Who is Israel? Who were the priestly authors of the Pentateuch? This anthropological reading of the Bible, by a world-renowned scholar, starts by asking why the Book of Numbers lists the twelve tribes of Israel seven times. Mary Douglas argues that the editors, far from being a separate elite unconc[...]

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[...]

This new edition of a classic work provides an excellent introduction to the thought of Mary Douglas. First published to great acclaim in 1975, Mary Douglas has now revised the text to include additional chapters and a new introduction. Implicit Meanings includes writing on the key themes which are[...]

One of the most important works of modern anthropology. Written against the backdrop of the student uprisings of the late 1960s, the book took seriously the revolutionary fervour of the times, but instead of seeking to destroy the rituals and symbols that can govern and oppress, Mary Douglas saw ins[...]

First published in 1986 Mary Douglas' theory of institutions uses the sociological theories of Emile Durkheim and Ludwig Fleck to determine not only how institutions think, but also the extent to which thinking itself is dependent upon institutions. Different kinds of institutions allow individuals [...]

Mary Douglas was one of the most regarded anthropologists of the 20th Century. This is a collection of her latest essays on culture, previously uncollected, from the last decade and a half of her life.[...]

Mary Douglas's innovative explanations for styles of human thought and for the dynamics of institutional change have furnished a distinctive and powerful theory of how conflicts are managed, yet her work remains astonishingly poorly appreciated in social science disciplines. This volume introduces D[...]

Over the last two decades, much has changed in the world of oral history, as technology has opened up a wide range of possibilities for presentation and preservation of material. The doors of the archives have been blown from their hinges - and "access" has come to have a completely different meanin[...]

The story of Victor Frankenstein and the monstrous creature he created has held readers spellbound ever since it was published almost two centuries ago. On the surface, it is a novel of tense and steadily mounting horror; but on a more profound level, it offers searching illumination of the human co[...]