Risk perception and social anthropology: Critique of cultural theory*

Abstract

’Cultural theory’, launched by social anthropologist Mary Douglas, has been highly influential in the inter‐disciplinary field concerned with the study of risk perception and risk communication. The theory derives from the grid‐group analyses that Douglas developed in the 1970s. Cultural theory aims to explain universal ‘cultural bias’ by way of a general typology of group formation and a concomitant cosmology or world view. This article critically examines cultural theory and the study of hazards as culturally construed phenomena.