This symposium borrows the title, if not the substance, of anthropologist Mary Douglas’s book, Purity and Danger (1966), in hope of inviting examination of the purity motif as it threads its way through theories and praxis of Public Administration. Many associations come to mind, some quite practical, and some quite dangerous. As a catalyst to association and not as a set of expectations, our beginning considerations might include:

• Assertions of purity of motives, versus mixed motives or dirty hands, as impetus and consequence of administrative action.
• Assessments of the relations between purity of ideals (or identity) and inspiration to political unity, separatism, intolerance, or violence.
• Preoccupations with “impure thoughts” and chastity, particularly female chastity, not only in “faith-based” governance and abstinence programs in the U.S. and abroad, but in politics, society, and governance, generally; puritanism.
• Ambitions to distill pure essence and certainty in PA theories and research methods.
• Reflections on pollution, water purity, and water politics.
• Ruminations on food politics and policy in the agencies subsidizing and regulating (or failing to regulate) food, in marketing and international trade, and in personal and social relations; Orthorexia, anorexia, and other such afflictions and phobias.
• Discourses of racial purity, ethnic cleansing, and other dangerous ideas and practices in history and current social relations.
• Insistence on fastidious habits and practices of bodily purity as precursors to entering social space, and as suggestive of moral purity.
• Relations between the embodied social classes in intertextual times.
• Dislocations of discourses of contamination (e.g. from hospitals and sanitation facilities to other locations, and to social relations); concerns about contamination, hybridity, purity, and authenticity in social identity and relations.
• Rituals of purification; G-d’s purity, and human governance; symbolic and sacred associations.
• Purity as aesthetic ideal.

You take it from there. What might be gained from close examinations of the administrative life of this multivalent theme? Can we hope for theory and analysis that comes to rest somewhere other than in a “need for balance” between pure and impure, or between purity and danger?

Paper proposals are due January 8, 2010 and should include a working title, a one-page description of the proposed content, and affiliation and full contact information for the author(s). Papers commissioned from among the proposals will be due to the coordinator by June 1, 2010, and may then be sent out by the ATP editor for blind review. Completed final papers should be less than 9,000 words (including abstract, notes, and references). Invitation to participate does not ensure publication. Authors will have at least six weeks to make revisions in response to comments by the reviewers and coordinator. Final manuscripts will be due October 2010. The coordinator of this symposium is Patricia Patterson (Associate Professor, Florida Atlantic University). Please submit questions and proposals via email to patterso@fau.edu.