Waste is not “matter out of place”
Douglas’ theory of matter out of place is about power. Something in the wrong spot, something poisonous, is not matter out of place. Unless it threatens power.
Douglas’ theory of matter out of place is about power. Something in the wrong spot, something poisonous, is not matter out of place. Unless it threatens power.
Each so-called weed, after all, has a remarkable story to tell. Each is the product of millions of years of evolution. Each is a descendant from an ancient…
Bureaucracy is so deadly dull because it’s so mundane. But, as Steve Woolgar points out in his book Mundane Governance, the Latin etymology of ‘mundane’ is ‘of the…
We need to acknowledge the role we all play in silencing research. Consider the times we have dismissed a colleague’s idea because it ‘isn’t worth it’, or immediately…
How do I explain to my soon-to-be college graduate that she has to go to her graduation ceremony? My invocations of Arnold van Gennep and Victor Turner are…
Using Mary Douglas’s notion of matter out of place, I posit that when the government changed the law and increased their negative rhetoric about foreign workers, people like…