Rating: 
Summary: Absolutely great
Review: "Purity and Danger" is one of the best anthropology books...PERIOD. You will never look at taboos/pollution/dirt the same way again, after you read this book. Well, let me rephrase that: if this book doesn't give you a new insight into these matters, it is because you have already been exposed to Douglas's ideas and were not aware of it. I think that this book is essential for anyone in the social sciences. It is a great read, and is very powerful. Social science at its best.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely great
Review: "Purity and Danger" is one of the best anthropology books...PERIOD. You will never look at taboos/pollution/dirt the same way again, after you read this book. Well, let me rephrase that: if this book doesn't give you a new insight into these matters, it is because you have already been exposed to Douglas's ideas and were not aware of it. I think that this book is essential for anyone in the social sciences. It is a great read, and is very powerful. Social science at its best.
Rating:
Summary: Absolutely great
Review: "Purity and Danger" is one of the best anthropology books...PERIOD. You will never look at taboos/pollution/dirt the same way again, after you read this book. Well, let me rephrase that: if this book doesn't give you a new insight into these matters, it is because you have already been exposed to Douglas's ideas and were not aware of it. I think that this book is essential for anyone in the social sciences. It is a great read, and is very powerful. Social science at its best.
Rating:
Summary: Clean or dirty? Your culture decides.
Review: All cultures have definite ideas about what is clean and what is dirty. Drawing from previous hallmark works on how cultures make classifications (Levi-Strauss's The Raw and the Cooked, etc.), Douglas makes clear and concise arguments about the use of ritual in separating that which is considered pure from what's considered unclean. The convincing argument she makes is that such rituals and clearly defined boundaries of purity reinforce a society's common definitions, increasing its unity and therefore its ability to work together to succeed. Additionally, Douglas alludes to Malinowski's anxiety-reduction theories of totems to theorize that clear definitions of right and wrong and of clean and unclean reduce the stress in a given society, helping everyone to know who they are and what is expected of them. In fact, she feels, a lack of such distinctions can be fatal to the integrity of a group. If everyone went on their own deciding what was good or bad, there would be chaos - the danger alluded to in the title.A highlight of the book is the chapter titled "Abominations of Leviticus", in which she interprets the Jewish divisions between kosher and graev (no pork, no mixing of milk and meat, etc) in a cultural context. Here she shows that the Levites divided "pure" animals (deer, cattle, sheep, goats, etc) from those considered "mixed" (pig, rabbit, woodchuck), or having an undesireable combination of traits rather than just being dirty in aspect, as is commonly believed.
Rating:
Summary: Clean or dirty? Your culture decides.
Review: All cultures have definite ideas about what is clean and what is dirty. Drawing from previous hallmark works on how cultures make classifications (Levi-Strauss's The Raw and the Cooked, etc.), Douglas makes clear and concise arguments about the use of ritual in separating that which is considered pure from what's considered unclean. The convincing argument she makes is that such rituals and clearly defined boundaries of purity reinforce a society's common definitions, increasing its unity and therefore its ability to work together to succeed. Additionally, Douglas alludes to Malinowski's anxiety-reduction theories of totems to theorize that clear definitions of right and wrong and of clean and unclean reduce the stress in a given society, helping everyone to know who they are and what is expected of them. In fact, she feels, a lack of such distinctions can be fatal to the integrity of a group. If everyone went on their own deciding what was good or bad, there would be chaos - the danger alluded to in the title. A highlight of the book is the chapter titled "Abominations of Leviticus", in which she interprets the Jewish divisions between kosher and graev (no pork, no mixing of milk and meat, etc) in a cultural context. Here she shows that the Levites divided "pure" animals (deer, cattle, sheep, goats, etc) from those considered "mixed" (pig, rabbit, woodchuck), or having an undesireable combination of traits rather than just being dirty in aspect, as is commonly believed.
Rating: 
Summary: insightful, but uneven
Review: At the instigation of an anthropology teacher, I read this book when I was about 19 and found it shattering and profound. Now, however, returning to it years later (and having read in the meantime dozens of books on anthropology and anthropological issues, and having thought for years about what I thought I learned in this book) I'm not so sure it's as perceptive as I thought. In other words, I think what I may have found mind-blowing in my younger years was the insights of anthropology itself -- not so much the contributions of Ms. Douglas.
Having said that, there are four or five extremely interesting observations herein that will help explain, or at least clarify, some puzzling issues: why gangs "jump" initiates, why Muslims do not permit nonbelievers to enter Mecca, why frats "haze" their new recruits, etc., although you pretty much have to fill in those blanks for yourself: Ms. Douglas does not explicitly extend her theories to cover such aspects of modern society. I used to think the book was deep; now, I think (in general) that she doesn't go far enough with her theories, instead stopping short just when things are getting interesting.
Another unfortunate aspect of this book is that the author felt it necessary, in the first few chapters, to refute previous, erroneous ideas about filth and pollution. Unfortunately, many of the theories she refers to are complicated and difficult to follow, at least before you read the rest of the book. In other words, I think she should have left that section for last, instead just launching into her conclusions directly.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Antropological Study
Review: Douglas's view of ritual across human cultures paints an accurate and thought-provoking picture. Her analysis of the cause and effect of ritual will satisfy not only the scholar, but also the general reader. Of particular interest is the section on Moses and the Torah.
Rating:
Summary: even if you are not a scholarly type reader this is great
Review: just to learn about a way to look at the world from a new perspective, to figure out why some things make us recoil while others give us delight is reason enough to get this book.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting but narrow theory
Review: Whenever I read about an anthropologist's, psychologist's or anyone else's speculations about religion's function in society, I always feel that what I am actually reading about is how the author himself/herself perceives them to function. (Or perhaps how they function for the author.) In a way this is a good thing because each new theory gives us another aspect of the purpose and use of religion and since the author is human (let's hope), each theory is also a part of the truth. Unfortunately, it is also incomplete. Douglas offers us a fascinating hypothesis about religious taboos being used to support every society's structure, but I think that is a small part of their function. Hopefully, many more conjectures about religious taboos and religion itself will continue to be explored and probably all of them will be somewhat true. The whole story will never be known, but at least we keep adding to the possibilities.
Rating:
Summary: pangolin stew
Review: Why was one locust cleaner than the other? Man, I had no idea either till I picked up this book. In fact, I had no idea that Jewish dietary laws made any distinctions at all on the locust front. (I mean, as far as I'm concerned, you could leave the locusts off the menu altogether and it's a fair bet I wouldn't even notice.) Mary Douglas, extensively supported by a gaggle of other similarly academically endowed individuals in quote form, however, delves right into the whole locust conundrum and she does it in a truly fascinating manner. What begins as a graceful though predictable swan dive assessment of profanity as disruption of cultural order jack knifes thrillingly there in the middle to talk about physical creatures as metaphoric representations of religious and cultural values. The book starts out talking about dirt and ends up in a fascinating examination of how we as humans, both "primative" and "civilized", twist our concrete world to become metaphor for psychological and spiritual experience Cool, huh. Also, as an added treat, Douglas spends A LOT of time talking about the South American Lele cult of the pangolin. (For laypeople, that's that funny armadillo/anteater thing that looks quite alot like a pinecone.) Douglas takes some fairly weighty theories of cultural anthropology and turns them into an entertaining and infinitely readable piece. A nice trick. Oh, and did I mention the anteater? What's not to love?
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