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Overview
Facsimile of 1935 Edition. The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is, according to Margaret Mead, "her view of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" As Benedict wrote in that book, "A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action". Each culture, she held, chooses from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics which become the leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture. These traits comprise an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and values in each culture which together add up to a unique gestalt. Benedict, in Patterns of Culture, expresses her belief in cultural relativism. She desired to show that each culture has its own moral imperatives that can be understood only if one studies that culture as a whole. It was wrong, she felt, to disparage the customs or values of a culture different from one's own. Those customs had a meaning to the people who lived them which should not be dismissed or trivialized. We should not try to evaluate people by our standards alone. Morality, she argued, was relative to the values of the culture in which one operated.
Contents: I. The science of custom -- II. The diversity of cultures -- III. The integration of culture -- IV. The Pueblos of New Mexico -- V. Dobu -- VI. The northwest coast of America -- VII. The nature of society -- VIII. The individual and the pattern of culture
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781946963321 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Albatross Publishers |
| Publication date: | 11/04/2019 |
| Pages: | 224 |
| Product dimensions: | 6.14(w) x 9.21(h) x 0.56(d) |
Table of Contents
| Foreword | vii | |
| Preface | xiii | |
| Acknowledgments | xvii | |
| Introduction | xxi | |
| I | The Science of Custom | 1 |
| 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 | ||
| II | The Diversity of Cultures | 21 |
| 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 | ||
| III | The Integration of Culture | 45 |
| 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 | ||
| IV | The Pueblos of New Mexico | 57 |
| 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 | ||
| V | Dobu | 130 |
| 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 | ||
| VI | The Northwest Coast of America | 173 |
| 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 | ||
| VII | The Nature of Society | 223 |
| 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 | ||
| VIII | The Individual and the Pattern of Culture | 251 |
| 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 | |
| Index | 287 |