ABSTRACT
Risk and danger are culturally conditioned ideas. They are shaped by pressures of social life and accepted notions of accountability. The risk analyses that are increasingly being utilised by politicians, aid programmes and business ignore the insights to be gained from social anthropology which can be applied to modern industrial society.
In this collection of recent essays, Mary Douglas develops a programme for studying risk and blame that follows from ideas originally proposed in Purity and Danger. She suggests how political and cultural bias can be incorporated into the study of risk perception and in the discussion of responsibility in public policy.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
part |2 pages
Part I RISK AND BLAME
chapter 6|21 pages
THE SELF AS RISK-TAKER: A CULTURAL THEORY OF CONTAGION IN RELATION TO
part |2 pages
Part II WANTS AND INSTITUTIONS
chapter 9|12 pages
NO FREE GIFTS: INTRODUCTION TO MAUSS’S ESSAY ON THE GIFT
chapter 10|20 pages
INSTITUTIONS OF THE THIRD KIND: BRITISH COMPARED
part |2 pages
Part III BELIEVING AND THINKING