Purity and Danger: An Analysis of Concepts of Pollution and Taboo
History
Why I Chose This Book
Purity and Danger was the book that first fascinated me, as a historian, with anthropologists' way of posing questions. In this towering classic of British social anthropology, Professor Douglas forces us completely to rethink something we really never think about at all: dirt. But trust me, once you pose the question, “what is dirt?” you can never think about filth (and its structural counterpart, purity) in the same way again.
