Mary Douglas quotes

Mary Douglas was a British social anthropologist renowned for her influential work on human culture, symbolism, and classification. Her book "Purity and Danger" reshaped the study of ritual, taboo, and the concept of dirt. She became a leading figure in the analysis of how societies organize ideas of order and meaning. Here are 35 of her quotes:

Real equality is immensely difficult to achieve, it needs continual revision and monitoring of distributions. And it does not provide buffers between members, so they are continually colliding or frustrating each other.

Mary Douglas

If you want to change the culture, you will have to start by changing the organization.

Mary Douglas

It seems true that the growth of science and secularism made organized Christianity feel under threat.

Mary Douglas

Religion can make it worse. Are you supposing that if people were encouraged to believe in a transcendent reality, and to be encouraged by grand rituals and music and preaching, to love their neighbors, then they would put jealousy and frustration aside?

Mary Douglas

Our ultimate task is to find interpretative procedures that will uncover each bias and discredit its claims to universality. When this is done the eighteenth century can be formally closed and a new era that has been here a long time can be officially recognised. The individual human being, stripped of his humanity, is of no use as a conceptual base from which to make a picture of human society. No human exists except steeped in the culture of his time and place. The falsely abstracted individual has been sadly misleading to Western political thought. But now we can start again at a point where major streams of thought converge, at the other end, at the making of culture. Cultural analysis sees the whole tapestry as a whole, the picture and the weaving process, before attending to the individual threads.

Mary Douglas

I am convinced that living in an enclave shapes the personality, and living alone shapes the personality too.

Mary Douglas

Any great organization can go through sectarian phases.

Mary Douglas

Every year the progress of advanced capitalist society makes our population consist of more and more isolates. This is because of the infrastructure of the economy, especially electronic communications.

Mary Douglas

Enclave life becomes very tense, Even when they do elect a leader, the factions remain, with the threat of splitting off.

Mary Douglas

The theory of cultural bias... is the idea that a culture is based on a particular form of organization. It can't be transplanted except to another variant of that organization.

Mary Douglas

Our technological infrastructure alienates us from each other. No need to form a workplace community, everybody there will be out in a year or two, and so will you, looking for a better place.

Mary Douglas

When we are reflecting on terrorism we can grieve for many things we do and have done.

Mary Douglas

Mormons... are so strong, they can handle wealth, they are confident. I think it is because they are not bogged down by rules for equality, but have a firmly defined system of relative status and responsible command.

Mary Douglas

Hierarchy is is much reviled in the present day.

Mary Douglas

Hierarchy works well in a stable environment.

Mary Douglas

It is very reasonable to worry about the harm done by organized religion, and to prefer looser and more private arrangements.

Mary Douglas

Some scholars have been arguing that a civilizational clash between organized religions is the next step in human history.

Mary Douglas

Inside a religious body you get sects and hierarchies, inside an information network you get bazaars and cathedrals, it is the same, call them what you like. They survive by pointing the finger of blame at each other.

Mary Douglas

The history of the Church of Rome is a constant leakage of members into such breakaway cults, which go on splitting.

Mary Douglas

I have increasingly, over the years, felt that religion today does our civilization more harm than good.

Mary Douglas

Islam is in principle egalitarian, and has always had problems with power.

Mary Douglas

Since 1970, relationships can be more volatile, jobs more ephemeral, geographical mobility more intensified, stability of marriage weaker.

Mary Douglas