Patterns of culture / Ruth Benedict ; [with a new foreword by Louise Lamphere].

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Benedict, Ruth, 1887-1948.

Contributor:

George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Culture.

Ethnopsychology.

Zuni Indians.

Kwakiutl Indians.

Ethnology--Papua New Guinea--Dobu Island.

Ethnology.

Dobu Island (Papua New Guinea)--Social life and customs.

Dobu Island (Papua New Guinea).

Papua New Guinea--Dobu Island.

Physical Description:

xxiii, 290 pages ; 21 cm

Edition:

First Mariner Books edition.

Place of Publication:

Boston : Houghton Mifflin, 2005.

Summary:

A remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture is an eloquent declaration of the role of culture in shaping human life. In this fascinating work, the renowned anthropologist Ruth Benedict compares three societies - the Zuni of the southwestern United States, the Kwakiutl of western Canada, and the Dobuans of Melanesia - and demonstrates the diversity of behaviors in them. Benedict's ground-breaking study shows that a unique configuration of traits defines each human culture, and she examines the relationship between culture and the individual. Featuring prefatory remarks by Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Louise Lamphere, this provocative work ultimately explores what it means to be human.

Contents:

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.

Notes:

"A Mariner book."

Includes bibliographical references (pages [279]-[286]) and index.

Local Notes:

Acquired for the Penn Libraries with assistance from the George Clapp Vaillant Book Fund.

ISBN:

0618619550

OCLC:

65165543

Publisher Number:

9780618619559

Online:

Publisher description