gr07

Ritual Studies II

Mary Douglas

* **Denise Duguay, Jesse Oliver, Brent Aldie, Lucas Manuel

- Our group felt slightly lost as Douglas seemed to jump back and forth from ideas

- We all remembered the story of St. Catherine and all thought although it was gross to   drink a bowl of pus we thought that it really got the point across that uncleanliness and    unholiness are not the same thing.

- Our group talked alot about the chance of linguistic confusion that she brings up as well.   We all agreed that whenever language is involved there is opportunity and chance that   there could be word confusion and the meaning can be misinterpreted or lost completely.

- We ended up discussing the linguistic topic of the writing as we found it the most      comprehendible part of the reading as a whole for the group.

- We talked about French, because it is the language other than English that we all had some experience with. We discussed that even when translating French there is often changed meaning in sentences or words and the meaning can often be misinterpreted.

- Our group then began talking about the concept of fear in religion, or at least an   outsider’s view that fear is playing a role in a culture's religion. Again we agreed with   Douglas that you can not assume such a general idea and then place it on everyone.

- It was mentioned that we interpret other cultures and their religion in certain ways that basically make us feel better about them. We do not like not knowing or not understanding things so we make up explanations that make us feel better about what we are seeing or hearing about. We thought that this was relevant when she discussed fear and how we see it as an instigator in other religions. Douglas talked about how although fear was perceived to be a reason why religion was practiced the way it was in certain cultures it was shown to not be the case when looking more closely at some cultures.

Erick Murphy, Stephanie Doucet, Kelly LeBlanc, Greg Ryan, Michelle Johnston

Dirt was a common theme especially in the beginning. “she deliberately drank a bowl of puss”… we all found this specific section quite disturbing and wonder ‘why?’. Dirt is seen as unclean and this is how religions see ‘dirty’. If you are sacred and holy you are clean, but if not you are dirty. What is the connection between these two distinctions?
“Pollution ideas work in the life of society at two levels, one largely instrumental, one expressive. At the first level, the more obvious one, we find people trying to influence one another’s behaviour. Beliefs reinforce social behaviour” (p.3) This quote is important because it reinforces the dirty theme as well as making others believe that they need to be cleansed of their sins and best way of doing this is keeping them from performing certain acts. Social behaviour has always been influenced in society, one example of this would be marriage were women were encouraged to stay ‘pure’ until marriage which goes back to dowry’s so she would be worth more to the father who was trying to find a suitable husband for her.
We found this article slightly confusing but lightly understood some of its points of ‘dirt’ and the hygiene that can be linked with faith. How beliefs can influence social behaviour and cultural practices.

Group Reflection*
Ritual Studies II
Alison Belyea-Geddes
June 21, 2009

“Purity and Danger” by Mary Douglas (Introduction)
After reading and discussing the introduction to “Purity and Danger”, written by Mary Douglas, we as a group decided there were some things we did not quite grasp. Douglas states that “reflection on dirt involves reflection on the relation of order to disorder, being to non-being, form to formlessness, life to death” (Douglas, p.7). This part made sense to us.
We also discussed Douglas’ idea of dirt, that dirt is essentially disorder. At this point we talked about our own experiences with dirt; I personally am sort of a “neat freak” so dirt or a mess does symbolize disorder, or even chaos, to me. To this extent when Douglas says that dirt, and the organization of it, is how we make sense of our environment, or how we understand our world. To me oftentimes I see the organization of dirt or mess in my environment equates to a tidy or clean understanding, and a more organized mind. However, dirt never completely disappears. It is always accumulating, as soon as you clean something it just reverts back to its “contaminated” state. This constant re-organizing and re-ordering of our environment, is also representative of how we conform to certain ideas and how our ideas are ever-changing.
*Joel Power, Alicia Del Frate, and Shelly Duncan