Encyclopedia, Difference between revisions of "Ruth Benedict" - New World

From New World Encyclopedia
(copied from Wikipedia)
 
Line 2: Line 2:
 
[[Category:Anthropology]]
 
[[Category:Anthropology]]
 
[[Category:Biography]]
 
[[Category:Biography]]
 
 
 
{{epname}}
 
{{epname}}
  
 
+
'''Ruth Benedict''' (maiden Fulton) (born June 5, 1887 in New York City; died September 17, 1948 in New York) was an American cultural anthropologist.
  
 
[[image:Ruth0003.JPG|frame|Ruth Benedict]]  
 
[[image:Ruth0003.JPG|frame|Ruth Benedict]]  
  
'''Ruth Benedict''' (née Fulton) ([[June 6]], [[1887]] – [[September 17]], [[1948]]) was an [[United States|American]] [[anthropologist]].
+
== Life ==
  
She was born in [[New York City|New York]], and attended [[Vassar College]], graduating in [[1909]]. She entered graduate studies at [[Columbia University]] in [[1919]], studying under [[Franz Boas]], receiving her [[Doctor of Philosophy|PhD]] and joining the faculty in [[1923]]. [[Margaret Mead]], with whom she shared a romantic relationship, and [[Marvin Opler]] were among her students and colleagues.
+
Ruth Benedict was born in New York City, although some believe that her actual birthplace was Shenango Valley in Upstate New York. Her father, a successful surgeon, suddenly died when Ruth was two years old, an event that had a tremendous impact on her whole family. Ruth’s mother, Beatrice Shattuck, a schoolteacher, could not forget her husband, and spent the rest of her life in grievance after him. Ruth and her sister Margery had a littler contact with an outside world, and Ruth was often isolated, playing in her own fantasy world. She soon developed depression, which lasted well into her adulthood. When Ruth was eight years old, it was discovered that she was partially deaf.  
  
Franz Boas, her teacher and mentor, has been called the father of American anthropology and his point of view can be seen in his student's, Ruth Fulton Benedict. Boas is author of many classic works including ''Race, Language, and Culture''—perhaps the most potent anti-racist text to emerge from the academic world in his time. In it he proves that these three are independent: race, language, and culture. After Boas, it was no longer possible to say that any given race was inferior, incapable of the highest culture humanity had to offer, and still be taken seriously. Ruth Benedict was affected by the passionate egalitarianism of Boas, her mentor, and continued it in her research and writing.
+
By the end of the century, Ruth’s mother moved to Buffalo, and Ruth was enrolled in St. Margaret's Academy, where she started to write poetry, under the name Ann Singleton. After the high school, Ruth entered Vassar College. There she remained focused to realize her personal goals, and she graduated in 1909 with major in English literature. Her sister Margery, who graduated together with Ruth, married the same year, and Ruth decided to travel to Europe. After she came back, she settled in Buffalo, and started to work for the Charity Organization of Buffalo. However, she could not find satisfaction there, and eventually moved to her sister in Los Angeles, where she became a teacher.  
  
== ''Patterns of Culture'' ==
+
The life in Los Angeles was not fulfilling for Ruth either. She was searching for something more. When she met Stanley Benedict, a young biochemist, she thought that her quest was over. She married him in 1914, and moved with him in New York City. The couple could not have a child, and that complicated things between couple even worse. Ruth could not find her inner peace, as her restless mind was seeking for some intellectual satisfaction. Spending hours in the house alone was not what Ruth had in mind. Then in 1919 Ruth enrolled in The New School for Social Research in downtown Manhattan, where she became inspired with Alexander Goldenweiser and Elsie Clews Parsons, two lecture anthropologists whose lectures will change Ruth’s life forever.
  
Benedict's ''Patterns of Culture'' ([[1934]]) was translated into fourteen languages and was published in many editions as standard reading for anthropology courses in American universities for years.  
+
In 1921 Benedict entered graduate school at Columbia University, where she started her coursework under the guidance of Franz Boaz. She was 34 years old, and due to her age she could not get any financial help. She had to subdue to a very modest life, living in a small rented house. However, that didn’t discourage her. She soon became an excellent student, and Franz Boaz became to Benedict more like a father than a simple mentor. She received her PhD in 1923, with dissertation "The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America", in which she discussed cultural aspect of individual religious experiences. She began to teach at Barnard College and Columbia, where she stayed as a lecturer until 1932.  
  
The essential idea in ''Patterns of Culture'' is, according to Margaret Mead, "her view of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" Each culture, Benedict explains, 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. For example she described the emphasis on ''restraint'' in Pueblo cultures of the American southwest, and the emphasis on ''abandon'' in the Native American cultures of the Great Plains. She used the Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionesian" as the stimulus for her thought about these Native American cultures. She describes how in ancient Greece, the worshippers of Apollo emphasized order and calm in their celebrations. In contrast, the worshippers of Dionysis, the god of wine, emphasized wildness, abandon, letting go. And so it was among Native Americans. She described in detail the contrasts between rituals, beliefs, personal preferences amongst people of diverse cultures to show how each culture had a "personality" that was encouraged in each individual.
+
Although Benedict continued to live with her husband all those years, Stanley Benedict didn’t approve her career. The couple separated in 1930, and Benedict soon turned to her new friend – Margaret Mead, with whom she developed an intimate relationship.  
  
Other anthropologists of the ''personality and culture'' school followed through on these ideas—notably Margaret Mead in her ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' and ''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.'' Abram Kardiner was affected by these ideas, and in time the concept of "modal personality" was born: the cluster of traits most commonly thought to be observed in people of any given culture.
+
Benedict continued to work as an anthropologist, writing papers and books, and conducting field research. She was appointed the executive director of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia in 1937, and founded the Institute for Intercultural Studies in 1941. There she started her studies on European and Asian cultures, which were sponsored by the Office of War Information. She wrote her best selling book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword in 1946, based on the data collected during this period. From 1947 to 1951 Benedict was working on her last project - Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures. After the success of the project, Benedict died of a coronary thrombosis, in 1948.
  
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 persons who lived them which should not be summed up or superficialized. We should not try to evaluate people by our standards alone. Morality, she felt, was ''relative''.
 
  
As she described the Kwakiutls of the Northwest Coast, the Pueblos of New Mexico, the nations of the Great Plains, and the Dobu culture of New Guinea, she gave evidence that their values, even where they disagree with the values of the anthropology student who is reading ''Patterns of Culture'', belong to coherent cultural systems and should be respected.
+
== Work ==
  
Whatever ethical imperatives have since been described by anthropologists as universal, not culture-bound, Benedict's work as a pioneer in describing whole cultures, and as an advocate of cross-cultural equality, has lived.
+
In her work, Benedict was greatly inspired by her mentor, Franz Boaz. Boaz, often considered the father of American anthropology, was the one who initiated the idea that no culture is inferior, including so called “primitive” cultures. Ruth Benedict was affected by the passionate egalitarianism of Boas and continued it in her research and writing. She believed that any culture, including a “primitive” one, should be viewed holistically, with all of its pieces combined in an integrated whole.  
  
Critics have argued that particular patterns she found may only be a part, a subset, of the whole cultures. For example, David Friend Aberle writes that the Pueblo people may be calm, gentle, and much given to ritual when in one mood or set of circumstances, but can be suspicious, retaliatory, and warlike in the opposite situation. Nevertheless, while disagreements with Benedict are in the literature, her brief descriptions are felt to be vivid, readable, relevant to every human being, and as far as they go, penetratingly perceptive and accurate.
+
In her dissertation from 1923, The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America, Benedict discusses the power of religious awe in Native American cultures. She was particularly interested in the methods by which different tribes sought visions and guidance. Benedict considered Boaz her own spirit guide, as she relied on his knowledge to inspire her in her own work.  
  
In [[1936]] she was appointed an [[associate professor]] at Columbia University.
+
Benedict continued her research on American Indians through her field studies. In 1922 she did study on Serrano, in 1924 on Zuni, in 1925 on Cochiti, and in 1926 on Pima. Through her experience with all those tribes she discovered the differences in temperament and culture between the Pueblo and Plains Indian tribes. It led her to conclusion that personality and culture are interconnected, in isomorphic sense. This work led to publishing of her most acclaimed work Patterns of Culture, a bestseller that brought Benedict into the top of American anthropology.  
  
Benedict was among the leading [[Cultural anthropology|social anthropologists]] who were recruited by the U.S. Government for war-related research and consultation after U.S. entry into
+
When war broke out, Benedict was asked by the U.S. government to write about European and Asian cultures, in order to gain deeper understanding of the enemy. Her work led to publishing of her Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), a soon-to-become bestseller about Japanese culture.  
[[World War II]].
+
 +
Below is some important summary of her well-known work:
  
One of her lesser known works was a pamphlet ''The Races of Mankind'' which she wrote with her colleague at the Columbia University Department of Anthropology, [[Gene Weltfish]]. This pamphlet was intended for American troops and set forth, in simple language with cartoon illustrations, the scientific case against racist beliefs.
+
'''Patterns of Culture'''
 +
The essential idea in ''Patterns of Culture'' is, according to Margaret Mead, "her view of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" Each culture, Benedict explains, 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. For example, she described the emphasis on ''restraint'' in Pueblo cultures of the American southwest, and the emphasis on ''abandon'' in the Native American cultures of the Great Plains. She used the Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionesian" as the stimulus for her thought about these Native American cultures. She describes how in ancient Greece, the worshippers of Apollo emphasized order and calm in their celebrations. In contrast, the worshippers of Dionysis, the god of wine, emphasized wildness, abandon, letting go. And so it was among Native Americans. She described in detail the contrasts between rituals, beliefs, personal preferences amongst people of diverse cultures to show how each culture had a "personality" that was encouraged in each individual.
  
== ''The Races of Mankind'' ==
+
Other anthropologists of the ''personality and culture'' school followed through on these ideas—notably Margaret Mead in her ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' and ''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies.'' Abram Kardiner was affected by these ideas, and in time the concept of "modal personality" was born: the cluster of traits most commonly thought to be observed in people of any given culture.
  
"The world is shrinking" begin Benedict and Weltfish. "Thirty-seven nations are now united in a common cause—victory over Axis aggression, the military desctruction of fascism" (p. 1).
+
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 persons who lived them which should not be summed up or superficialized. We should not try to evaluate people by our standards alone. Morality, she felt, was ''relative''.  
  
The nations united against fascism, they continue, include ''the most different physical types of men."  
+
'''The Races of Mankind'''
 +
This is the lesser-known work of Benedict, which was written in 1943. In this she writes against the war, trying to encourage all types of people to join together and not fight amongst themselves. "The peoples of the earth," Benedict points out, “are one family. We all have just so many teeth, so many molars, just so many little bones and muscles—so we can only have come from one set of ancestors no matter what our color, the shape of our head, the texture of our hair…. The races of mankind are what the Bible says they are—brothers. In their bodies is the record of their brotherhood."
  
And the writers explicate, in section after section, the best evidence they knew for human equality. They want to encourage all these types of people to join together and not fight amongst themselves. "The peoples of the earth," they point out, are one family. We all have just so many teeth, so many molars, just so many little bones and muscles—so we can only have come from one set of ancestors no matter what our color, the shape of our head, the texture of our hair. "The races of mankind are what the Bible says they are—brothers. In their bodies is the record of their brotherhood."
+
Furthermore, Benedict tries to give scientific explanation for racial differences, but only to proclaim that all races are equal. Benedict says, “Whatever our physical traits, regardless of the shape or size of our head, we are equally intelligent… Environment has more to do with intelligence than birth does, including how much money is spent on schools. "Southern Whites," for example, scored below "Northern Negroes" in the IQ tests administered to the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. And the per capita expenditures on schools in the south were only "fractions" of those in northern states in 1917… The differences.... [arose] because of differences of income, education, cultural advantages, and other opportunities.''
  
Environment has to do with our physical traits. Dark skin affords some protection against strong tropical sunlight, for example.  
+
The Races of Mankind can be thus seen as one of the important scientific works targeting racial oppression and inequality.  
  
But whatever our physical traits, regardless of the shape or size of our head, we are equally intelligent. "The best scientists cannot tell from examining a brain to what group of people its owner belonged....Some of the most brilliant men in the world have had very small brains. On the other hand, the world's largest brain belongs to an imbecile."
+
'''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'''
 +
The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is the study of the society and culture of Japan that she published in 1946, incorporating results of her war-time research. This book is an example of “Anthropology at a Distance” – a study of a culture through its literature, newspaper clippings, films and recordings, etc. Unable to visit Nazi Germany or Japan, anthropologists made use of the cultural materials studied at a distance. They were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving their aggression, and hoped to find possible weaknesses, or means of persuasion that had been missed. Benedict's war work included a major study, largely completed in 1944, aimed at understanding Japanese culture; for the Allies were in combat with Japanese armed forces in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War. Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer.
  
Environment has more to do with intelligence than birth does, including how much money is spent on schools. "Southern Whites," for example, scored below "Northern Negroes" in the IQ tests administered to the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. And the per capita expenditures on schools in the south were only "fractions" of those in northern states in 1917.
 
  
::''The difference....[arose] because of differences of income, education, cultural advantages, and other opportunities.''
+
== Legacy ==
  
Not only is the intelligence of people the same, on the whole, but the blood has the same chemical composition. Different peoples don't have different blood—"all the races of man have all [the] blood types"--and can receive transfusions from one another to save lives.
+
Whatever ethical imperatives have since been described by anthropologists as universal, not culture-bound, Benedict's work as a pioneer in describing whole cultures, and as an advocate of cross-cultural equality, has lived.
  
And all people are of mixed race, produced by "the movements of peoples over the face of the earth...since before history began."
+
Benedict's ''Patterns of Culture'' (1934) was translated into fourteen languages and was published in many editions as standard reading for anthropology courses in American universities for years.  
  
This knowledge, and more, was intended to work against superiority—the superiority "a man claims when he says, 'I was born a member of a superior race.'....Racial prejudice," writes the authors, "makes people ruthless."
+
Benedict was among the leading social anthropologists who were recruited by the U.S. Government for war-related research and consultation after U.S. entry into World War II.  
  
== ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' ==
+
Benedict’s ''The Races of Mankind'' (1943), which she wrote with her colleague at the Columbia University Department of Anthropology, Gene Weltfish, can be seen as an important scientific attempt to battle against racist beliefs.
Benedict is known not only for her earlier ''Patterns of Culture'' but also for her later book ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'', the study of the society and culture of [[Japan]] that she published in [[1946]], incorporating results of her war-time research.
 
  
This book is an instance of ''Anthropology at a Distance.'' Study of a culture through its literature, through newspaper clippings, through films and recordings, etc., was necessary when anthropologists aided the United States and its allies in World War II. Unable to visit Nazi Germany or Japan under Hirohito, anthropologists made use of the cultural materials produced studied at a distance. They were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving their aggression, and hoped to find possible weaknesses, or means of persuasion that had been missed.
 
  
Benedict's war work included a major study, largely completed in [[1944]], aimed at understanding Japanese culture; for the Allies were in combat with Japanese armed forces in the Pacific Theatre of the second World War.
+
== References ==
 +
 +
Benedict, R  (1922). The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America. (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.)  ''Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association'', 29, 1-7                                                                                     
  
Americans found themselves unable to comprehend matters in Japanese culture. For instance, [[United States|Americans]] considered it quite natural for American [[prisoner of war|POW]]s' to ''want'' their families to know they were alive, and to keep quiet when asked for information about troop movements, etc. While Japanese POWs, apparently, gave information freely and did not try to contact their families. Why was that? Why, too, did Asian peoples neither treat the Japanese as their liberators from Western colonialism, nor accept their own supposedly obviously just place in a hierarchy that had Japanese at the top?
+
Benedict, R (1934). ''Patterns of Culture''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.                        
  
Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the [[Emperor of Japan]] in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President [[Franklin D. Roosevelt]] that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer.
+
Benedict, R (1940). ''Race: Science and Politics''. New York: Modern Age.                    
  
While one critic has written that ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword'' is "long since... discredited since Benedict had no direct experience in Japan" and described it as "considered shallow and overtly racist", the Japanese ambassador to Pakistan stated this in a public address:
+
Benedict, R  (1946). ''The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture''. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.  
  
:In 1946, Ruth Benedict, a well-known American cultural anthropologist, published a book on Japan entitled “The Chrysanthemum and The Sword”, which has been a must reading for many students of Japanese studies.  
+
Benedict, R. & Weltfish, G. (1943). ''The Races of Mankind''. Public Affairs Pamphlet, No. 85, Public Affairs Committee, Inc., New York
  
Other Japanese who have read this work, according to Margaret Mead, found it on the whole accurate but somewhat "moralistic."
 
  
It is still generally regarded as a classic whose value continues even despite the post-war changes in Japanese culture.
+
== Sources ==
  
== Post-War ==
+
[http://www.pk.emb-japan.go.jp/Ambassador/flower_show_25nov00.htm Remarks by H.E. Mr. Sadaaki Numata. Retrieved 25 November, 2000]
She continued her teaching after the war, advancing to the rank of full [[professor]] only two months before her death, and died in New York on [[September 17]], [[1948]].
 
 
 
A U.S. [[postage stamp]] in her honor was issued [[October 20]], [[1995]].
 
 
 
== References ==
 
* [http://www.pk.emb-japan.go.jp/Ambassador/flower_show_25nov00.htm Remarks by H.E. Mr. Sadaaki Numata ... [[25 November]] [[2000]]]
 
* ''Patterns of Culture'', Ruth Benedict, Houghton Mifflin, New York, 1934.
 
* ''The Races of Mankind'', Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish, Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 85, Public Affairs Committee, Inc., New York, 1943.
 
* "A New Preface" by Margaret Mead in ''Patterns of Culture,'' paperback Sentry Edition (Houghton Mifflin), Boston: 1959.
 
*[[Roger Sandall | Sandall, Roger]] 2001 ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays'' ISBN 0813338638
 
  
 +
[http://www.webster.edu/~woolflm/ruthbenedict.html]
  
 
{{Credit1|Ruth_Benedict|45172368|}}
 
{{Credit1|Ruth_Benedict|45172368|}}

Revision as of 20:27, 7 April 2006

Ruth Benedict (maiden Fulton) (born June 5, 1887 in New York City; died September 17, 1948 in New York) was an American cultural anthropologist.

File:Ruth0003.JPG
Ruth Benedict

Life

Ruth Benedict was born in New York City, although some believe that her actual birthplace was Shenango Valley in Upstate New York. Her father, a successful surgeon, suddenly died when Ruth was two years old, an event that had a tremendous impact on her whole family. Ruth’s mother, Beatrice Shattuck, a schoolteacher, could not forget her husband, and spent the rest of her life in grievance after him. Ruth and her sister Margery had a littler contact with an outside world, and Ruth was often isolated, playing in her own fantasy world. She soon developed depression, which lasted well into her adulthood. When Ruth was eight years old, it was discovered that she was partially deaf.

By the end of the century, Ruth’s mother moved to Buffalo, and Ruth was enrolled in St. Margaret's Academy, where she started to write poetry, under the name Ann Singleton. After the high school, Ruth entered Vassar College. There she remained focused to realize her personal goals, and she graduated in 1909 with major in English literature. Her sister Margery, who graduated together with Ruth, married the same year, and Ruth decided to travel to Europe. After she came back, she settled in Buffalo, and started to work for the Charity Organization of Buffalo. However, she could not find satisfaction there, and eventually moved to her sister in Los Angeles, where she became a teacher.

The life in Los Angeles was not fulfilling for Ruth either. She was searching for something more. When she met Stanley Benedict, a young biochemist, she thought that her quest was over. She married him in 1914, and moved with him in New York City. The couple could not have a child, and that complicated things between couple even worse. Ruth could not find her inner peace, as her restless mind was seeking for some intellectual satisfaction. Spending hours in the house alone was not what Ruth had in mind. Then in 1919 Ruth enrolled in The New School for Social Research in downtown Manhattan, where she became inspired with Alexander Goldenweiser and Elsie Clews Parsons, two lecture anthropologists whose lectures will change Ruth’s life forever.

In 1921 Benedict entered graduate school at Columbia University, where she started her coursework under the guidance of Franz Boaz. She was 34 years old, and due to her age she could not get any financial help. She had to subdue to a very modest life, living in a small rented house. However, that didn’t discourage her. She soon became an excellent student, and Franz Boaz became to Benedict more like a father than a simple mentor. She received her PhD in 1923, with dissertation "The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America", in which she discussed cultural aspect of individual religious experiences. She began to teach at Barnard College and Columbia, where she stayed as a lecturer until 1932.

Although Benedict continued to live with her husband all those years, Stanley Benedict didn’t approve her career. The couple separated in 1930, and Benedict soon turned to her new friend – Margaret Mead, with whom she developed an intimate relationship.

Benedict continued to work as an anthropologist, writing papers and books, and conducting field research. She was appointed the executive director of the Department of Anthropology at Columbia in 1937, and founded the Institute for Intercultural Studies in 1941. There she started her studies on European and Asian cultures, which were sponsored by the Office of War Information. She wrote her best selling book The Chrysanthemum and the Sword in 1946, based on the data collected during this period. From 1947 to 1951 Benedict was working on her last project - Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures. After the success of the project, Benedict died of a coronary thrombosis, in 1948.


Work

In her work, Benedict was greatly inspired by her mentor, Franz Boaz. Boaz, often considered the father of American anthropology, was the one who initiated the idea that no culture is inferior, including so called “primitive” cultures. Ruth Benedict was affected by the passionate egalitarianism of Boas and continued it in her research and writing. She believed that any culture, including a “primitive” one, should be viewed holistically, with all of its pieces combined in an integrated whole.

In her dissertation from 1923, The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America, Benedict discusses the power of religious awe in Native American cultures. She was particularly interested in the methods by which different tribes sought visions and guidance. Benedict considered Boaz her own spirit guide, as she relied on his knowledge to inspire her in her own work.

Benedict continued her research on American Indians through her field studies. In 1922 she did study on Serrano, in 1924 on Zuni, in 1925 on Cochiti, and in 1926 on Pima. Through her experience with all those tribes she discovered the differences in temperament and culture between the Pueblo and Plains Indian tribes. It led her to conclusion that personality and culture are interconnected, in isomorphic sense. This work led to publishing of her most acclaimed work Patterns of Culture, a bestseller that brought Benedict into the top of American anthropology.

When war broke out, Benedict was asked by the U.S. government to write about European and Asian cultures, in order to gain deeper understanding of the enemy. Her work led to publishing of her Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), a soon-to-become bestseller about Japanese culture.

Below is some important summary of her well-known work:

Patterns of Culture The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is, according to Margaret Mead, "her view of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" Each culture, Benedict explains, 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. For example, she described the emphasis on restraint in Pueblo cultures of the American southwest, and the emphasis on abandon in the Native American cultures of the Great Plains. She used the Nietzschean opposites of "Apollonian" and "Dionesian" as the stimulus for her thought about these Native American cultures. She describes how in ancient Greece, the worshippers of Apollo emphasized order and calm in their celebrations. In contrast, the worshippers of Dionysis, the god of wine, emphasized wildness, abandon, letting go. And so it was among Native Americans. She described in detail the contrasts between rituals, beliefs, personal preferences amongst people of diverse cultures to show how each culture had a "personality" that was encouraged in each individual.

Other anthropologists of the personality and culture school followed through on these ideas—notably Margaret Mead in her Coming of Age in Samoa and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Abram Kardiner was affected by these ideas, and in time the concept of "modal personality" was born: the cluster of traits most commonly thought to be observed in people of any given culture.

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 persons who lived them which should not be summed up or superficialized. We should not try to evaluate people by our standards alone. Morality, she felt, was relative.

The Races of Mankind This is the lesser-known work of Benedict, which was written in 1943. In this she writes against the war, trying to encourage all types of people to join together and not fight amongst themselves. "The peoples of the earth," Benedict points out, “are one family. We all have just so many teeth, so many molars, just so many little bones and muscles—so we can only have come from one set of ancestors no matter what our color, the shape of our head, the texture of our hair…. The races of mankind are what the Bible says they are—brothers. In their bodies is the record of their brotherhood."

Furthermore, Benedict tries to give scientific explanation for racial differences, but only to proclaim that all races are equal. Benedict says, “Whatever our physical traits, regardless of the shape or size of our head, we are equally intelligent… Environment has more to do with intelligence than birth does, including how much money is spent on schools. "Southern Whites," for example, scored below "Northern Negroes" in the IQ tests administered to the American Expeditionary Forces (AEF) in World War I. And the per capita expenditures on schools in the south were only "fractions" of those in northern states in 1917… The differences.... [arose] because of differences of income, education, cultural advantages, and other opportunities.

The Races of Mankind can be thus seen as one of the important scientific works targeting racial oppression and inequality.

The Chrysanthemum and the Sword The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is the study of the society and culture of Japan that she published in 1946, incorporating results of her war-time research. This book is an example of “Anthropology at a Distance” – a study of a culture through its literature, newspaper clippings, films and recordings, etc. Unable to visit Nazi Germany or Japan, anthropologists made use of the cultural materials studied at a distance. They were attempting to understand the cultural patterns that might be driving their aggression, and hoped to find possible weaknesses, or means of persuasion that had been missed. Benedict's war work included a major study, largely completed in 1944, aimed at understanding Japanese culture; for the Allies were in combat with Japanese armed forces in the Pacific Theatre of the Second World War. Benedict played a major role in grasping the place of the Emperor of Japan in Japanese popular culture, and formulating the recommendation to President Franklin D. Roosevelt that permitting continuation of the Emperor's reign had to be part of the eventual surrender offer.


Legacy

Whatever ethical imperatives have since been described by anthropologists as universal, not culture-bound, Benedict's work as a pioneer in describing whole cultures, and as an advocate of cross-cultural equality, has lived.

Benedict's Patterns of Culture (1934) was translated into fourteen languages and was published in many editions as standard reading for anthropology courses in American universities for years.

Benedict was among the leading social anthropologists who were recruited by the U.S. Government for war-related research and consultation after U.S. entry into World War II.

Benedict’s The Races of Mankind (1943), which she wrote with her colleague at the Columbia University Department of Anthropology, Gene Weltfish, can be seen as an important scientific attempt to battle against racist beliefs.


References
ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

Benedict, R (1922). The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America. (Ph.D. diss., Columbia University.) Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, 29, 1-7

Benedict, R (1934). Patterns of Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Benedict, R (1940). Race: Science and Politics. New York: Modern Age.

Benedict, R (1946). The Chrysanthemum and the Sword: Patterns of Japanese Culture. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Co.

Benedict, R. & Weltfish, G. (1943). The Races of Mankind. Public Affairs Pamphlet, No. 85, Public Affairs Committee, Inc., New York


Sources

Remarks by H.E. Mr. Sadaaki Numata. Retrieved 25 November, 2000

[1]

Credits

New World Encyclopedia writers and editors rewrote and completed the Wikipedia article in accordance with New World Encyclopedia standards. This article abides by terms of the Creative Commons CC-by-sa 3.0 License (CC-by-sa), which may be used and disseminated with proper attribution. Credit is due under the terms of this license that can reference both the New World Encyclopedia contributors and the selfless volunteer contributors of the Wikimedia Foundation. To cite this article click here for a list of acceptable citing formats.The history of earlier contributions by wikipedians is accessible to researchers here:

The history of this article since it was imported to New World Encyclopedia:

Note: Some restrictions may apply to use of individual images which are separately licensed.