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Natural Symbols MARY DOUGLAS MARY DOUGLAS: COLLECTED WORKS VOLUME I The Lele of the Kasai VOLUME II Purity and Danger VOLUME III Natural Symbols VOLUME IV Rules and Meanings VOLUME V Implicit Meanings VOLUME VI The World of Goods VOLUME VII Edward Evans-Pritchard VOLUME VIII Essays in the Sociology of Perception VOLUME IX Food in the Social Order VOLUME X Constructive Drinking VOLUME XI Risk Acceptability According to the Social Sciences VOLUME XII Risk and Blame MARY DOUGLAS COLLECTED WORKS VOLUME III NATURAL SYMBOLS London and New York First published in 1970 by Barrie and Rockliff The Cresset Press This edition published 2003 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon, OX14 4RN Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 270 Madison Ave, NewYork NY 10016 Routledge is an imprint ofthe Taylor & Francis Group Transferred to Digital Printing 2007 © by Mary Douglas 1970 Typeset in Times by Keystroke, Jacaranda Lodge, Wolverhampton All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data ISBN 0-415-28397-3 (set) ISBN 0-415-29106-2 (volume III) Publisher's Note The publisher has gone to great 1engths to ensure the quality of this reprint but points out that some imperfections in the original may be apparent CONTENTS Preface vü 1 A way from Ritual 1 2 To Inner Experience 19 3 The Bog Irish 37 4 A Rule of Method 54 5 The Two Bodies 65 6 A Test Case 82 7 Sin and Society 99 8 The Problem of Evil 107 9 Impersonal Rules 125 10 Control of Symbols 140 11 Out of the Cave 156 Bibliography 169 Index 175 DIAGRAMS 1 Family Control 27 2 Speech Codes 28 3 General Cosmological Ideas 29 4 Religious Ideas 35 5 Grid and Group (a) 59 6 Grid and Group (h) 60 7 The Periphery 87 8 Three Nilotes 96 9 Types of Cosmology 105 10 From Impersonal to Personal 141 11 From Asceticism to Affirmation 143 PREFACE Most symbolic behaviour must work through the human body. Much is written about natural symbols derived from the blood, excretions and exhalations of the body and about symbols of orientation derived from bodily structure. For the most part they take the form of select catalogues with no general hypo­ thesis to interpret the clustering of symbols. On the other hand, communication theory uses a refined technique to analyse sym­ boHc structures. But it must assurne that the meaning of the signs is exhausted in their patterned relationships. Therefore it is imprisoned in its technique. It cannot explain the power of symbols which appear with the same meaning in different systems. In this book I suggest the beginning of an approach. The human body is common to us all. Only our sodal condition varies. The symbols based on the human body are used to express different sodal experiences. We should therefore start with a prindple for classifying the latter. I am not directly concerned with those which can be expressed in verbal or numerical form. But the field of intimate personal relations is spedally apt for bodily symbolism. Take the simple series that runs from sodally distant to familiar. It is expressed by a diminishing of personal distance and by a choice of speech forms and topics which starts from the most general and closes down on the particular, per­ sonal and physical. As so on as we focus on the contrast between the expression of formality and the expression of intimacy­ even in its verbal manifestation-we can see the symbolism of the human body being set to work. In what follows I argue that there is a strong tendency to replicate the sodal situation in symbolic form by drawing richly on bodily symbols in every possible dimension. I have argued elsewhere from the analysis of jokes (1968b) that there is a drive to achieve eonsonance in all the layers of experience. This kind of approach ean be as erude or as subtle as anyone Hkes. In its erudest version its truth is so obvious that it hardly needs to be said. Formal sodal rela­ tions eall for controlled movements and physical distance; in- viii PREFACE formal relations call for relaxed posture, free movement, casual dress, uninhibited speech and so forth. Everyone knows the platitude. The challenge is to develop it. I will argue that the range of situations which use the human body for expression are fairly limited. They derive essentially from the quality of sodal relations. Thus, with one sweep of the arm, I am prepared to push aside from this analysis all the variations of political structure, industrial complexity and ecolo­ gical variety. All I am concemed with is a formula for classifying relations which can be applied equally to the smallest band of hunters and gatherers as to the most industrialised nations. All we need to know is the way in which these relations are structured according to two independently varying criteria which I have called grid and group. Group is obvious-the experience of a bounded sodal unit. Grid refers to rules which relate one person to others on an ego-centred basis. Grid and group may be found together. In this case the quality of relations is ordered and clearly bounded. If group is found by itself, or grid is found without group, the quality of relations is different in each case. Take the case of group alone: a man recognises very strong allegiance to a sodal group, and at the same time does not know how he relates to other members or what his expectations should be. He tends to use the image of the human body to express both the exclusive nature of the allegiance and the confused sodal ex­ perience. The group is likened to the human body; the orifices are to be carefully guarded to prevent unIawful intrusions, dangers from poisoning and loss of physical strength express the lack of articulated roles within it. In such a case, the most funda­ mental assumptions about the cosmos and man's place in nature are coloured by the sodally appropriate image of the human body. This is the level of experience at which the great historical heresies would have arisen. We can see a continuity from Europe's andent Manicheeism to witch-hunting cosmologies of contemporary Africa, and even to witch-hunting movements in contemporary politics. For if group is strong and grid weak, the idea of a cherished bodily form vulnerable to attack from with­ out tends to be transferred from one context to another. It can serve as a theory of misfortune by pinning blame on hidden enemies of sodety; it can serve as a guide to action, requiring the enemies to be unmasked and disabled; it can serve as a philo- PREFACE ix sophy of being, by distinguishing the forces of good from the forces of evil and identifying the inside of the body as the area under attack: inside becomes good and outside evil. Since the sodal experience emphasises external boundaries but not in­ ternal structure, the inside of the body under threat of attack is thought of as vulnerable but undifferentiated: at the level of sodal philosophy this image corresponds to an optimism about the possibility of sodety remaining undifferentiated: injustice can be rectified merely by purging the system of internal traitors allied with outside enemies. It produces political negativism. Bodily symbolism in the witch fearing cosmology is endlessly rieh and varied, but always the emphasis is on valuing the boundaries, guarding the orifices, avoiding improper mixtures. This soda! experience tends towards setting a low value on the physieal functions of ingestion and excretion; its attitudes tend to the austere in the enjoyment of the good things of life; they show interest in purification, anxiety about health and siekness; they despise gluttony, treat sex with caution, and unregulated sex with horror. The derived theologieal attitudes tend towards cele­ brating the purity of the spirit and the dangers of fleshly cor­ ruption. The other combinations of grid and group do not produce such an elaborately consistent set of attitudes based on the symbolism of the body. For example, where grid alone is stong, the human body is inevitably less cogent as a symbol of sodety. For the man who hirnself feels unbounded, uncommitted to any sodal group, can make less use of the essentially bounded character of the human body to express his soda! concerns. His very pragmatie, unphilosophie outlook is important in itself for the sodology of religion. I will show that this kind of sodal experience, where a man is constrained not by group loyalties but by a set of rules whieh engage him in redprocal transactions, leads him to be uninterested in logie-chopping metaphysies; he does not separate mind from matter still less revere one or des­ pise the other. He is strietly secular in outlook. Secularisation is often treated as a modern trend, attributable to the growth of dties or to the prestige of sdence, or just to the breakdown of sodal forms. But we shall see that it is an age-old cosmologieal type, a product of a definable soda! experience, whieh need have nothing to do with urban life or modern sdence.
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