Implicit Meanings: Selected Essays in Anthropology

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Psychology Press, 1999 - Social Science - 322 pages

'No more sparkling and suggestive work of social science is likely to appear in the near future. This book provides a splendid answer as to why anthropology goes on mattering and also to why no surgery can separate it from sociology '-The Economist from the reviews of the first edition This new edition of a classic work provides an excellent introduction to the thought of anthropologist 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 writings on the key themes which are associated with Mary Douglas's work and which have had a major influence on anthropological thought, such as: *food *pollution *risk *animals *myth. Among the new pieces inluded in this edition are: The Lele of the Kasai * Techniques of Socrcery Control in Central Africa * The Lele Revisited * Obituary of Godfrey Lienhardt * The Depolitzation of Risk * Rightness of Categories

 

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About the author (1999)

Born in Italy, Mary Douglas was educated at Oxford University and began her career as a civil servant in 1943. Her first field research was carried out in what was then the Belgian Congo and she taught at Oxford and the University of London before moving to the United States in 1977. Purity and Danger (1966) is an essay about the logic of pollution beliefs, suggesting that ideas about dirt and disorder outline and reinforce particular social orders. Her other essays exploring the implicit meanings of cultural symbols follow a similar Durkheimian format. Her recent interests have turned to analysis of risk behavior and cross-cultural attitudes about food and alcohol.

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