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4. Beyond Cultural Relativity
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
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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] [77], (1) Lines: 0 to 49 ——— 6.2pt PgVa ——— Normal Page PgEnds: TEX [77], (1) chapter 4 Beyond Cultural Relativity Correlating Social Conditions with Social Outcomes Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict designed a project in 1930 that would sponsor fieldwork on North American Indians “with emphasis on . . . the reinterpretation of culture traits that is unique for each cultural center.” Investigations in at least ten tribes – by 1937 twenty tribes had been studied – would be brought together “in a comprehensive study of the processes of culture change and acculturation. . . . The theoretical implications of all the studies will be worked out in a book by the junior applicant [Ruth Benedict] on the individuality of cultures, the integration of different elements, and the interrelation of psychological types of cultural and of individual behavior” cua-cl, cucrss, Project #35). The style of the initial project statement is Boas’s, yet his definition of the comprehensive book foreshadows Patterns of Culture, going beyond Benedict’s papers of 1928 and 1930 on psychological aspects of culture and configurations, as though Boas knew how her ideas were developing. This research statement is far from “salvage research,” the term often used for fieldwork among American Indians in this period. It was the study of cultures reinterpreting diffused traits in order to achieve patterning and integration. Benedict wrote that students were sent to areas where the cultures were functioning with the least disruption. She had written in a letter to Margaret Mead quoted in the preceding chapter that she regretted her proposed book would be about dead cultures, as many tribal cultures did seem at that time, before Native American reenvisioning of values and customs of their past had gained a foothold, but she also went on to say that the material could support some significant points. Her remark about dead cultures inferred a contrast between the tribes most of her students went to study and Mead’s work in less disrupted cultures. The title submitted was “The Study of Acculturation,” and the Columbia University Council on Research in Social Sciences, to which they had applied for funds, designated it as Project #35, the title by which it was usually known.1 Benedict wrote the yearly reports and requests to the council. In 77 Beyond Cultural Relativity 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 [78], (2) Lines: 49 to ——— 0.0pt Pg ——— Normal Pag PgEnds: TEX [78], (2) each report of work accomplished and request for the next year’s funding for fieldwork, writing, and publishing, Benedict repeated that there would be a summary volume to follow the individual monographs that began appearing , but the summary book was never written. In her final project report to the funding committee, she wrote that her 1934 book was “a preliminary general statement of the range of human behavior and its local patterning by social institutions. . . . A final volume will be able to present a much more controlled analysis of the problem and to document conclusions important in the field of the social sciences” (u.p. 1938:12–13). The year Patterns of Culture was published, her report to the funding committee mentioned that a new point had emerged in several of the field studies:“It has become clear that this material is relevant not merely to a study of the processes of incorporation and modification of culture traits . . . but to the study of social sanctions.” The next year the new finding about social structure was more fully stated: “The cultures of the American Indians are often complexly organized, having rival groups each with great economic or prestige prerogatives, yet their punitive and political institutions are far below what is usually considered the necessary minimum” (cua-cl, cucrss, Project #35; rfb 60.2). This was the point of origin of her lengthy attempt to determine the social conditions and types of social sanctions that make possible a sense of freedom, a subject of several articles and lectures. She would attempt to find social correlates of beneficial social conditions and of disruptive social...