A late-career intervention by anthropologist Mary Douglas, co-written with political scientist Steven Ney, addressing how modern social sciences define — and systematically erase — the concept of the person.

Written against the backdrop of late twentieth-century policy thinking, the book critiques technocratic models that reduce human subjects to abstractions; units with risk attached.

Douglas and Ney stage a methodological one argument, concerned with the way many contemporary social theories fail precisely where they claim neutrality. A sharp, disciplined work that sits at the intersection of anthropology, political theory, and philosophy of the social sciences.

First edition hardback. University of California Press, 1998.