Transcript history of anthro pt 1

A Brief History of
Anthropology
19th Century Characteristics
 Industrial Revolution
 Science
 Positivism
 Rationalism – Reason
 Rapid Change
 Progress
 Christianity under attack
 Age of Empire
 Philosophy of History
With the industrial
revolution literally steaming
ahead the 19th century was a
century of rapid change
To the Victorian
mind it was far
better to be
civilized than to be
a “savage”
Anthropology: A Branch of History
`the history, not of tribes or nations, but of the condition
of knowledge, religion, art, custom, and the like among
them' (Tylor 1871 I: 5).
"no conception can be understood except through its
history is a maxim which all ethnographers may adopt as
a standing rule". (Tylor 1871).
`the past is continuously needed to explain the present
and the whole to explain the part' (Tylor 1865: 2).
`there seems no human thought so primitive as to have
lost its bearing on our own thought, nor so ancient as to
have broken its connection with our own life' (Tylor 1871).
Australia
The Savage Becomes
the Primitive
Making Stone Tools New Guinea
`the master-key to the
investigation of man's
primeval condition is held
by Prehistoric Archaeology.
This key is the evidence of the Stone Age, proving that men
of remotely ancient ages were in the savage state' (Tylor
1871 I: 58).
“Looking over a collection of their [quaternary man's]
implements and weapons on a museum shelf we may
fairly judge by analogy that in their moral habits, as in
their material arts, they had much in common with the
rudest savages of modern times, users like them of
chipped stone and flint.” (Tylor 1873a: 702)
Central tenet
Ona of Tierra del Fuego
“The condition of savage and
barbarous tribes often more or
less fairly represent stages of
culture through which our own
ancestors passed long ago'
(Tylor 1871)
Anthropologists could then use
the `indirect evidence' provided
by contemporary savagery `as a
means of re-constructing the lost
records of early or barbarous
times' (1865: 5).
universal sequence of
“stages” through
which it was
hypothesized all
societies will sooner
or later pass unless
their development is
arrested by some
exogenous
circumstance
(extinction, conquest,
absorption by another
society or achieving a
perfect equilibrium
with the environment)
CIVILIZATION:
Writing, urban life;
flowering of arts,
architecture
BARBARISM:
settled life; markets,
rise of chiefs and kings,
agriculture, arts develop
SAVAGERY: hunting and
gathering; no surplus
production; no permanent
cohesive unit wider than
band, stone tools
UNIFORMITY OF STAGES
A present day society in the
stage of Barbarism (e.g.
Hawai’i or Samoa) could
shed light on the distant
past when northern
European society was in the
stage of Barbarism
just as an Australian
Aboriginal society could
inform Europeans of their
history in the stage of
Savagery
Hawai’i
Australian
Aborigines
Europeans
Uniformitarian principle
The same kind of development in culture which has gone on
inside our range of knowledge has also gone on outside it, its
course of proceeding being unaffected by our having or not
having reporters present. If any one holds that human thought
and action were worked out in primæval times according to laws
essentially other than those of the modern world, it is for him to
prove by valid evidence this anomalous state of things,
otherwise the doctrine of permanent principle will hold good, as
in astronomy or geology. That the tendency of culture has been
similar throughout the existence of human society, and that we
may fairly judge from its known historic course what its
prehistoric course may have been, is a theory clearly entitled to
precedence as a fundamental principle of ethnographic research.
(1871a I: 32-33)
“The phenomena of Culture may be classified and arranged, stage by
stage, in a probable order of evolution” (1871 I: 6)
Hand Gonne
c.1400
Matchlock
1400-1700
Wheellock
1500-1820
Flintlock
1608-1865
“it is desirable to work out a systematically as possible a scheme of
evolution of this culture along its many lines”. P. 21
Survivals
Among evidence aiding
us to trace the course
which the civilization of
the world has actually
followed, is that great
class of facts to denote
which I have found it
convenient to introduce
the term “Survivals”.
Maypole Dancing Outskirts of London, 1891
These are processes, customs, opinions, and so forth which have been
carried on by force of habit into a new state of society different from
that in which they had their original home, and they thus remain as
proofs and examples of an older condition of culture out of which a
newer has evolved…. Such examples lead us back to the habits of
hundreds and even thousands of years ago, p. 16. “games, popular
sayings, customs, superstitions, and the like”.
E.B. Tylor 1832-1917
 1871 Primitive Culture
 correlates the three levels
of social evolution to types
of religion:
•Savagery — animism
•barbarism — polytheism
•civilization — monotheism
 Also linked to morality
John Ferguson McLennan, (1827-81)
1865 Primitive Marriage: An Enquiry into the Origin of
the Form of Capture in Marriage Ceremonies
 first stage was a time of
sexual promiscuity
 Female infanticide led to
a shortage of women,
who had to be shared in a
polyandrous matriarchal
situation
 Because men don’t like to share wives they captured
them from neighbors (exogamy) – patriarchy and
monogamy
Lewis Henry Morgan
1851 League of the Iroquois
(1818 – 1881)
1871 Systems of
Consanguinity and Affinity
1877 Ancient Society
Assumptions of Nineteenth Century Evolutionism
1. Like the natural world the cultural world is governed by
laws that science can discover.
2. These laws operated on the distant past as they do on
the present. - Uniformitarianism
3. The present grows out of the past by a continuous
process - developmentalism
4. This growth is simple to complex.
5. All humans share a single psychic nature – are rational
6. The moving force of cultural development is interaction
with the environment.
Assumptions of Nineteenth Century Evolutionism Continued
7. Different development is due to different environments.
8. These differences can be measured.
9. In these terms cultures can be ordered in a hierarchical
manner.
10. Certain contemporary cultures are like earlier stages.
11. In the absence of data these stages can be reconstructed
by the comparative method.
12. The results of the comparative method can be confirmed
by the study of survivals.
CRITIQUE OF EVOLUTIONISM
1. Is the Central Tenet Valid?
2. Is it Ethnocentric?
3. Did the Data support the theory?
4. Is the Doctrine of survivals valid?
The Growth of Fieldwork
N. Chagnon in Brazil with the Yanomamo
3 Impetuses
1. Increasing knowledge of other cultures
2. dissatisfaction with the quality and quantity
of much of the data contained in the
ethnological writings
3. the belief that the ‘savage’ tribes in their
‘natural’ state were rapidly disappearing in
the face of contact with the more civilized
nations
Increasing knowledge of other cultures
 Explorers and travellers were replaced by
government officials and missionaries who formed a
closer association with the people they were in contact
with.
 Appearance of Literary journals such as
•The Fortnightly Review (1865-1934),
•The Nineteenth Century (1877),
•The Academy (1871)
•The Contemporary Review (1866- )
 First Monographs
• e.g. The Native Tribes of Central Australia (1899), B. Spencer
and F. Gillen
 Questionnaires
Notes and Queries on Anthropology
1874
Purpose: `to promote accurate
anthropological observation on
the part of travellers, and to
enable those who are not
anthropologists to supply the
information, which is needed for
the scientific study of
anthropology at home' (BAAS
1874: vii).
Fear that “primitive” tribes were rapidly disappearing
Tierra del Fuego has
probably been inhabited for
at least 9000 years.
Around 1880 there were
between 3500 and 4000 Ona
In 1919 there were < 300
By 1930 < 100 Ona remained.
Onas hunting in Tierra Del Fuego c. 1900
the last full-blooded Ona
died in 1977.
`In view of the fast vanishing "primitive" cultures, and the rapid
extinction of some of the more primitive and ethnologically interesting
races the importance of such efforts to secure information ere it is too
late cannot be over-estimated' (Balfour 1905: 15).
Alfred Court Hadddon (1855-1940)
W H R Rivers 1864-1922
1898 Cambridge Expedition to the Torres Straits
Survey Versus Intensive Fieldwork
A typical piece of intensive work is one in which the worker
lives for a year or more among a community of perhaps four
or five hundred people and studies every detail of their life
and culture; in which he comes to know every member of
the community personally; in which he is not content with
generalized information, but studies every feature of life and
custom in concrete detail and by means of the vernacular
language. It is only by such work that one can fully realise
the immense extent of the knowledge which is now awaiting
the inquirer, even in places where the culture has already
suffered much change. It is only by such work that it is
possible to discover the incomplete and even misleading
character of much of the vast mass of survey work which
forms the existing basis of anthropology” Rivers 1913
Still Evolutionary Theory
 Rivers: “the goal of anthropology is the
reconstruction of the history of `primitive' peoples
 Balfour: “the ethnographer's purpose
determine their ‘place in time’” (1905: 18)
is
to
 Haddon's aim: “to elucidate the “nature, origin and
distribution of the races and peoples of a limited
ethnological area and to define their place in the
evolutionary tree”
Two things were absent from fieldwork at this time
1. participation
 `at Bendiyagalge we were particularly well situated to observe
their behaviour, our camp being out of sight of the Vedda camp but
within two hundred yards of it, here we could listen to their
unrestrained chatter and laughter' (Seligman and Seligman The
Vedda 1911: 85).
 Most ethnographers at this time also relied heavily on translators
 Fieldwork conducted under an evolutionary paradigm did not
necessitate participation. Since ethnographers were interested in
establishing historical links with other cultures, the meanings
which the myths and ceremonies they were describing had for the
people concerned was of little interest
2. sociological theory
Emile Durkheim
1858 - 1917
 The Division of Labour
in Society 1893
 Rules of the Sociological
Method 1895
 Suicide 1897
Elementary Forms of the
Religious Life, 1912
What is a Social Fact?
“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of
exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every
way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at
the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual
manifestations”
When I perform my duties as a father or a
husband for example, I fulfill obligations which
are defined in law and custom and which are
external to myself and my actions.
Even when they conform to my own
sentiments and when I feel their reality within
me, that reality does not cease to be objective,
for it is not I who have prescribed these duties;
I have received them through education.
Social Facts Characteristics
 External to the Individual
• found ready-made at birth
• Objective
 Learned
•Relative
 Endowed with coercive power
 A new variety of phenomena
• source is not the individual but in society a
collective phenomenon
Rules of the Sociological Method
 Society is part of nature and a science of society must
be based on the same principles as those of the natural
sciences
 Social facts must be treated as things I.e. objectively
 The properties of the totality cannot be deduced from
those of the individuals who combine to form it. E.g.
Suicide rates
 Social facts have to be explained in terms of their
function
Functional Explanation
 function of a social item refers to its correspondence with “the
general needs of the social organism not the individual”
 Function must be clearly distinguished from intention or purpose
The root idea in functionalism
Human societies consist of a number of institutions which
 over time achieve a harmonious “fit” to one another
Integration
 serve adaptive ends — i.e. contribute to the survival of
the overall society
 function
 do not just reflect universal human nature, but shape it
in distinctive ways
 determinism
Functionalist view of a society (1)
INSTITUTIONS
SOCIETY
PERSON
A society consists of a distinct set of institutions which introject
distinctive motivations into its members from earliest childhood
Functionalist view of a society
Different institutions produce different persons
with different motivations
Functionalism in a Nutshell
how does a social phenomenon contribute to
the survival of the society as a whole
BRONISŁAW MALINOWSKI
1884 - 1942
1884 born in Kraków, Poland, then
part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire
1910: emigrates to England to
begin postgraduate work in
anthropology at the LSE
1912 receives a Ph.D from the LSE
for a library dissertation on the
Australian aborigines
1914 travels to the British
Association for the Advancement of
Science’s meeting in Melbourne
Sept 1914 War is declared while en
route and Malinowski is classified as
an enemy alien.
 spends 2 ½ years in the Trobriands
Trobriand Is.
“Imagine yourself suddenly set down surrounded by all your gear on
a tropical beach close to a native village while the launch or dinghy
which has brought you sails away out of sight”.
“Imagine yourself then, making your first entry into the village”
“Some natives flock around you, especially if they smell tobacco”
“He ought to put himself in good conditions of work, that is, in the
main, to live without other white men, right among the natives”
“One step further in this line can be made by the Ethnographer who
acquires a knowledge of the native language and can use it as an
instrument of inquiry.” (p. 23)
The Goal of Ethnography
The goal [of the Ethnographer] is, briefly; to
grasp the native's point of view, his relation to
life, to realise his vision of his world” P. 25
Perhaps through realising human nature in a
shape very distant and foreign to us, we shall
have some light shed on our own. P. 25
Participant
• It is good for the Ethnographer
sometimes to put aside camera,
note book and pencil, and to join
in himself in what is going on p. 21
inside
view
Observation
• An ethnographic diary, carried on
systematically throughout the
course of one’s work in a district
would be the ideal instrument for
this sort of study
outside
(analytical)
view
 A functional account is an analyst’s account which asks
what is the `sociological function of these customs what
part do they play in the maintenance and development
of civilization?”
 Functional accounts don’t worry about how an
institution arose
–most institutional origins lost in the mists of time
–can at most speculate about them (“conjectural
history” )
For functionalists, what is important is not how things
originated but how they work (function)…
–how they contribute to peoples’ lives
Various Institutional Functions
language  binds the community together
Magic  warrants a myth's truth,
Myth  expresses, enhances, and codifies belief; it
safeguards and enforces morality'
Scientific knowledge  ensures Man's survival
Religion  establishes, fixes, and enhances all valuable
mental attitudes, such as reverence for tradition, harmony
with environment, courage and confidence in the struggle
with different cultures and at the prospect of death
law  curbs certain natural propensities, to hem in and
control human instincts and to impose a non-spontaneous,
compulsory behaviour'
Malinowski’s Hierarchy of needs
‘Basic’ needs
Food, shelter, sex, etc.
universal
this supplies a certain commonality to all human cultures and
is ultimately what makes them comparable.
Also makes ethnology scientific
each culture responds to the particular needs of its members
through institutions
every institution centres around a fundamental need
For example, tools function to provide food, and shelter
The variation in the form of the institution is culturally
determined
instrumental’ needs
but tools require skilled artisans and trade groups etc. In a
sense, the tools themselves have needs.
These are instrumental needs
 the three primary ones being economic organization, law,
and education
integrative needs
these institutions must in turn be functionally adjusted to
each other in order to form a more or less consistent
pattern…
this produces requirements not of individuals but of the
cultural system itself
2STRUCTURAL FUNCTIONALISM
The dominant theoretical
paradigm of the British
school of social
anthropology, 1930–1955.
Associated with the
theoretical writings of A. R.
Radcliffe-Brown in
Structure and function in
primitive society
A. R. Radcliffe-Brown 1881-1955
FIVE BASIC PRINCIPLES
1. Society is seen as an organically structured whole akin to
a biological organism.
2. Society has a social structure - an ordered arrangement
of parts.
3. Structure is ideally integrated, unified, and exists in
equilibrium.
4. This structure is the object of analysis; the most valued
data is the structure you can abstract.
5. The function of Social activities and institutions is
ultimately interpreted in terms of maintaining the whole
social structure of the society
THE STRUCTURE IS INTEGRATED
INSTITUTIONS:
 Distinguishable sets of roles, norms, and statuses within
a social system e.g. kinship system
 it is to institutions that the concept of “function” is
applicable
 the function of an institution is its contribution to the
overall perpetuation and adaptation of the society
 For social life to persist or continue the various
institutions must exhibit some kind of measure of
coherence or consistence
THE FUNCTION OF INSTITUTIONS IS TO
MAINTAIN THE STRUCTURE
 The problem for society is to survive — to maintain its
structure
 But basic human nature is inherently selfish and is
therefore inimical to that survival.
 Therefore the behaviour of individuals must be molded
to the requirements society needs to survive
 Conflict must be restrained and the conduct of persons
in their interrelations with each other must be controlled
by norms or rules of behaviour
 Failure of the individual to follow these norms results in
sanctions.
In the Trobriand Islands, a shaved head and a body blackened
with charcoal are signs of mourning. This is followed by ritual
wailing by the deceased maternal kin
How does this ritual mourning contribute to
the survival of the society as a whole?
CRITIQUE OF FUNCTIONALISM
What is the Functionalist view of Human Nature?
 What is the Relationship between the individual and the
society?
 How do Functionalists account for change?
 How do functionalists deal with conflict?
 How is the function of a given institution determined?
 How does one decide, or know what is good for the
society as a whole?
 Must all institutions have a function?
 What is its methodology?
REACTION AGAINST
EVOLUTIONARY THEORY
1870
1880
1890
1900
1910
1920
DEVELOPMENT OF
NATIONAL SCHOOLS
1930
1940
AMERICAN
CULTURAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
Boas
EVOLUTIONISM
BRITISH
SOCIAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
DIFFUSIONISM
Malinowski
FUNCTIONALISM
Radcliffe Brown
DURKHEIMIAN
SOCIOLOGY
PERIOD OF GRAND THEORY
FRENCH
ETHNOLOGIE
MODERN PERIOD
FRANZ BOAS
1858-1942
Boas en route to Baffin
Island 1883 and Central
Inuit; to study the
reflectivity of sea-water
CENTRAL ESKIMO (IGULIK) STUDY
Inuit can perceive and name hundreds of
colors and qualities of sea-water and
surfaces unknown in European
languages…
• distinctions which can be
described ‘scientifically’ in physics
and optics
• and which are of adaptive value to
a sea-mammal hunting culture
Boas’ study: earliest anthropological
attempt to describe a non-European
‘ethno-science’ in phenomenological
terms
Analyst seeks to understand phenomena by grasping
how they make sense within the framework of the
subject’s thought-world i.e relatively
posing as a Kwakiutl dancer for a National Museum diorama, 1895
1885: First expedition to
Northwest Coast (Bella
Coola)
1886: First collecting trip
for American Museum of
Natural History (New
York City) to Nootka and
Kwakiutl (Kwakwaka'wakw)
— massive
documentation of
Northwest Coast culture
Anti-Evolutionist
 Evolutionism assumes what it is trying to prove
 Order of cultural traits is arbitrary, eg representative and
geometric art forms
positioning individual cultures on the savagery-barbarismcivilization ladder discounts their particularity and integrity
 sidesteps the important task of reconstructing unwritten
histories for non-Western peoples
Rational psychological explanation is misleading i.e. people
did not reason themselves out of their primitive state
because one of the fundamental characteristics of people is
that they act automatically and unconsciously
CULTURAL/HISTORICAL
PARTICULARISM
Three pillars explain cultural customs
1. Cultures can only be understood with
reference to their particular historical
development. Therefore each culture is unique
2. Environmental conditions
3. Individual psychological factors
CULTURAL/HISTORICAL
PARTICULARISM
idea was not to make a preconceived hypothesis,
but to collect as much data about a particular culture without
any theory
general theories of human Behaviour would arise once enough
data had been collected
“We refrain from the attempt to solve the fundamental problem
of the general development of civilization until we have been
able to unravel the processes that are going on under our eyes”
Hallmark of historical particularism became the intensive study
of specific cultures through long periods of fieldwork
BOASIAN CONCEPT OF CULTURE
superorganic —the product
of collective or group life;
but the individual has an
influence
unconscious — a filter
through which reality is
perceived, but which is not
itself the object of attention
adaptive — culture
ultimately helps individuals
adapt to their environment.
Four Field Approach
SOCIAL
AND
CULTURAL
ARCHAEOLOGY
ANTHROPOLOGY
PHYSICAL
ANTHROPOLOGY
LINGUISTICS
FRANZ BOAS
 Cultural/historical particularism
 “race, language, and culture” as
independent variables
 Relativism
 superorganic
 Cultural Determinism
 Data Collection “without” theory
 Emphasis on Fieldwork
 4-field approach
Alfred Louis Kroeber
(1876-1960)
1897 enrolled in a course in
American Indian languages at
Columbia University offered by
Franz Boas
1901 completed his
dissertation on symbolism in
Arapaho art in Montana and
received the first doctorate in
anthropology to be awarded by
Columbia
1901-1946 first instructor of
newly created anthropology
dept. at U of California, Berkeley
“no culture is
wholly intelligible
without reference to
the non-cultural or
so-called
environmental factors
with which it is in
relation and which
condition it" (Kroeber,
1939: 205).
Arapaho camp with buffalo meat drying near
Fort Dodge, Kansas 1870. William S. Soule
“cultures occur in nature as wholes; and these wholes can never be
entirely formulated through consideration of their elements.
ARCTIC
NORTHWEST
COAST
Cultural and
natural
areas of
Native North
America
(1939)
SUBARCTIC
PLAINS
PLATEAU
BASIN
PRAIRIE
CALIFORNIA
BAJA
CALIFORNIA
SOUTHWEST
NATIVE NORTH AMERICA:
CULTURE AREAS
EASTERN
WOODLANDS
N-E
MEXICO
MESOAMERICA
The Superorganic
“The superorganic or superspsychic or super-individual
that we call civilization appears to have an existence, an
order, and a causality as objective and as determinable as
those of the subpsychic or inorganic”
 individuals have very little if any impact on a culture’s
development and change
 Culture plays a determining role in individual human behaviour.
 Culture has an existence outside of us and compels us to conform
to patterns that could be statistically demonstrated
 e.g. changes in fashion show that cyclical patterns of change
have occurred beyond the influence or understanding of any
given individual. Kroeber showed that hem length, height, and
width tended to move up and down in regular cycles,
Alfred Kroeber
 Culture Areas
 Superorganic
 Deterministic
 First American Textbook in
anthropology (1923)
Culture and Personality
seeks to understand the growth and development
of personal or social identity as it relates to the
surrounding social environment
Margaret Mead
1901-1978
Ruth Benedict
1887-1948)
 1922 Barnard College
under Boas, Meets Ruth
Benedict.
 1925-26 8 months
Fieldwork in Samoa
Margaret Mead 1901-1978
Coming of Age in Samoa 1926
 Is adolescence a
universally traumatic
and stressful time due to
biological factors or is
the experience of
adolescence dependent
on one's cultural
upbringing?
 nature vs nurture
based on a detailed study of 68 girls
between 8 and 20 in three contiguous
villages
Mead described sexual relations as
frequent and usually without
consequence – or issue
The basic conclusion was
that adolescence in Samoa
was not a stressful period for
girls
Because, in general, Samoan
society lacked stresses
Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and
Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (1983)
Mead did not spend enough time in Samoa and lived in
naval dispensary with an American family rather than in a
Samoan household
 was not familiar with the Samoan language
 ignored violence in Samoan life,
Failed to consider the influence of biology on behavior
Derek Freeman (1916-2001)
Mead had been lied to by her female
informants and thus came to erroneous
conclusions about Samoan culture and the
sexual freedom of the girls
also went to Samoa with preconceived
intention of showing that culture, not
biology, determined human responses to
life’s situations.
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
sought to discover extent
temperamental differences between
the sexes were culturally determined
rather than innate biological
 Mead found a different pattern of
male and female behavior in each of
the cultures she studied, all different
from gender role expectations in the
United States at that time.
The gentle mountain-dwelling Arapesh
Arapesh child-rearing responsibilities evenly
divided among men and women
The fierce cannibalistic
Mundugumor
a natural hostility exists
between all members of the
same sex”. Mundugumor
fathers and sons, and
mothers and daughters were
adversaries.
The “graceful” headhunters of Tchambuli
While men were preoccupied with art the
women had the real power, controlling fishing
and manufacturing
Mead's contribution in separating biologically-based sex from socially-constructed
gender was groundbreaking
Characteristics of Mead’s anthropology
Relativism
Ahistorical
Holistic
Participant observation
Romanticism
Humans select their culture, choosing some
traits and ignoring others.
1922 begins teaching at
Barnard College as
assistant to Franz Boas
and meets Margaret
Mead
Ruth Fulton Benedict
1887-1948
Patterns of Culture 1934
Demonstrated the primacy of
culture over biology in
understanding the differences
between people
Contrasted the ways of life of
the Zuni, Natives of Dobu and
Kwakiutl
Zuni
 Wealth is a sign of
greediness.
 Individual fame is a sign
of selfishness
 Solutions
• Share all the wealth with
other members of the
tribe.
• Dare not to do anything
that brings them
individual fame.
 Extremely passive.
Kwakiutl
 Overbearing
 Vigorous
 Zest for life
 Strive for ecstasy in
ceremonies
 self-aggrandizing
 Megalomaniac
paranoid
Why are they
so different?
 Can’t be “fixed human
nature.”
 Why not?
 Suppose - Newborn
Zuni baby is raised by
Kwakiutl parents (or
vice versa).
 How would this baby
behave when he or she
becomes adult?
 Like their adopted
parents.
Culture and Personality
A set of core values shapes larger cultural practices
resulting in a distinctive pattern of culture
cultural differences were multifaceted expressions of
a society’s most basic core values
cultural values relative
Societies have a dominating cultural personality
Culture is “Personality writ large”
The goal of anthropology was to document these
different patterns
Culture and Personality
“We have seen that any society selects some segment
of the arc of possible human behaviour”… and in so far
as it achieves integrations its institutions tend to
further the expression of its selected segment and
inhibit opposite expressions”.
Integrated
Holistic
Deterministic
Individual psychology is plastic, i.e. Is molded
principally by cultural experience
During World War II,
Benedict worked for the
Office of War Information,
applying anthropological
methods to the study of
contemporary cultures.
1946 The Chrysanthemum
and the Sword: Patterns of
Japanese Culture
Culture and Personality - Critique
Where’s the history?
How are culture & individual psychology related? For
example, does culture somehow 'cause' individual
personality?
Is individual behaviour patterned? How? What best
accounts for the observed patterns?
Circular -- Basic personality structure was inferred from
some aspects of behaviour then used to explain other
behaviour
linked anthropology with psychology
Culture and Personality - Critique
Where’s the history?
How are culture & individual psychology related? For
example, does culture somehow 'cause' individual
personality?
Is individual behaviour patterned? How? What best
accounts for the observed patterns?
Circular -- Basic personality structure was inferred from
some aspects of behaviour then used to explain other
behaviour
linked anthropology with psychology