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1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [First Page] [1], (1) Lines: 0 to 46 ——— 6.2pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [1], (1) chapter 1 Ruth Benedict’s Life and Work Knowledge of Ruth Benedict’s Thought Ruth Benedict is a central figure in cultural anthropology, yet her thought is generally known only by one book, Patterns of Culture, published in 1934, fourteen years before her sudden death. Her later books, Race: Science and Politics (1940) and The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture (1946), were widely read but were not principally statements of culture theory, as Patterns of Culture was and as were a number of articles and papers on the new investigations she began after Patterns of Culture. She began to note observations of social conditions underlying personal security and individual freedom, noting them first in research memoranda and, a few years later, in publications. Her articles on personal freedom seldom have been a subject of commentary. This was an ambitious comparative search in which she attempted to find “laws” for a “cohesive society.” In the same period, she published several articles that carried further her viewpoint on the relation of individuals to culture. Later she wrote studies of the national cultures of Thailand, Romania, and the Netherlands that employed further alterations of her concept of culture, particularly by referencing history significantly and by presenting a model for individuals living within the strictures of their culture, a model that grew out of her earlier portrayals of individuals molded by their culture. Benedict’s studies of national cultures have been available and circulated in the mimeographed editions prepared for their sponsor, the Office of War Information (owi), but have seldom been taken into account as representations of her concepts. All of this work is found in numerous manuscripts of lectures and prospectuses of projects archived in her papers. Patterns of Culture would be named a classic by most anthropologists. It drew an image of a people’s selection from “a great arc of potential human purposes and motivations . . . material techniques or culture traits,” a selection that was the source of a configuration, and it gave coherence and psychological consistency to the culture (Benedict 1934:219). The configu1 Ruth Benedict’s Life and Work 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 [2], (2) Lines: 46 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TEX [2], (2) ration shaped the social institutions and the ongoing choices, conditioned the thought and behavior of the people, and tended to be maintained. The book also challenged ethnocentrism found in much scholarly work and in public opinion by arguing that the many independent preliterate cultures of the world, which had endured, nurtured generations, and maintained institutional continuity, had proved their success in meeting the fundamental problems of continuing human life. All should be recognized as workable ways of living. Benedict’s achievement was in adding a psychological and configurational framework to a fundamental, but not always observed, relativistic position in the anthropology of her times. Patterns of Culture presents many other aspects of the idea of configuration,and the reader will find them described for different points to be made throughout this introduction to her subsequent work. As Ruth Benedict wrote Patterns of Culture, new questions engaged her. She wrote in the penultimate chapter: “It is possible to scrutinize different institutions and cast up their cost in terms of social capital, in terms of the less desirable behavior traits they stimulate, and in terms of human suffering and frustration” (Benedict 1934:229). This was the opposite side of the coin. Cultural relativity was not the full lesson of the comparative study of cultures. It was true of forms but not of functioning, as she phrased the point in her course on theory, noting that “cultural relativism breaks through ethnocentrism , but the study of cultural relativism is not final. . . . There is a cultural relativity fallacy” (Theory 1/15/48). Cultures can be shown to function for a general good, or with excessive human suffering, or by exploitation of some members. Benedict took...

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