misguided systems of hygiene. Anthropologists now interpret them as symbolic statements. Rules of purity are often treated as peculiar to primitive, foreign thought systems; but, from the starting point of modern ideas of uncleanness and dirt, Professor Douglas shows that to examine what is considered as unclean in any culture is to take a looking-glass approach to the ordered patterning which it strives to establish. Such an approach affords a more universal understanding of rules of purity, applying equally to secular and to religious life, to primitive and modern.

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