Benedict, Ruth (1887–1948)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Doran
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Publication Patterns ◽  
Margaret Mead

Known as America’s first woman anthropologist, Ruth Fulton Benedict was a cultural relativist and folklorist. She studied anthropology under Franz Boas (1858–1942) at Columbia University, received her PhD in 1923 and thereafter joined the faculty. Margaret Mead (1901–78) was her student and protégée, and the two maintained a lifelong friendship. Among Benedict’s contributions to the field of anthropology was her publication Patterns of Culture (1934), in which she directed anthropology toward a comparative analysis of culture, through which we learn about a given culture by contextualizing it with others without making moral judgments.

Anthropological Fictions: On Character, Culture, and Sexuality in the Work of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Virginia Woolf

Prospects ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Kimberly Engber
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Subsequent Response ◽  
Vassar College ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Ruth Benedict

In January 1932, anthropologist Ruth Benedict writes a letter to her colleague Margaret Mead on fieldwork in New Guinea, bringing Mead up to date on the health of “Papa” Franz Boas. Boas, the academic mentor that Benedict and Mead shared at Columbia University, acts as only the momentary locus for their continuing exchange about life and work and the relationship between the two. After giving “her hospital report,” Benedict turns eagerly to another conversation with Mead, asking, “Did you likeThe Waves? And did you keep thinking how you'd set down everybody you knew in a similar fashion? I did. I suppose I'm disappointed that she didn't include any violent temperaments, and I want my group of persons to be more varied” (Mead,Anthropologist at Work, 318). Focusing on the depiction of characters in Virginia Woolf's 1931 novelThe Waves, Benedict presents modernist fiction as a model for ethnography. However, she completely avoids the literary termcharacterin her discussion of Woolf, a particularly odd omission since Benedict had majored in English at Vassar College and since she and Mead regularly exchanged novels and their own poetry in letters.Ruth Benedict's reading ofThe Waveshas been cited as evidence of her tendency toward a vaguely “poetic” anthropology, an argument that tends to separate the aesthetic from the sociopolitical in both Benedict and Woolf. In this essay, I consider Benedict's reading of Woolf, together with Margaret Mead's subsequent response, as evidence of a shared critical engagement with character, culture, and sexuality in the early 20th century.

Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Jacknis
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology

The work of Margaret Mead (b. 1901–d. 1978) and Gregory Bateson (b. 1904–d. 1980) has proven to be critical in forming the subdiscipline of visual anthropology. In 1933 Mead met Bateson on the Sepik River, while both were engaged in ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Soon a couple (they married in 1936), they decided to travel to Bali with the explicit intention of pioneering the use of still photography and film as a basic ethnographic methodology. Before their collaboration Mead had studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University (PhD in 1929), and Bateson was a student of Alfred C. Haddon at Cambridge (MA in 1930). During their lives, neither held a tenured regular academic appointment, although both were active teachers and mentors. In their early and middle years, both worked in the field that came to be known as “culture and personality.” The couple worked together in Bali between January 1936 and March 1938. Following a comparative period of fieldwork among the Iatmul of New Guinea (April 1938–February 1939), they returned to Bali (February–March 1939), before returning to America. From their shared Balinese fieldwork they created a corpus of about 25,000 still photographs and 22,600 feet of 16 mm. film footage—and from the Iatmul of New Guinea, another 11,000 feet of film, and another 8,000 still photographs. From these materials, they produced two photographic ethnographies and seven edited films. These were perhaps the first cultural representations to use images, coupled with texts, as the primary vehicles for making ethnographic arguments and analyses. Although this transformed both visual anthropology and the discipline at large, it took many decades for their achievement to be recognized. Bateson and Mead, each in their own way, continued to advocate for the importance of visual representations in anthropology and related disciplines. After their divorce in 1950, Bateson continued his peripatetic professional career, often working collaboratively. His later work in psychiatry and the behavior of animals (otters, dolphins, and octopuses) found a place for visual documentation of non-verbal forms of communication. Except for her first fieldwork, in Samoa (1925), Mead never took her own photographs, instead collaborating with her ethnographic partners, especially two of her husbands, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson. More so than Bateson, in later life Mead was active in helping create the institutions of visual anthropology, through archives, conferences, publications, and teaching. Bateson and Mead’s visual anthropology has been influential throughout the scholarly world, but given the relatively large literature on the couple, this bibliography has been confined to works published in English.

“Stern Champion of the Human Race, of Man as Human”: Alexander F. Chamberlain and Reform in the Age of Imperialism and Jim Crow

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 833-864
Author(s):  
JOHN DAVID SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
World War I ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
World War ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Academic Interests

This essay examines the broad and understudied contributions of pioneer American anthropologist Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865–1914), who earned America's first PhD in anthropology at Clark University under the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas. Before his untimely death on the eve of World War I, and Boas's rise as a leading scientific spokesman of antiracism at Columbia University, Chamberlain contributed as significantly as Boas to the fields of linguistic and cultural anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, child development, comparative folklore, and Native American and African American culture, and to the cause of equality and justice for all humans. Chamberlain subscribed to an antiracist cultural evolutionism, frequently and passionately condemning ethnocentrism and insisting on the “generic humanity” of all persons, of all races. Close reading of Chamberlain's work suggests not that Boas's work mattered less, but rather that both men participated in an emerging debate on the nature and meaning of race that informed social policy and shaped academic interests during the Progressive Era.

Clark Wissler, 1870–1947

1948 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. C. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Natural History ◽  
York City ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
American Archaeology ◽  
University Training

American Archaeology lost one of its . most enthusiastic promoters and interpreters by the death, in New York City on August 25, of Doctor Clark Wissler. As one of the last of the passing generation of anthropologists with university training to enter the profession from another discipline—in this case Psychology—-he came to the American Museum of Natural History in 1902, at the age of 32. He served at first as Assistant in the Department of Ethnology under Curators F. W. Putnam and Franz Boas; but not long after, probably on Putnam's departure, was advanced to Assistant Curator of Ethnology and by 1905 is recorded as Acting Curator of Ethnology. Succeeding Boas, on the latter's complete transfer to Columbia University in 1906, he was named Curator of the Department of Ethnology and finally, in 1907, Curator of the Department of Anthropology, a rank which he held until retired to emeritus status in 1942, at the ripe age of 72.

Migration History as a Transcultural History of Societies

2015 ◽  
Vol 1 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-135
Author(s):  
Dirk Hoerder
Keyword(s):  
Chicago School ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
University Of Minnesota ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Social Distance Scale ◽  
Migration History ◽  
Ethnic History ◽  
History Of ◽  
Multicultural Perspectives ◽  
The University

As ‘ethnic’ history — the nation-to-ethnic-ghetto version of migrant strategies — came to include the process of migration and the socialization, the ‘roots’ of the field were still traced to the Chicago School and Oscar Handlin. European scholarship in the initial stages centred on emigration to North America and followed us approaches. I discuss, to the 1950s, European and Canadian epistemologies of the field and briefly refer to research in other parts of the world. The essays discuss neglected, theoretically and conceptually complex origins of migration studies and history in the us: (1) the Chicago Women’s School of Sociology of Hull House reformers and women economists from the 1880s and the cluster of interdisciplinary scholars at Columbia University (Franz Boas et al.); (2) scholars at the University of Minnesota who included the migrants’ societies of origin; as well as (3) scholars in California (Bogardus, social distance scale) and (4) British Columbia who recovered data collected in the 1920s and read them in modern multicultural perspectives. Against these many threads the emphasis by Chicago scholars, E. Park in particular, and O. Handlin on disorganization and ‘marginal men’ are assessed.

scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of Levels of Development of Moral Consciousness, Personal Autonomy and Valuable Orientations in Teenagers and Youth

Reflexio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 92-105
Author(s):  
E. S. Seredovich ◽  
O. V. Kiseleva
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Regulatory Function ◽  
Life Choices ◽  
Moral Consciousness ◽  
Sustainable Value ◽  
Value Preferences

In this article, from the position of the age-psychological approach, the results of the study of the moral and value sphere in groups of adolescents and young people are presented. Adolescence and youth are sensitive periods in terms of the formation of a moral and value orientation that performs a regulatory function and defines sustainable value preferences and life principles that characterize a person’s life choices. A comparative analysis of the levels of development of moral judgments, personal autonomy and value orientations of adolescents and young people revealed the differences in the selected groups.

scholarly journals Charles Wagley: his career, his work, his legacy

2014 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 623-630
Author(s):  
Conrad Phillip Kottak
Keyword(s):  
Field Research ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Race And Class ◽  
Central Brazil ◽  
Popular Book ◽  
The Tropics ◽  
Brazilian Culture ◽  
And Training ◽  
Over Time

Charles Wagley's work, firmly in the Boasian tradition, reflects his association with and training by Franz Boas, but especially by Ruth Benedict and Ruth Bunzel. Wagley's career as an ethnographer began in the Guatemalan highland town of Santiago Chimaltenango in 1937. Soon thereafter, he turned from Guatemala to Brazil, where he did his first field research (1939-1940) among the Tapirapé Indians. Wagley's Tapirapé revisits culminated in his last book, "Welcome of tears: the Tapirapé Indians of Central Brazil" (1977). Wagley's study of Gurupá began in 1948 and produced various editions of his popular book "Amazon town: a study of man in the Tropics". Wagley co-directed the Bahia State-Columbia University Community Study Project in 1951-1952, culminating in the edited book "Race and class in rural Brazil". Over time, Wagley focused increasingly on non-Indians, ranging from rural towns like Gurupá to Brazilian culture as a whole. Illustrating the latter, Wagley wrote two editions of "Introduction to Brazil", a culturally insightful text that examined unity and diversity in Brazilian culture and society. A man of careful scholarship and keen intellect, Chuck Wagley took great pride in the excellence of his teaching and writing; he also enjoyed sharing his knowledge and insights with a larger public

scholarly journals Comparative Analysis of Levels of Development of Moral Consciousness, Personal Autonomy and Valuable Orientations in Teenagers and Youth

Reflexio ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 89-102
Author(s):  
E. S. Seredovich ◽  
O. V. Kiseleva
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Young People ◽  
Personal Autonomy ◽  
Value Orientations ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Regulatory Function ◽  
Life Choices ◽  
Moral Consciousness ◽  
Sustainable Value ◽  
Value Preferences

In this article, from the position of the age-psychological approach, the results of the study of the moral and value sphere in groups of adolescents and young people are presented. Adolescence and youth are sensitive periods in terms of the formation of a moral and value orientation that performs a regulatory function and defines sustainable value preferences and life principles that characterize a person’s life choices. A comparative analysis of the levels of development of moral judgments, personal autonomy and value orientations of adolescents and young people revealed the differences in the selected groups.

scholarly journals Adolescent Concepts of Responsibility in Different Types of Moral Dilemmas

2017 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 81-90 ◽  
Author(s):  
S.V. Molchanov ◽  
O.V. Almazova
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Empirical Study ◽  
Moral Reasoning ◽  
Moral Dilemma ◽  
Moral Dilemmas ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Main Character ◽  
Moral Norms ◽  
Different Types ◽  
The Relationship

The paper presents results of an empirical study of adolescents' concepts of responsibility in different types of moral dilemmas characterized by violations of moral norms. The study proved that the type of moral dilemma and the context of interaction of its participants determine the adolescents' readiness to recognize the responsibility of the main character of the dilemma for violating the norm. In dilemmas of asocial type adolescents are more willing to recognize the responsibility of the offender whose behavior leads to obvious damage for one of the participants in the interaction. As for prosocial dilemmas and dilemmas of confronting norms, adolescents tend to deny the responsibility of the offender. The paper provides a comparative analysis of empirically identified types of adolescent concepts of responsibility, including the differentiated responsibility with egoistic orientation, high responsibility, low responsibility and ‘polar’ responsibility. The authors highlight the ambiguity of the relationship between adolescents’ evaluation of behavior, their readiness to recognize responsibility in moral transgression, and their judgment about the necessity of punishment. The paper concludes with the discussion concerning the relationship between the level of development of moral judgments/moral reasoning and the concepts of responsibility in adolescents.

Culture and Personality

Anthropology ◽  
2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert A. LeVine
Keyword(s):  
Public Discourse ◽  
Theoretical Orientation ◽  
Individual Case ◽  
National Character ◽  
Psychological Anthropology ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Early 21St Century ◽  
Psychological Dimension ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Edward Sapir

“Culture and personality” (also known as “personality and culture” and “culture-and-personality studies”) was an interdisciplinary movement seeking to unite psychology with anthropology in American social science of the mid-20th century. The movement gained exceptional renown and then fell into disrepute in the decades after 1950, while nevertheless providing a basis for modern psychological anthropology. The movement was initiated by three students of Franz Boas’s (founder of academic anthropology in America)—Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict—who included, in different ways, a psychological dimension in the study of culture. Bestselling books written by Mead (e.g., Coming of Age in Samoa, Growing Up in New Guinea, and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies; see Mead 1928, Mead 1930, and Mead 1935, all cited under Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson) and Benedict (e.g., Patterns of Culture, see Benedict 1934a, cited under Ruth F. Benedict) introduced anthropology to the American reading public, and in the late 1940s, when the books were reprinted in paperback editions, became the public face of anthropology itself. In 1947, Mead and Benedict launched a “national character” project on modern cultures at Columbia University, partly funded by the US military to study cultures “behind the Iron Curtain.” Their first book, The People of Great Russia, by Geoffrey Gorer and John Rickman (see Gorer and Rickman 1949, cited under National-Character Studies at Columbia University), suggested that tsarist and Soviet authoritarianism had psychological roots in the swaddling of Russian infants; it was widely ridiculed and harshly criticized, creating a stigma from which the culture-and-personality movement as such never recovered. Yet, by the 1950s the movement had generated other, less visible research projects directly and indirectly influenced by Edward Sapir that were refashioned as “psychological anthropology” and continue to the early 21st century. The movement’s renown brought with it the publication of biographies of its founders, and a division between its image in public discourse and those aspects known only to the academic world. The less visible aspects were recovered only after 1990 through the work of historians of anthropology, especially Regna Darnell with her biography of Sapir and Judith Irvine’s posthumous reconstruction of Sapir’s lectures on the psychology of culture. Culture and personality was never a centralized movement and lacked a consensus on theory and method; diverse approaches were formulated and tried out. If its theoretical orientation was generally post-Freudian, its methods ranged widely across ethnographic and individual case studies (including life history approaches), the Rorschach and other projective tests, and statistical analyses, both within and across cultures. Topics such as childrearing, individual variations in adult personality, and the relation of culture to mental disorders were examined anew and in most cases, for the first time, gave rise to research traditions that remain influential in modern psychological anthropology.

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