How long does it take to read Natural Symbols?
Profess Douglas, Mary Douglas, Professor Mary Douglas
Natural Symbols by Profess Douglas, Mary Douglas, Professor Mary Douglas takes about 4 hours 1 minute to read at 250 words a minute.
About 4 hours 1 minute
A weekend read
First published 1970. 219 pages, about 60,225 words.
9 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 6 hours 42 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 4 hours 1 minute |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 2 hours 31 minutes |
The page count is the median across 32 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
There are no such things as natural symbols. Every culture naturalises a certain view of the human body to make it carry social meanings. This work focuses on how the selections from blood, bones, breath or excrement, are made. Body symbolism is always in service to social intentions, and the body cannot be endowed with universal meanings. In this now classic work Mary Douglas shows how certain forms of social life bring forth regularly the same varieties of symbolic expression. Hierarchy treats the body as a hierarchy; sect treats it as a closed system; individualism treats it as pervasive energy. Political movements as well as religions have their rituals, medicine, ethics, educational theory, aesthetics, a huge range of judgements fall into line behind the standard cultural bias.
Subjects: Ethnology, Religious aspects, Religion and sociology, Symbolism, Religion, Ritual
