published on such subjects as risk analysis and the environment, consumption and welfare economics, and food and ritual, all increasingly cited outside anthropology circles. After four years (1977–81) as Foundation Research Professor of Cultural Studies at the Russell Sage Foundation in New York, she moved to Northwestern University as Avalon Professor of the Humanities with a remit to link the studies of theology and anthropology, and spent three years at Princeton University. She received an honorary doctorate from the Faculty of Humanities at Uppsala University, Sweden in 1986. In 1988 she returned to Britain, where she gave the Gifford Lectures in 1989. In 1989 she was elected a Fellow of the British Academy. She became a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in 1992, and was appointed Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire (DBE) in the Queen's New Year's Honours List published on 30 December 2006. She died on 16 May 2007 in London, aged 86, from complications of cancer, survived by her three children. Her husband died in 2004. In 2002 a twelve volume edition of her "Collected work" was published by Routledge. Contributions to anthropology The Lele of the Kasai (1963) Douglas’ first publication, The Lele of the Kasai (1963), focuses on a matrilineal society in Kasai (now the Kasai-Occidental), the Lele. This matrilineal society is marked by a strong division of tasks, polyandric matrimonial rules, egalitarianism, autonomy and anarchism; a social world that was completely different from her own and that defied the teachings of Evans-Pritchard. She breaks from a functionalist approach by her analyses on the production and distribution of wealth amongst clans, a detailed description of matrilineal organization and the role of aristocratic clans in the power structure, and the place of marriage in the alliance strategies between the clans and the practice and supervision of witchcraft. Her intense empirical work granted to her an insight into the concrete practices of the Lele contrary to the theories developed by institutions. During her research, she establishes the importance of the relationship between the social structure and the symbolic representations of the values upheld in the society. Purity and Danger (1966) Douglas' book Purity and Danger (first published 1966) is an analysis of the concepts of ritual purity and pollution in different societies and times to construct a general concept on how ritual purity is established, and is considered a key