Loading profile…
Loading profile…
Book
Mary Douglas · 1970
An anthropological exploration of how cultures use body symbolism to express social meanings and cosmological systems. Douglas argues that symbolic expression varies systematically with social structures—hierarchy, sect, and individualism each produce distinctive ritual forms and cosmologies.
Sequence ladder
Narrative Intelligence sources live outside the figurative image sequence ladder. Adaptive placement applies to image sequences, not this reading library.
What this book knows
Social structure shapes cosmology: how group boundaries and grid classifications determine ritual, body symbolism, and the experience of evil.
obedience-and-authority
On one dimension is variation in constraints on the individual imposed by group membership. On the other the constraints of structure are assessed—rules, classifications, compartments.
NSEC-RC-013The person whose soul is in revolt is regarded as abnormal and needing special ritual curing. In this society piety is the order of the day, piety towards senior kinsmen and piety to the dead.
NSEC-RC-091embodiment
Women, serfs and slaves are inevitably pinned only weakly into the central structure of their society. They experience strong grid. Therefore they are susceptible to religious movements which celebrate this experience.
NSEC-RC-119My classification of cosmologies is based on four social types. Is it possible to see in the symbolism of the body appropriate to them two distinct forms?
NSEC-RC-185faith-and-doubt
Religion obscures God in forms and formulae, ritualizes him sacramentally when in truth He can only be known experimentally and experientially.
NSEC-RC-081The apparent anti-ritualism of today is the adoption of one set of natural symbols in place of another. It is like a switch between restricted speech codes.
NSEC-RC-191Illuminates
6 published passages · book excerpt · research analysis
Reader resonance signals for text sources are not wired to this view yet.