Recommendations from our site
“She tried to understand through everyday examples how we deal with things that are polluting, dangerous or dirty. Her classic aphorism is that dirt is simply matter out of place. A pair of shoes standing in the hallway? Fine. Put them on the table? Dirty. Her idea was that we have to understand the world around us and how we try to put order back into the world. How do we organise away those impurities, pollution, dirt? It’s a really beguiling book that took years to take off, but has now informed how later generations study issues like insecurity and danger.” Read more...
The best books on Anthropology
Ruben Andersson, Social Scientist
” for me and still for many of my students, it’s a book that really opened my eyes. It showed me that you could theorize about things that you had always taken for granted and thought didn’t need explaining. Douglas set out to defamiliarize our own culture. One of her favourite party pieces is she goes through all the dietary prohibitions in Leviticus. She said, look at these carefully and you will see there’s a logic to them. What’s being prohibited in terms of eating is very often those animals or foodstuffs which don’t fit into a set category. For example, pigs don’t fall into any particular category because of their feet. In order to make sense of society, cultures like to group things. When objects fall outside those groups they are either reviled or revered.” Read more...
The best books on Ancient History in Modern Life
Mary Beard, Classicist
