Natural Symbols
Profess Douglas, Mary Douglas, Mary Douglas, Professor Mary Douglas · 2002
Where to buy
Amazon’s price changes daily, so the most accurate place to see it is there, at the moment you buy.
View on AmazonAbout the 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.
First sentence: One of the gravest problems of our day is the lack of commitment to common symbols.
Book details
- Year
- 2002
- Language
- English
- Publisher
- Routledge
- Editions
- 23
- Pages
- 240
- ISBN
- 9780415314541
Data source: Wikidata
