Vol. 6 · No. 2 · 2002
The Religion And Social Organisation
Of Irish Travellers (Part Ii): Cleanliness And Dirt, Bodies And Borders

C.C.M. Griffin

20 pages

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Introduction

The social organisation of semi-nomadic Irish Travellers is characterised on the one hand by internal autonomy and tension between domestic groups, and on the other by a barely muted sense of conflict between themselves and non-Travellers. Correspondingly, there are two modes of religious-cum-ritual expression: one personal, private and interior, that draws on diffuse and condensed symbols (to use Mary Douglas's terms 1978, 1984); the other collective, public and exterior, that draws on condensed symbols (Griffin 2002). This paper takes these ideas further.