Natural Symbols

Profess Douglas Mary Douglas Mary Douglas Professor Mary Douglas First published 2002

About this book

There are no such things as natural symbols. Every culture naturalises a certain view of the human body to make it carry social meanings. This work focuses on how the selections from blood, bones, breath or excrement, are made. Body symbolism is always in service to social intentions, and the body cannot be endowed with universal meanings.

In this now classic work Mary Douglas shows how certain forms of social life bring forth regularly the same varieties of symbolic expression. Hierarchy treats the body as a hierarchy; sect treats it as a closed system; individualism treats it as pervasive energy. Political movements as well as religions have their rituals, medicine, ethics, educational theory, aesthetics, a huge range of judgements fall into line behind the standard cultural bias.

Subjects

302.2/22
73.85
antropologia
aspectes religiosos
aspect religieux
bl256 .d68 2003
body, human
communication studies
corps humain
cos humà
cosmologia
ethnology
ethnology, religious aspects
ethnology--religious aspects
gesellschaft
human body
human body, folklore
human body, religious aspects
individuum
in folklore, mythology, & religion
language arts & disciplines
lichamelijkheid
mythology
religion
religion and sociology
religious aspects
religious aspects of ethnology
religious aspects of the human body
rites et cérémonies
ritual
rituel
simbolisme
sociology
symbolen
symbolism
symbolisme
symbolismus
tribale groepen
völkerkunde
westerse wereld