Academic Periodical

Mary Douglas work “Purity and Danger” (1966) lies within the context of the Durkheimean ideas of British anthropology. Considering correlations between categories of order and disorder, existence and non-existence, shape and shapelessness, life and death in the symbolic structures of the primitive societies through categories of dirty, danger, and through understanding of the rules of purity the author comes to the conclusion about superficiality and inconsistency of the categorical contraposition of belief systems of primitive and modern societies. Inconsistency of such contraposition of these two systems is rooted in underestimation of metaphysical depth of the primitive beliefs. The difference between primitive and modern societies lies not in mental, but rather in social field.