User:AmbiguousHeinzSauce/sandbox

Anthropologist Catherine Besteman, author of the ethnography Making Refuge: Somali Bantu Refugees and Lewiston, Maine, utilized ideas derived from Mary Douglas's Purity and Danger to illustrate the anthropological concept of boundaries between two major groups of people living in the Lewiston area. Besteman's area of study revolved around Somali Bantu refugees, who had been displaced from Somalia and were now living in Maine. Her account entails the relations and tensions between the refugees and the people originally living in Lewiston throughout her observation period from 2006-2010. The forceful joining of these two groups of people resulted in conflicts that were boiled down to the original Lewiston community being perceived as "clean" and the impeding Somali Bantu refugees being perceived as "dirty" or "dangerous". The general consensus of the Lewiston public was that Somali Bantu refugees had not worked for the financial aid they were receiving through Social Services; therefore, those originally living in Lewiston were quick to fear that Somali Bantu refugees were stealing Lewiston resources. The boundary between "clean" and "dirty" laid within the belief that natives in Lewiston were the only people capable of wisely using Lewiston's resources and that allowing any outsider access to these resources would result in those resources disappearing for those who had the "right" to them, which would be natives of Lewiston. Besteman's theory behind the close-minded and fear-guided behavior of natives in Lewiston towards Somali Bantu refugees speaks to Mary Douglas's idea that the unfamiliar is threatening.