Visualizing Theory

  Sophie Homlar The photo above depicts the medical examinations that immigrants to the United States traveling through Ellis Island endured. Around seventy-five percent of all US immigrants entered Ellis Island between 1885 and 1920 and were forced to complete extensive medical tests to determine their eligibility for citizenship. These exams included testing for diseases, endurance levels, physiological state, and intelligence; however, most were conducted at the physical gaze of the physician. The people were separated into the pens seen above based on the results of these exams. Those that did not pass the exams (primarily from Southern and Eastern Europe) were not allowed to continue migrating.  Social anthropologist Mary Douglas describes collective features in a society that distinguish between the pure and impure. In her writing within Purity and Danger, she argues that society separates anomalies into an impure category– deeming them dangerous or incohesive with the ...

The above art piece is a recreation of an ancient cave painting done by artist Jess Cummin. The painting depicts two women under the moon, seemingly dancing, meditating, or participating in some kind of ritual. Though the figures are fairly crudely drawn, their female anatomy is clearly emphasized. However, that’s not the most striking thing about this image– Cummin painted this using her own menstrual blood.  According to Douglas, period blood can be considered a “margin of the body.” This term applies not only to bodily fluids like blood, urine, feces, but also to transitional parts of the body such as hair and the skin, as well as body openings such as the mouth, nose, eyes, anus, vagina, or anus. These margins are seen in society as polluting and taboo, and almost all cultures have specific rituals designed to clean and purify them. In the US, periods are still highly stigmatized despite a growing movement to normalize talking about menstruation. Jess Cummin had this stigma in ...

  Hannah Sussman Across the internet, the "That" girl aesthetic has provided a new unreachable standard for physical and moral purity for women. Like its predecessors "soft girl", "clean girl", "vanilla girl" etc, the trend of "that" girl provides a moral framework for how one should treat their body and more broadly how they should interact with the outside world. The trend of "that" girl presents an ideal version of being a young woman and provides instructions as to how this image can be achieved. By presenting youtube videos like the one this image is taken from, the trend invites others to participate creating what Mary Douglas called "unity in experience" (2002: 3) in her work Purity and Danger. The trend encourages a cleansing of self and space, as can be seen by the clean single color outfit in the center image, and the white backdrop in most images. The rituals include permitting only specific fo...

  There are general habits around the world of eating food and not leaving food on tables. In China, leaving rice on the table is not acceptable and a sense of a mess. Children are trained not to spill food from the bowl when using chopsticks. And the more food spilled on the table, the "dirtier" one eats. According to the norm, at least in most families, spilling even only one rice on the table is seen as "dirty" or "uneducated." It is thought that a person letting food fall on the table makes the whole eating environment "dirtier" since others share the same table.  According to Douglas, "purity" and "dirty" are social order and disorder. Applying Douglas' theory on how people eat food in an ordered way is very helpful in understanding why foods ending up in slightly different places are clean and dirty. 

  As seen in the above image, a young girl looks at her bare self in the reflection of water. The bath in front of her is known as a mikveh, which is used to perform a ceremony of purification used for Orthodox Jewish women following menstruation. In Judaism, a woman who is menstruating is referred to as a niddah. When a woman occupies that status of niddah, there are certain rules which she must follow. She may not touch her husband and they may not sleep in the same bed. Following her period the woman then must wait seven days before returning to the regular status and is thus regarded as “clean” once she performs the mikveh. The mikveh includes fully emerging one's body in the water, cleaning oneself of all impurity, finally reciting a prayer, and being inspected. The article that this picture is from, The Mirror in the Mikveh. advocates for  young girls, aged 11 or 12, to begin using the mikveh. The author cites that it is a great way for young girls to learn about their o...