by Mary Douglas (1970)

Mary Douglas belongs to that rarest of breeds: the conservative anthropologist. In Natural Symbols, Douglas defends ritual, tradition, and hierarchy, and criticizes liberal modern society.

The way in which society is structured not only reflects our beliefs about the world but fundamentally influences and shapes how we think about how the world is ordered. Natural Symbols is an anthropological and sociological exploration into this relationship.

Symbols and Ritual

Douglas emphasizes how all communication depends on symbols. Ritualism, which Douglas defines as a heightened appreciation of symbolic action, is a particular type of communication that is manifested in two ways: belief in efficacy of instituted signs and a sensitivity to ‘condensed symbols’, by which she means symbols dense with rich and multifaceted content and that connect society to its past. Rituals are transmitters of culture and its accumulated knowledge. Symbols and non-verbal customs help order our experiences and create “a structure of meaning in which… individuals can relate to one another and realize their own ultimate purposes” (p. 50). When a society abandons its traditional structure and its rituals for a more unstructured form of organization, its members lose their customary shared means of expressing themselves and their ability to formulate precise conceptual categories corresponding to the world they inhabit, leading to vaguer, more uncertain patterns of thought. Members are compelled to seek out more informal and emotional means of expressing themselves, which increasingly tend to find their outlet in the form of panics and crazes.

Grid and Group

A society’s attitude toward ritual is a key indication of the sort of society it is. Douglas develops a schema for categorizing societies along two axes. The vertical axis represents what Douglas terms grid. Strong grid represents a system of shared classifications, while weak grid represents a private system of classification. (Classification scheme refers to how concepts are distinguished and categorized. A shared classification system therefore means that the various categories and functions that are relevant to a society are understood and recognized by all). The horizontal axis represents group. Strong group indicates that the individual is strongly controlled by community pressures. Weak group suggests that social pressure is weak and the individual is relatively more independent: voluntary exit from the group is easier than in a strong group society.

Society Types

There are three general types of society. High classification societies correspond to strong grid, strong group and are characterized by deference to authority, an acute sensitivity to symbols and ritual, and belief in a rational moral universe where good is rewarded and evil punished. Such societies have a high degree of solidarity and self-confidence.

The second sort of society is small group, which corresponds to strong group, weak grid. Here we have strong personal pressures exerted by the community accompanied by a weak shared classification scheme. This results in a society with clear external boundaries but internal confusion, since without a strong shared classification scheme, society rules and expectations seem irrational and contradictory: for example, the strong group feature discourages splitting society into factions, an aim which depends on loyalty, yet the lack of clearly defined roles resulting from the weak shared classification scheme produces in every man the ambition to become head of his village, a goal which requires disloyalty. The community cannot grow beyond a certain size without introducing more sharply defined roles since larger communities require more organizational structure to thrive (hence the name small group).

The final type of society is strong grid, which is a bifurcated society: part of society resides in the weak grid/strong group quadrant, while the other part of society inhabits the strong grid/weak group quadrant. This sort of society is characterized by an elite or ruling class that is only weakly constrained by community interests and therefore free to pursue its own interests and power (weak group), while the majority are constrained both by social pressures that emerge from the ruling class (strong group) and an oppressive grid. Such a society exhibits a bewildering and complex network of impersonal protocols that defines the rules of competition. Strong grid societies include the Big Man society, prevalent in tribal Africa, and particularly interestingly from our point of view, modern society.

Reflection of the Cosmos and the Moral Order in Society

Each of these society types reflects a certain cosmology, a particular understanding of the human body, and attitudes toward the sacred and morality. The structure characteristic of high classification societies manifests itself in a conception of the cosmos as having a rational moral order. A corollary is a strong sense of sin: moral failings are regarded not only as personal failings but as offenses against religion and the community. Personal and societal expectations tend to coincide for the individual, and a premium is placed on self-control. The individual is well-integrated into society, and the clearly defined roles and heightened symbolic nature of society imbue his life with meaning. Community restoration is achieved via ritual practices such as fasting or sacrifice. Strong bodily boundaries and a keen sensitivity to rules of purity and impurity mirror the strong external and internal social boundaries.

Small group is characterized by a dualistic cosmology, reflecting that the in-group/out-group dynamic eclipses all other elements. The absence of structure and well-established roles within society and its consequent one-upmanship expresses itself in the spiritual realm as the dominance of capricious spiritual forces and constant contending with demonic and occult powers. Community restoration is achieved via expulsion by means of scapegoating and witch hunting (a practice which is exacerbated by the desire to vanquish rivals), which permits the group to maintain itself and to function without hierarchy and formal roles. Expelling the witch from society is seen as analogous to expelling disease from the body. There is a weaker connection between suffering and the transgression of a moral code compared to high classification societies. The weaker internal social constraints are reflected in the bodily realm through heightened bodily dissociation in the form of practices like trances and speaking in tongues. Such practices are treated as ways to channel power to the community.

In strong grid, the cosmos is impersonal and amoral, reflecting the impersonal and disconnected rules that govern society, so moral sensibilities lose their saliency and are supplanted by feelings of honor and shame. Man comes to feel atomized and alienated from society because the rules of society, being merely pragmatic and lacking any connection to symbols of the transcendent, do not relate the individual to any ultimate purpose of the community. Identity and self-value come to be measured solely by success, and society is set up so that this is achievable by only a few. Sin is replaced by stupidity, i.e., failure to understand and manipulate the rules of the game to one’s own advantage.

One interesting consequence of a strong grid society is that its bifurcated nature gives rise to two very different belief systems: on the left side of the grid-group diagram where the elite reside, a pragmatic, unspeculative, and materialist ideology that is blind to symbolic representation reigns: the rules that govern society are perfectly rational and comprehensible to them. On the right side of the diagram, where the rules of society appear opaque, a tendency toward millennialism exhibits itself: since the structure of society is incomprehensible to these members, they view this structure as oppressive and seek to eliminate all structure. Douglas notes that the tendency to want to cast off all structure in strong grid societies is exactly the wrong approach and bound to make things worse. Instead, she writes:

The way to humanize the system is to cherish particular categories. The institution which runs by strict adherence to general rules gives up its own autonomy. If it tries to adopt equality or seniority or alphabetical order or any other hard and fast principle for promotion and admission, it is bound to override the hard case. Furthermore, it is bound to abandon its traditions and so its identity and its original, special purposes. For these humanizing influences depend upon a continuity with the past, benevolent forms of nepotism, irregular charity, extraordinary promotions, freedom to pioneer in the tradition of the founders… Instead of anti-ritualism it would be more practical to experiment with more flexible institutional forms and to seek to develop their ritual expression. (p. 158-159)

My main criticism of Douglas is that she has a tendency to regard the sociological explanation as the only valid sort: she often evinces a reductionist, unidirectional view of the relationship between the structure of society and its cosmology, i.e., that a society’s beliefs are entirely determined by its structure. However, it seems clear that this relationship is reciprocal: a society’s structure will shape its beliefs, but a society’s beliefs will also influence how it is structured. Another criticism is that the book is sometimes difficult to follow. For example, Douglas sometimes writes of three general types of society and other times of four, and it is not entirely clear to me what the distinction between the third and fourth types are.