Man in Africa. Edited by Mary Douglas and Phyllis M. Kaberry. London: Tavistock Publications, 1969. Pp. xxvii+372, ill., maps. 52s.

Africa ◽  
1970 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 172-175
Author(s):  
John Beattie
Keyword(s):  
Mary Douglas

Making Sense of Religion and Food

2017 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 18-24 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emily Bailey
Keyword(s):  
Graduate Students ◽  
Social Structure ◽  
Biological Information ◽  
Approaches To Teaching ◽  
Cultural System ◽  
Gender And Race ◽  
Religious Traditions ◽  
Making Sense ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Pedagogical Approaches

When looking at eating beyond physical nourishment, British anthropologist Mary Douglas (1921-2007) defined food as a cultural system, or code that communicates not only biological information, but social structure and meaning. What can a study of food and faith teach us, as scholars of religion, that we might not otherwise know? This article outlines thematic and pedagogical approaches to teaching food and religion through the lens of five semesters of teaching this course to undergraduate and graduate students. In it, I explore the topics of Food memory and community; Food and scripture; Food, gender and race; and Stewardship and Charity, thinking about spiritual and physical nourishment in the world's major religious traditions.

Mary Douglas

Réseaux ◽  
1993 ◽  
Vol 11 (62) ◽  
pp. 117-118
Keyword(s):  
Mary Douglas

Ethnicity as inclusion and exclusion

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1262-1269 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rachel F. Baskerville ◽  
Kerry Jacobs ◽  
Vassili Joannides de Lautour ◽  
Jeff Sissons
Keyword(s):  
Ad Hoc ◽  
Cultural Perspective ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Culture Theory ◽  
Grid And Group ◽  
Group Culture ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Relationship

Purpose Accounting research has struggled with how ethnicity is to be understood in relation to concepts such as nation and nationality and how ethnicity may impact on accounting and auditing practices, behaviours, education and professional values. These themes are explored and developed in the papers presented in this special issue. In particular, the purpose of this paper is to explore the contrasting theoretical and methodological approaches reflected by the papers in the issue. Design/methodology/approach This is a reflective and analytical paper which explores how notions of ethnicity are conceived and operationalised in accounting research. The authors identified two distinctive analytic ordering processes evident within this AAAJ Special issue: Mary Douglas’ scheme of Grid and Group and the Pierre Bourdieu’s conceptual tools of field, capital and habitus. Findings The “Grid and Group” Culture Theory with Bourdieu’s theoretical tools evident in the papers provide powerful tools to explore the relationship between ethnicity and accounting both conceptually and empirically, suggesting that ethnicity can be deployed to reveal and challenge institutionalised racism. This paper highlights the potential to integrate elements of the “Grid and Group” Culture Theory and Bourdieu’s theoretical tools. The issue of ethnicity and the relationship between ethnicity and accounting should be more fruitfully explored in future. Research limitations/implications The authors acknowledge the challenges and limitations of discussing the issue of ethnicity from any particular cultural perspective and recognise the implicit dominance of White Anglo centric perspectives within accounting research. Originality/value The papers presented in the special issue illustrate that the issue of ethnicity is complex and difficult to operationalise. This paper highlights the potential to move beyond the ad hoc application of theoretical and methodological concepts to operationalise coherent concepts which challenge and extend the authors’ understanding of accounting as a social and contextual practice. But to achieve this it is necessary to more clearly integrate theory, methodology, method and critique.

scholarly journals Employing neo-Durkheimian institutional theory in cross-cultural accounting research

2016 ◽  
Vol 29 (8) ◽  
pp. 1270-1293 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip Mark Linsley ◽  
Alexander Linsley ◽  
Matthias Beck ◽  
Simon Mollan
Keyword(s):  
Institutional Theory ◽  
Cultural Change ◽  
Cross Cultural ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Accounting Research ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
The Social ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Uk

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to propose Neo-Durkheimian institutional theory, developed by the Durkheimian institutional theory, as developed by anthropologist Mary Douglas, as a suitable theory base for undertaking cross-cultural accounting research. The social theory provides a structure for examining within-country and cross-country actions and behaviours of different groups and communities. It avoids associating nations and cultures, instead contending any nation will comprise four different solidarities engaging in constant dialogues. Further, it is a dynamic theory able to take account of cultural change. Design/methodology/approach The paper establishes a case for using neo-Durkheimian institutional theory in cross-cultural accounting research by specifying the key components of the theory and addressing common criticisms. To illustrate how the theory might be utilised in the domain of accounting and finance research, a comparative interpretation of the different experiences of financialization in Germany and the UK is provided drawing on Douglas’s grid-group schema. Findings Neo-Durkheimian institutional theory is deemed sufficiently capable of interpreting the behaviours of different social groups and is not open to the same criticisms as Hofstede’s work. Differences in Douglasian cultural dialogues in the post-1945 history of Germany and the UK provide an explanation of the variations in the comparative experiences of financialization. Originality/value Neo-Durkheimian institutional theory has been used in a wide range of contexts; however, it has been little used in the context of accounting research. The adoption of the theory in future accounting research can redress a Hofstedian-bias in accounting research.

Social-Scientific Readings of the Gospel and Letters of John

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Philip F. Esler
Keyword(s):  
Collective Memory ◽  
Sociology Of Knowledge ◽  
Memory Studies ◽  
Fourth Gospel ◽  
Chronological Order ◽  
Grid And Group ◽  
Mediterranean Culture ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Social Scientific

This chapter surveys the development of social-scientific readings of the Johannine Gospel and Letters in roughly chronological order from the introduction of the sociology of knowledge and sectarianism to Johannine scholarship by Wayne Meeks in 1972, and the application of sectarian perspectives, especially influenced by Bryan Wilson’s typology of sectarianism, in the 1980s and 1990s. Sociolinguistic insights into anti-society and anti-language to understand the Johannine Sondersprache were also introduced in the 1980s together with Mary Douglas’ notions of grid and group and notions of Mediterranean culture. Applications of sectarianism and Mediterranean culture continued into the 2000s, but were accompnaied by new interests in identity, including the tension between Judean ethnic and Christ-movement identities in the Fourth Gospel, and in collective memory studies. All of these approaches continue to have a role in understanding the Johannine corpus.

scholarly journals Ritual as а Subject of Religious Reflexivity in British Social Anthropology and Catholic Traditionalism

2021 ◽  
Vol 17 (50) ◽  
pp. 131-168
Author(s):  
Ekaterina Khonineva
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Social Order ◽  
Social Anthropology ◽  
Inner Life ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Critical Reflexivity ◽  
Close Analysis ◽  
Vatican Council ◽  
Liturgical Reform ◽  
The Many

This article discusses how the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) and the liturgical reform in the Catholic Church enhanced critical reflexivity on ritual semiotics and the boundaries of ritualism and anti-ritualism in British social anthropology (namely, in the works of Victor Turner and Mary Douglas) and in the protest movement of Catholic Traditionalism, and furnished the conditions for their discursive convergence. Since Turner and Douglas were Catholics, the similarities in the logic and rhetoric of academic and “folk” anthropology of ritual inevitably raise questions commonly labeled as the problem of belief, focusing on the risks and benefits of the anthropologist's religious commitments for ethnographic work. A close analysis of statements on liturgical reform by British anthropologists and Traditionalist Catholics shows that they share a common, Durkheimian view of ritual and social order; at the same time, intellectual and spiritual biographies of Turner and Douglas demonstrate that sometimes anthropology can influence anthropologists' belief as much as their belief influences their anthropology. These observations provide grounds for a revision of the problem of belief with a Protestant bias. The association of belief with the inner life and creeds is one of the many ways of conceptualizing the mediation of religious experience. In some cultures, such as traditional Catholicism, no lesser emphasis is placed on ritual performance. Thus, an exploration of the proximity of anthropological and Traditionalist “languages” of ritual description opens up prospects for a discussion of the place of attitudes toward ritual in anthropological epistemology and its historical roots.

The perception of corruption as social and institutional pressure: A comparative analysis of cultural biases

Human Affairs ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Davide Torsello
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Cultural Adaptation ◽  
Cultural Theory ◽  
Economic Resources ◽  
Institutional Pressure ◽  
Mary Douglas ◽  
Social Grouping ◽  
Corruption Perception ◽  
Cross Country ◽  
Aaron Wildavsky

AbstractThis study is an empirical approach to answering the question: are there any universal factors that account for the origin, diffusion and persistence of corruption in human societies? The paper enquires whether the perception of corruption in politics and economics can be tackled as a form of cultural adaptation, driven by exogenous and endogenous forces. These are respectively: freedom of access and management of economic resources, and the pressures towards human grouping. Following the analytical insights of cultural theory, developed by Mary Douglas and later Aaron Wildavsky, variation is introduced through the ways in which corruption is perceived through the different behavioral and cultural biases that prevail in societies. This research introduces a cross-country comparative analysis of 57 countries attempting to test quantitatively whether institutional pressure and emphasis towards social grouping are correlated with corruption perception at country levels.

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