Mary Douglas : a very personal method ; anthropological writings drawn from life / edited by Richard Fardon.

Errata slip.

"The range of Mary Douglas's interests had few parallels amongst the leading social anthropologists of the 20th century. Although inspired by the classics of the discipline of anthropology, her theories were idiosyncratic and her applications of them never predictable. By bringing together writings in different genres that she composed over the entirety of her career, this volume demonstrates her distinctive style of thought and expression. The topics she addressed ranged freely between family and friends, the demands of domestic routine, her belonging to the Roman Catholic Church, and cultural similarities and differences on a global scale. In her method and style, as much as in her explicit arguments, Mary Douglas constantly invited her readers to reflect on the inextricable intertwining of the personal and the theoretical in her thought. More than any previous collection of Mary Douglas's work, A Very Personal Method reveals a mind restlessly reworking her enduring preoccupations and finding echoes of them in the new concerns she continued to draw from life"--Publisher's website.

Introduction : drawn from life : Mary Douglas's personal method / Richard Fardon -- Familiar feelings. A feeling for hierarchy ; Hooked on fishing--Gilbert Tew, 1884-1951 ; The gender of the trout ; My circus fieldwork -- Thinking about Catholicism in Lele religious experience. The Lele of the Congo ; The problem of evil among the Lele : sorcery, witch-hunt and Christian teaching in Africa ; The devil vanishes ; Other beings, post-colonially correct ; The cloud god and the shadow self -- Taboo and ritual. Taboo ; The contempt of ritual ; The contempt of ritual (again) -- Contemporaries. On Franz Steiner : a memoir ; On E.E. Evans-Prichard : from The tablet notebook ; On Lev́i-Strauss : Wild pansies : speaking tenderly of its layered puff pastry effect ; Smothering the differences--in a savage mind about Lev́i-Strauss ; On Clifford Geertz : the self-completing animal -- Inclusion as conclusion. Knowing the code ; A course off the menu ; To honour the dead ; The oracles of love--a play for AKT ; Sacraments and society : an anthropologist asks what women could be doing in the Church ; Can a scientist be objective about her faith? : in conversation with Deborah Jones -- Epilogue. Original minds : Mary Douglas in conversation with Eleanor Wachtel ; Granny ; Endpiece : The golden fish / the Brothers Grimm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.