Document Type
Article
Citation Information
Please cite to the original publication
Abstract
Risk and Culture by anthropologist Mary Douglas and political scientist
Aaron Wildavsky proves that a whole is sometimes less than some of
its parts. The book consists of two interwoven but separable parts: (1) an
abstract theory of the relationship between risk and culture; and (2) an
application of the theory to explain "the sudden, widespread, across-theboard
concern about environmental pollution and personal contamination
that has arisen in the Western world in general and with particular force
in the United States" (a phenomenon that I will call "environmentalism").
Date of Authorship for this Version
1983