Mary Douglas

"What appears to be individual choice is often collective decision-making."

"The home reflects and reinforces the values of the wider society."

"Danger is a label we apply to things that threaten our sense of order."

"Social conventions appear natural only because we have forgotten their origins."

"The concept of dirt reveals the hidden structure of a culture."

"All societies must solve the problem of impurity and transgression."

"Symbols work by evoking what they stand apart from."

"The nation-state is a relatively recent invention masquerading as ancient tradition."

"What we call natural is the result of countless generations of social labor."

"Consumption patterns reveal the true religion of modern society."

"The boundaries between inside and outside, self and other, are socially constructed."

"Risk is not an objective fact but a social and cultural assessment."

"Every society needs myths to explain why its rules matter."

"The purity of a group depends upon the exclusion of those deemed impure."

"Social harmony requires constant negotiation and renegotiation of boundaries."

"What we inherit as culture is the accumulated wisdom of survival."

"The market is not a natural mechanism but a social institution."

"Taboos reveal what a society most fears or most desperately needs to control."

"The individual is always already social; the self is constructed in relationship."

"Meaning is not in things but in the relations between things."

"Every system of order produces its own disorder and its own waste."

"What we call rational is often deeply embedded in cultural tradition."

"Social institutions persist because they serve needs we may not consciously recognize."

"The sacred is that which we protect through ritual and boundary maintenance."

"Solidarity is built through shared commitments to observance and taboo."

"What appears universal in human nature is often profoundly particular in culture."

"The home is where we most fully enact the values and hierarchies of our society."

"Exchange is never merely economic; it is always a communication about relationships."

"What we call progress is often the replacement of one system of exclusion with another."

"The modern obsession with hygiene masks deeper anxieties about social contamination."