sociology ⁽⁵⁾

Mary Douglas & Steven Ney. 1998. Missing Persons: A Critique of the Social Sciences, The Aaron Wildavsky Forum for Public Policy. Berkeley : New York: University of California Press ; Russell Sage Foundation. ISBN 9780520207523 A copy of Missing Persons arrived in excellent condition, while heading towards 30 years old. Bought in my reading to catch-up with the work of anthropologist by…

Writers on culture, society, and other outcomes of thw worlding urge

Mary Douglas – reading over three decades (substack) Mary Douglas: a negative gist (substack) Mary Douglas : a positive spin (substack) The lawyer and the doctor Risk, training, habit & inclination. Mary Douglas and narcissism. Not in that order. (substack) Douglas & Ney's 1998 'Missing Persons: A Critique of the Social Sciences' Part one — Missing institutions (substack) Part two…

In my late twenties my reading moved to include more non-fiction. By my forties there was very little fiction, even if this is still more than most people read… I read a lot. So before my third decade I would wander the State Library of Tasmania’s reference section and browse and sit and read. Soon I would be expecting babies…

Like the post Sister Wendy on love as an obedient art, this is mostly about the preface. Purity and Danger was originally published in 1966, a year after I was born. In Categories versus practices: moral leadership & teenagers running amok I briefly rail against the methodology of using categories as resolution for a 'digital scanner' of social realities (in…