35 pages • 1 hour read
Mary DouglasPurity and Danger
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 1966A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Preface-Chapter 1 Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Preface Summary
The 2002 edition of Purity and Danger contains a Preface in which Douglas recalls the circumstances of the book's original publication in 1966, recaps some of its main ideas, clarifies some points, and revises some of her earlier statements (especially about the Book of Leviticus). She places her book in the social and cultural context of the 1940s through the 1960s, explaining that it was part of an effort to combat racist prejudices toward “primitive” societies and religions. She recalls that the book's ideas about structure and control were at variance with the anti-authoritarian social atmosphere of the middle and late 1960s; at the same time, the book anticipated the ecological concerns of the 1970s and beyond.
Also in the Preface, Douglas revises some of her earlier statements about the prohibitions in the Book of Leviticus. Notably, she puts forward the idea that the avoidance rules express the idea that it is abominable to harm the animals in question, not that they themselves are abominable. “The prohibitions of unclean animals are not based on abhorrence,” but are rather part of an “intellectual structure of rules that mirror God's covenant with his people” (xv).
Introduction Summary
The Introduction sets forth the principal themes of the book. Purity rituals “create unity in experience” (3) by imposing patterns of order on the chaos of experience: “There is nothing fearful or unreasoning in our dirt-avoidance: it is a creative movement, an attempt to relate form to function, to make unity of experience” (3). Dirt is principally about order, and its removal is a positive action. In many cultures, the purity of the body symbolizes the hierarchies and relationships of society. Purity beliefs are often used to back up the moral code of a society, with transgressions like incest or adultery tied to illness, contagion, or meteorological disaster.
Douglas’s book will question some assumptions of earlier anthropologists, including the notion that primitive religions are inspired by fear and obsessed with hygiene and defilement. To Douglas, purity beliefs are a human constant, found in some form in every society, and are part of the central project of religion. Holding a plethora of beliefs about purity and pollution does not necessarily imply a “rigid mental outlook or rigid social institutions” (6). Furthermore, fear is not the dominant mood of these societies. On the contrary, some of them treat the deity as a familiar friend and are characterized by a carefree and happy attitude toward life. Finally, studying the beliefs of “primitive” societies can throw light on Western culture—for example, the Christian teachings of St. Paul about grace and redemption. Thus, a study of purity rituals “is a sound entry to comparative religion” (7).
Chapter 1 Summary: “Ritual Uncleanness”
We as a society avoid dirt and pollution, and it is self-evident to us that the sacred and the unclean are opposites. Yet some anthropologists have maintained that primitive societies conflated sacredness with uncleanness. This is because (according to the theory) primitive peoples considered the sacred to mean principally prohibition. The sacred or divine is set apart from humanity, and whoever comes into illicit contact with it risks becoming “contaminated.”
A number of early anthropologists held an evolutionary view of human spiritual development: First came magic, then religion, then science. Religions that were preoccupied with hygienic rules were less advanced, while those which had ethical goals were more advanced. For example, some anthropologists believed that early Judaism was obsessed with external observances and that the Prophets attempted to instill a greater concern for internal morality. In this view:
Primitive rules on uncleanliness pay attention to the material circumstances of an act and judge it good or bad accordingly […] Christian rules of holiness, by contrast, disregard the material circumstances and judge according to the motives and disposition of the agent (13).
Douglas is critical of many of these views of ancient culture and insists that we confront the ideas that form the basis of our own culture before critiquing other societies.
Preface-Chapter 1 Analysis
Douglas reviews with a critical eye some ideas of earlier anthropologists—including an important school influenced by Sir James Frazer—about purity and uncleanness. According to this school, primitive societies made little distinction between sacredness and uncleanness. This is because they saw uncleanness as implying illicit contact with divinity—a kind of “sacred contagion.” In ancient Syria, for example, pigs were avoided because they were variously considered unclean or sacred. This idea is also reflected to some extent in the Hebrew scriptures, where “holy” means “set apart.”
Frazer's school claimed that the primitive mind associated uncleanness with physical conditions only and treated purity rituals as instrumental mechanisms, similar to magic. To the extent that a religion associated impurity with spiritual states, it was held to be a “higher” or “advanced” religion. This school was of an evolutionist mindset, influenced by Hegel and Darwin, and saw civilization in a steady state of progress from “primitive” cultures to our “advanced” modern Western culture. Some Protestant anthropologists compared primitive magic to Catholicism as a way to shame their (Protestant) opponents into accepting their views. For them, “advanced” ethical religion evolved out of “primitive” magic in the same way that Protestantism evolved out of Catholicism.
Douglas argues that many of Frazer's “school”—which included Durkheim and T.H. Green—displayed complacent and prejudiced attitudes toward primitive societies. Her book will attempt to reunite false dichotomies—between religion and magic, ritual and ethics, and interior and exterior religion.
