• Comparison of Interpretive Anthropology And Scientific Anthropology     pt2             1400w

Mary Douglas, another anthropologist known for symbolic anthropology challenges the generalization which suggests that most symbolic anthropologists fail to describe culture as universal (McGee and Warms 2000:468). Like Turner, her work bears the influence of British structural-functionalism yet her work focused largely on the symbolic interpretation of the body and its functions. In External Boundaries, Douglas uses hygiene and pollution as symbolic directors which influence everything from social status to eating practices. According to Douglas “body symbolism is part of the common stock of symbols” and “rituals draw on those commons stock of symbols selectively” (McGee and Warms 2000:472-473). Thus, by Douglas’s theoretical approach rational categories such as the act of various bodily secretions would provide individuals with a psychological ordering of the world (Miller 2002:90). For example, Douglas uses the Indian caste system to illustrate this point. In such a caste system even the division of labour is effected by what the body does and does not come in contact with. The holiest member of such a system comes into contact with nothing that might “pollute” them, where individuals prescribed the job of cleaning away excrement such as blood or feces are considered to be the lowest on the social ladder (McGee and Warms 2000:474-475).

While symbolic anthropology opens numerous of new abstract approaches towards the understanding of culture on a more personal level, one can’t help but feel that some of initial approaches provided by Turner, Geertz and Douglas harbour minor flaws. The largest among these however is their approach to interpretive anthropology as a whole because it leans towards being far too generalized (McGee and Warms 2000:468). According to the works of Douglas, she suggests that social categories are artificial because it is society which imposes them (Hicks 2002:48). Conversely, social categories are constructed by society and have in the process become part of the cultural construction of that society. This is not to say that these different categories cannot be