Purity and Danger
Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo is a 1966 book by the anthropologist and cultural theorist Mary Douglas.Through a complex and sophisticated reading of ritual, religion and lifestyle, Douglas challenged Western ideas of pollution and clarified how context and social history are essential.As an example of that approach, Douglas first proposed that the kosher laws were not, as many believed, either primitive health regulations or randomly chosen tests of the Israelites' commitment to God.For example, the place of pigs in the natural order was ambiguous because they shared the cloven hoof of the ungulates but did not chew cud.[1] In Powers of Horror (1980), Julia Kristeva elaborates her theory of abjection and recognises the influence of Douglas's "fundamental work" but criticises certain aspects of her approach.