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Patterns of Culture

by Benedict, Ruth

ISBN13:

9780618619559

ISBN10:

0618619550

Format:

Paperback

Pub. Date:

1/25/2006

Publisher(s):

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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Summary

A remarkable introduction to cultural studies as relevant today as it was in 1934, Ruth Benedict's groundbreaking study is the book that first brought the concept of "culture" to lay readers. In this fascinating work, Benedict compares the cultures of three peoples: the Kwakiutl of western Canada, the Zuni of the southwestern United States, and the Dobuans of Melanesia. Featuring an introduction by Franz Boas, a preface by Margaret Mead, and a foreword by Mary Catherine Bateson, Patterns of Culture shows the importance culture has on everyday life.

Author Biography

RUTH BENEDICT (1887–1948) was one of the twentieth century’s foremost anthropologists and helped to shape the discipline in the United States and around the world. Benedict was a student and later a colleague of Franz Boas at Columbia, where she taught from 1924. Margaret Mead was one of her students. Benedict’s contributions to the field of cultural anthropology are often cited today.

Foreword

vii

Louise Lamphere

Preface

xiii

Margaret Mead

Acknowledgments

xvii

Introduction

xxi

Franz Boas

The Science of Custom

(20)

Custom and behaviour

The child's inheritance

Our false perspective

Confusion of local custom with `Human Nature'

Our blindness to other cultures

Race-prejudice

Man moulded by custom, not instinct

`Racial purity' a delusion

Reason for studying primitive peoples

The Diversity of Cultures

(24)

The cup of life

The necessity for selection

Adolescence and puberty as treated in different societies

Peoples who never heard of war

Marriage customs

Interweaving of cultural traits

Guardian spirits and visions

Marriage and the Church

These associations social, not biologically inevitable

The Integration of Culture

(12)

All standards of behaviour relative

Patterning of culture

Weakness of most anthropological work

The view of the whole

Spengler's `Decline of the West'

Faustian and Apollonian man

Western civilization too intricate for study

A detour via primitive tribes

The Pueblos of New Mexico

(73)

An unspoiled community

Zuni ceremonial

Priests and masked gods

Medicine societies

A strongly socialized culture

`The middle road'

Carrying farther the Greek ideal

Contrasting customs of the Plains Indians

Dionysian frenzies and visions

Drugs and alcohol

The Zuni's distrust of excess

Scorn for power and violence

Marriage, death, and mourning

Fertility ceremonies

Sex symbolism

`Man's oneness with the universe'

The typical Apollonian civilization

Dobu

130

(43)

Where ill-will and treachery are virtues

Traditional hostility

Trapping the bridegroom

The humiliating position of the husband

Fierce exclusiveness of ownership

Reliance on magic

Ritual of the garden

Disease-charms and sorcerers

Passion for commerce

Wabuwabu, a sharp trade practice

Death

Mutual recriminations among survivors

Laughter excluded

Prudery

A cutthroat struggle

The Northwest Coast of America

173

(50)

A sea-coast civilization

The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island

Typical Dionysians

Cannibal Society

At the opposite pole from the Pueblos

The economic contest

A parody on our own society

Self-glorification

Shaming one's guests

Potlatch exchanges

Heights of bravado

Investing in a bride

Prerogatives through marriage, murder, and religion

Shamanism

Fear of ridicule

Death, the paramount affront

The gamut of emotions

The Nature of Society

223

(28)

Integration and assimilation

Conflict of inharmonious elements

Our own complex society

The organism v. the individual

The cultural v. the biological interpretation

Applying the lesson of primitive tribes

No fixed `types'

Significance of diffusion and cultural configuration

Social values

Need for self-appraisal

The Individual and the Pattern of Culture

251

(28)

Society and individual not antagonistic but interdependent

Ready adaptation to a pattern

Reactions to frustration

Striking cases of maladjustment

Acceptance of homosexuals

Trance and catalepsy as means to authority

The place of the `misfit' in society

Possibilities of tolerance

Extreme representatives of a cultural type: Puritan divines and successful modern egoists

Social relativity a doctrine of hope, not despair

References

279

(8)

Index

287