel movements through transitional spaces.
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