Nov
7
“Sixty years ago, a young woman named Mary Douglas studying tribal custom in Africa, came across the following belief: if a woman had been unfaithful, she risked miscarriage in pregnancy. This was viewed not as bad luck or magic, but as a law of nature, as today we might regard gravity. At the time she thought the tribe primitive, exercising a crude means of asserting power and ignorant of science. Later, Douglas, a celebrated anthropologist, came to the view that their behaviour was not primitive at all but normal in all societies. That is, what we call “risky” is often an expression of disapproval - though we might not be aware that this is what it is - as much as a measure of real danger.”
BBC NEWS | Magazine | A risky business
