Yohan Yoo and James W. Watts
Cleansing is a basic feature of human biology, psychology, and sociology. Our bodies cleanse themselves of waste by exhaling, urinating, and defecating. Our cultures concretize cleansing behavior in standardized baths and toilets. We internalize the value of staying clean from a very early age. Beyond routine cleansing and washing, however, human cultures also tend to turn cleansing into a social and religious ideal. This ideal seems to demand a vocabulary of purity, and religious cleansing tends to be called the purification of pollution.
Ideas about purity and pollution and ritual practices of purification appear in very many cultures around the world. People have typically thought that some objects or activities may pollute them and that there are specific ways of purifying themselves as well as the spaces they find themselves in and the objects they touch. Before engaging in religious activities, polluted persons are often required to remove any pollution. In most religions, purification involves ritual cleansing, such as washing, immersion, or sprinkling with water. In Islam, for example, “minor impurity” caused by natural evacuations is removed by washing just parts of the body, such as hands, face, or mouth, while purifying “major impurity” caused by such things as sexual activity, menstruation, and childbirth requires a full bath. Before Japanese enter a Shinto shrine through the torii, or sacred archway, they should rinse their hands and mouth at a stone basin with fresh water. The biblical books of Exodus and Leviticus often require washing hands and feet or the whole body for ritual purification. All these practices suggest that if contaminated people wash with water, they will no longer transmit contamination by touch.
Purity ideas engage more than customary rituals. Purity vocabulary is a common feature of religious rhetoric, ranging from sectarian polemics to the most refined theological and mystical speculations. Theology tends to associate both holiness and morality with purity. Preachers and theologians may employ pollution vocabulary not only to condemn opponents but also to explain the nature and sources of evil and suffering. The ideas of purity and pollution inflect much religious thought just as purification rituals accompany many forms of religious practice.
Mary Douglas's theory and its problems
Almost all theoretical discussions of pollution practices begin with Mary Douglas's book, Purity and Danger (1966). Douglas's definition of purity was based on the function of ritual within a society. In Purity and Danger, Douglas probed deeply into the social functions and roles of ritual, articulating some critical characteristics of ritual. According to Douglas, ritual provides a mnemonic method and formulates experience. It is necessary for controlling human experience at a societal level: “as a social animal, man is a ritual animal. … there are some things we cannot experience without ritual.” Through the function of ritual, people symbolically create a unity that structures all experience. Douglas argued that ritual maintains “the cosmic outlines and the ideal social order” (2002 [1966], 77, 78, 80, 85, 90). In short, ritual creates a symbolic universe that unifies a society and maintains social order.
Douglas emphasized the significance of ritual for understanding purity ideas, articulating her conception of purity as symbolic ritual cleanliness. Douglas understood uncleanness as “matter out of place,” which therefore involves conceptions of order (2002 [1966], 45–50). Her discussion of danger emphasized fear of crossing boundaries and fear of internal contradictions (2002 [1966], 141–72). Douglas maintained that cultures exclude disorder or danger in the form of pollution in order to maintain social order. She observed that “Pollution is a type of danger which is not likely to occur except where the lines of structure, cosmic and social, are clearly defined” (2002 [1966], 140). It is ritual therefore that holds back social disorder, namely, pollution, by controlling the danger of disorder, by recognizing the potency of disorder, and by finding “powers and truths which cannot be reached by conscious effort” (2002 [1966], 117).
Douglas agreed with Victor Turner (1964) and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1958 [1949]) that “ritual is creative,” offering “meaning to existence” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 88–90). When she published Purity and Danger in 1966, this new paradigm of ritual theory was just beginning to appear among some anthropologists. As Ronald Grimes (1982, 117) noted, “The most general claims for ritual have been … the traditional religious, Durkheimian sociological, Freudian psychoanalytic, and Cambridge school theories which have dominated modern ritual theory” until the growing influence of Levi-Strauss (1981, 667–82). However, Victor Turner (1964) was the first to look upon ritual as having creative and critical capacities (Grimes 1990, 21). More recent theorists, including Catherine Bell, argued that ritual not only informs meanings but also creates meanings. Bell (1997, 80) therefore advocated “the study of ritual as practice” or as performance. Roy Rappaport (1999, 3, 12–16, 52–57) even asserted that “religion's major conceptual and experiential constituents, the sacred, the numinous, the occult, and the divine, and their integration into the Holy” are all the creations of ritual.1
Douglas's 1966 book can be considered one of the major sources for this new paradigm of ritual theory that found its footing in the 1980s (Grimes 1990, 21). She even criticized the “anti-ritualist prejudice” that has made it difficult to find instances of ritual uncleanness in Christian practice (Douglas 2002 [1966], 76–77). Douglas brilliantly related concepts of purity and pollution to ritual. Furthermore, since most ritual theorists have not delved into purity matters, Douglas's work remains the dominant anthropological analysis of the ritual function of purity ideas.
However, Douglas's theory suffers from several problems that undermine her general thesis. The first shortcoming of Douglas's theory is that, by overemphasizing societies, social systems, and social order for understanding purity, Douglas overlooked religious dimensions of purity ideas that cannot always be explained by social systems. For Douglas, a functional anthropologist, society was “a powerful image. It is potent in its own right to control or to stir men to action” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 141). Ritual was important for her because of the function it plays in society. In particular, she related purity systems to functions of the social order, including social hierarchy. According to Douglas (2002 [1966], 140; also 139, 152–57), “all spiritual powers are part of the social system,” and “the power of the universe is ultimately hitched to society.” Without a series of social processes that create order, nothing can be explained: “Dirt was created by the differentiating activity of mind, it was a by-product of the creation of order” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 198).
There can be no question that many cultures do connect purity and pollution to social hierarchy and order. However, if we limit purity to matters related to the social order, as Douglas did, we miss much about how people see the world and themselves. In Purity and Danger, she argued that purity and impurity are supposed to be critical for determining a society's hierarchy and structure. She defined dirt as “matter out of place” and “disorder … is in the eye of the beholder” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 2, 44). According to Douglas, ideas of impurity uphold moral values, define social rules, and create unity in experience. She observed that “some pollutions are used as analogies for expressing a general view of the social order” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 4). She viewed purity and impurity as socially constructed and determined by the order that a society requires. Douglas's impurity represents disorder in the symbolic world. Purification therefore means the same thing as maintaining social order and uniting society.
Though it is appropriate to see dirt and pollution as a “matter of place,” we do not agree that these places only consist of socially constructed ones. Our view here is more like that of Kimberley Patton (2007, 15, 21), who accepted many of the details of Douglas's theory while rejecting Douglas's view “that dirt (or pollution) is purely a socially constructed category.” Studies that stress only functional aspects of religion for building and maintaining social order have often neglected the elements of religion in which adherents place the most value. For example, the ethnographer, Anne Meigs, found that the Hua people of New Guinea were more concerned by pollution from bodily excretions than from crossing social boundaries. She concluded that their purity concerns focus a fear of death (Meigs 1978). As many scholars of religion have pointed out, thinkers in the various fields of religious studies should pay more attention to the emic religious meanings that adherents give to their behaviors and beliefs (Kristensen 1960, 2–14; W. C. Smith 1971, 131–40; Eliade 1982, 142; Paden 1988, 178–79; Patton 2009, 161).
Douglas's explanation for purity and pollution changed conspicuously when it came to the social function of the Bible's lists of pure and polluting animals. In Purity and Danger, she analyzed the biblical diet system as symbolic of maintaining social order by labelling those animals as impure that crossed the boundaries between natural spheres (Douglas 2002 [1966], 51–71). In her later work, Douglas argued that the Israelites’ ritual impurity system did not work for maintaining social order: “in so far as the Levitical rules for purity apply universally they are useless for internal disciplining. They maintain absolutely no social demarcation” (Douglas 1993/1994, 112–13). However, she continued to emphasize the social system in explaining purity. For example, she argued that the Israelites’ purity rules were based on their religious beliefs in the order of Creation, which in turn reflected Israelite social order (Douglas 1993/1994, 110; Douglas 1999, 176–94).2 In as much as ancient people did not distinguish society from religion, Douglas's argument may be right. Yet, we cannot ignore Clifford Geertz's argument that culture and social structure are different and that there are often radical discontinuities between them (Geertz 1973, 114–45). Contrary to Douglas's argument that “all spiritual powers are part of the social system” and that “the power of the universe is ultimately hitched to society” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 140), religious beliefs, which include the belief in spiritual power, cannot be explained only in relation to society. We will suggest a theory of purity that includes dimensions of religion other than the social dimension (similarly Smart 1999, 8–10).
Douglas's social functionalist theory has another major problem: by emphasizing social order, her theory does not recognize the possible coexistence of various views on purity within a single culture. Douglas utilized the concept of “primitive cultures” in which unity is created by means of ritual, without clearly defining what constitutes the “primitive.” In the fifth chapter of Purity and Danger, she summarized characteristics of primitive worlds, including that they are “pollution-prone,” “personal,” and “man-centred” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 92, 100, 101). The standards for this demarcation are abstract and idealizing. She freely used the term “primitive,” arguing “our professional delicacy in avoiding the term ‘primitive’ is the product of secret convictions of superiority” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 93). To Douglas, the Israelite society that produced Leviticus was primitive just like the Bushman, the Ndembu, and the Dinka. She did not articulate exactly what constitutes the boundary between “primitive” and “us.” She argued that “each primitive culture is a universe to itself” (Douglas 2002 [1966], 4) and explained the nature of purity within the context of “a total universe” of a primitive culture. According to Douglas (2002 [1966], 85),
For the Bushman, Dinka, and many other primitive cultures the field of symbolic action is one. The unity which they create by their separating and tidying is not just a little home, but a total universe in which all experience is ordered … Our rituals create a lot of little sub-worlds, unrelated. Their rituals create one single, symbolically consistent universe.
In short, she presupposed a unified or “consistent universe” that is created by ritual within each “primitive culture.” She often alternated between the phrases “the unity of a culture” and “social order.” According to Douglas, ritual behavior creates social order, and pollution is a by-product of this social process. Though she sometimes recognized social conflicts within a culture and the modifications of rituals that can result from them (especially in Douglas 2002 [1966], chap. 9), she focused on how ritual and purity ideas help society overcome conflicts.
The claim, however, that primitives lived in “one single, symbolically consistent universe” is an outdated social-functionalist argument (Kazen 2018a, 79–83). In 1973, Clifford Geertz pointed out this problem in the sociological or functional approach to studying ritual that stemmed originally from Émile Durkheim (2008 [1912]). Geertz called this “a bias in favor of ‘well-integrated’ societies.” He claimed that, “in analyses of religion this static, ahistorical approach has led to a somewhat overconservative view of the role of ritual and belief in social life” (Geertz 1973, 142; see 142–69). Using a Javanese example, he meticulously demonstrated how ritual can create cultural ambiguity and social conflict. Jonathan Z. Smith (1987, 39–45) has also shown the potential differences among ideological groups within a culture. Douglas originally failed to recognize such discrepancies or variations among groups that share the same culture.
In the preface to the 2002 edition of Purity and Danger, Douglas acknowledged this problem and stated that she should have added examples of “radical taboos” that change social order.
The examples of taboo that I gave to illustrate the themes in Purity and Danger are mainly conservative in effect. They protect an abstract constitution from being subverted. If I had anticipated the political implications of taboo, I could have mentioned radical taboos …. If I were to write the book again, I would know what to look out for to balance the original account.
(Douglas 2002, xix–xx)
She recognized that her theory is too conservative. However, while Douglas continued to develop and change her own theory of purity, the field of religious studies has not, but continues to rely heavily on her now fifty-five-year-old theory. We will suggest a theory of purity that instead allows for the co...
