I woke up this morning at home (briefly between US trips) to learn from a friend that Mary Douglas died recently. The note included this statement from Richard Farson:

I have the sad news that our friend and colleague Mary Douglas died last night, peacefully in a London hospital near her home there. Mary was certainly one of the greatest anthropologists who ever lived, and we were fortunate indeed to have her as an ILF Fellow. A product of Oxford, she taught at University of London, and wrote some of the classics in anthropology, notably Purity and Danger. She was the founder and leader of a network of scholars around the world who pursued her views of cultural theory. In her recent years she had accepted visiting appointments in schools of religion and theology at Princeton and Northwestern, and at the time of her death, was writing about several books in the Old Testament, Leviticus and Numbers, as I recall.

Mary was simply one of the most knowledgeable, smartest and wisest social scientists I have ever encountered. I can truthfully say that I have never emerged from a serious conversation with her without having my mind changed in some fundamental way. And what a lovely person. I still love her deeply, and will miss her more than I can say.I can only echo that statement.

Her book Purity and Danger is a classic, and was one of the seminal influences on my own work. She knew more about the nature and criticality of boundaries than anyone else I have read. She understood complexity before complexity science had been created, she articulated the pattern basis of human intelligence before neuro-science. She was an intellectual giant. I reported some of her new work here only a few weeks ago. She is a huge loss, not only to the field of anthropology, but to humanity.