SOURCE: "Anthropology for the Common Man," in American Anthropologist, Vol. 49, No. 1, 1947, pp. 84-90.

[In the following essay, Williams reviews the mass-market edition ofPatterns of Culture, providing an introduction to the methodology and principles that are central to this work.]

Publication of Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture in a 25 cent edition is an extremely important event. What it means is no less than this: Anthropology has now become available to the man on the street.

What is it that has now become popularly available? Great interest will attach, for one thing, to Dr. Benedict's colorful and suggestive use of the concepts "Apollonian" and "Dionysian." People interested in their "complexes" (and that includes almost everybody!) will derive pleasure and profit from her shrewd application of psychoanalysis to anthropology. But there can be little doubt that overriding contribution of Patterns of Culture is the liberalizing tradition of the science, the tradition which has shown itself already powerful in dealing with race prejudice and hatred. The message of Patterns of Culture is that

the possible human institutions and motives are legion, on every plane of cultural simplicity or complexity, and… wisdom consists in a greatly increased tolerance toward their divergences. No man can thoroughly participate in any culture unless he has been brought up and has lived according to its forms, but he can grant to other cultures the same significance to their participants which he recognizes in his own.

When Dr. Benedict asks for tolerance we know that she means tolerance toward Indians, Negroes, Jews, colonial peoples, and other minority groups now discriminated against (including infants and schoolchildren whose problems she knows so well). And this is probably what such statements as that quoted will be taken to mean. But it is important to note that, benevolent interpretations aside, this is not what she is saying, and this is not what anthropologists in general are saying. What they are saying is not only that we should tolerate feminism in females and homosexuality in homosexuals. They are saying that we should look upon all habits, all institutions (which are legion) with tolerance. We should "grant to other cultures the same significance to their participants which we recognize in our own."

Among professional students of man it is agreed to be an irresponsible pastime to discuss theoretical questions in terms and labels derived from the late war. But it is to be expected that the average citizen will be ignorant of this tabu and unconscious of his bad taste in violating it. For him the war experience has been a pervading thing, and this is an important fact to remember if ever the statements of anthropologists are taken literally. If these statements are ever read for a moment without an investment of benevolent meaning it is just possible that there will be a public hue-and-cry against anthropology.

For the war period has provided the greatest mass education in "cultural divergences" the world has so far witnessed. Large portions of the world's population have come to learn about "possible human institutions and motives" in exceedingly direct and searching fashion. And the Gold Star Mother (for instance) is going to be reluctant about granting significance to Hitler's culture, the surviving citizens of Hiroshima (for instance) are going to look for their wisdom elsewhere than in a "greatly increased tolerance" toward the divergences of American generals, and the remaining Jews of Europe (for instance) are going to be poor customers for gospels which hold that there are two sides to every question.

Although such a position follows from her theoretical premises it would be wrong to suppose that Dr. Benedict is asking for tolerance of war criminals and of war crimes. In fact on almost every page she denounces such culturetraits.

War is, we have been forced to admit even in the face of its huge place in our own civilization, an asocial trait … War in our own civilization is as good an illustration as one can take of the destructive lengths to which the development of a culturally selected trait may go. If we justify war, it is because all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed, not because war will bear an objective examination of its merits.

And "warfare is not an isolated case." "Asocial elaborations" of cultural forms she knows to be frequent—"those cases are clearest where, as in dietary or mating regulations, for example, traditional usage runs counter to biological drives."

But that Dr. Benedict recognizes and condemns asocial traits which are destructive of human values is a tribute to her humanitarianism, not to her anthropological theory. The very existence of the category "asocial" is of course hotly denied in theory. Which brings to the fore again the question, What is anthropology per se trying to tell us? It is nothing new that war is bad and that women and children ought to be free. And to advocate "tolerance" of other ways of doing things must appear (to the naive Common Man) as either irresponsible or foolish: other traits are either better or worse than our own—if better we ought to adopt them; if worse the least we can do is expose them. But it is just this tolerance which is anthropology's root and core. The conclusion is inescapable that the polemics against asocial habits are intrusions and the real message is Relativism. To the Common Man's question, What in this chaotic world is significant? comes the answer: Everything—and nothing. "The diversity of the possible combinations of culture-traits is endless, and adequate social orders can be built indiscriminately upon a great variety of … combinations." And in return for license to wallow in our own fatuity we grant this privilege to all other peoples.…

Thus speaks the theory. And probably everyone will admit it would be a bad thing for the race if anthropologists followed these dicta even half the time. But of course Dr. Benedict does not accept her theory any more than the other professors. Such an approach would tackle the problem of valuation not to solve it but to give it up entirely. The Common Man asks the question, How shall we straighten out our poor country and our chaotic world? and back comes the answer: You can't miss, so don't worry about it.

If this were the only answer given we should have to conclude that Dr. Benedict (and anthropologists generally) have taken the easy way out. The problem of significance and value is not even touched by "tolerance," by granting "to other cultures the same significance to their participants" which we recognize in our own (because we know that "all peoples always justify the traits of which they find themselves possessed"). On the contrary the problem of significance is a hard problem, to be solved not by shrugging the shoulders but, in Dr. Benedict's own words, by making "objective examinations of the merits" of culture-traits. And to an important degree, despite their theoretical banalities, Dr. Benedict and the rest of the anthropologists are already at work at this task.

A glance at some of this work in progress is instructive. Dr. Benedict offers objective examinations of the merits of many institutions and from these can be deduced her criterion of value. If the Common Man is not helped by her formal statements he can learn from what she does in practice. Take the critique of Zuffi marital customs:

Marital jealousy [Dr. Benedict finds] is… soft-pedalled. They do not meet adultery with violence. A usual response on the Plains to the wife's adultery was to cut off the fleshy part of her nose.… But in Zuiji the unfaithfulness of the wife is no excuse for violence.

There are "no outbursts, no recriminations."

Can anyone read this and get the idea that Dr. Benedict regards Plains and Zuiji behavior as equally valid? Is she suggesting to the Common Man that it would be wisdom on his part to look on both modes of behavior (counting our own as Plains) with tolerance? Of course not. Dr. Benedict would be the last to suggest that we grant to the sensible Zuiji the same significance of their culture-trait as we recognize in our own, and thereby make ourselves out fools. She is definitely judging different ways of handling sex relations and we can set down her criterion tentatively: the presence or absence of violence. Violence is bad and non-violence good. Such a criterion of course provides a real answer to the Common Man's question, How should we run the country? The answer is something he can get his hands on, a recipe: Abjure violence, no matter what excuses for it you hear.

Take another example. Dr. Benedict has occasion to discuss the personal exercise of arbitrary authority and notes that among the Zuili it is almost totally absent. The young in other cultures learn to walk the straight and narrow under penalty almost from birth, and in consequence tremble at authority all their lives. The initiation of boys

is very often an uninhibited exercise of their prerogatives by those in authority; it is a hazing by those in power of those whom they must now admit to tribal status.… In South America the boys are herded under men with long sticks who use them freely on all occasions. They must run the gantlet with blows raining upon them, they must expect constant blows from behind accompanied by jeers.

But in Zuiii "not even the uncles" exercise authority because occasions are not tolerated which would demand it. In consequence,

The child grows up without either the resentments or the compensatory day-dreams of ambition that have their roots in this familiar situation. When the child himself becomes an adult, he has not the motivations that lead him to imagine situations in which authority will be relevant.

Again the questions may be raised: Is Dr. Benedict here neutral as regards Zuii practices vs. those of Africa, South America, and Australia? To her mind is Zuii mildness and gentleness on a par with South American jeers and gantlets, one to be tolerated with the other? The answer is, Of course not. She is condemning ordeals which pave the way for status and authority. Again the Common Man is furnished with a recipe: Abjure authority, or your culture will be rotted to the core with neurotic personalities and compensatory day-dreams.

A third example will perhaps suffice. After noting that the Puritan attitude toward sex "flows from its identification with sin," Dr. Benedict remarks that the Zuiii have no sense of sin.

Sin is unfamiliar to them, not only in sex but in any experience. They do not suffer guilt complexes, and they do not consider sex as a series of temptations to be resisted with painful efforts of the will. Chastity as a way of life is regarded with great disfavor, and no one in their folktales is criticized more harshly than the proud girls who resist marriage in their youth. They stay in and work, ignoring the occasions when they should legitimately be admired by the young men. But the gods do not take the steps they were supposed to take in Puritan ethics. They come down and contrive in spite of obstacles to sleep with them, and teach them delight and humility.

Surely Puritanism gets the worst of it here! No one can read this and still be tolerant of a social organization which produces guilt complexes, false pride, and the other sufferings so common in masochism and sadism. Again there is a maxim, a recipe for the Common Man: Despise not thy body.

Many more examples of this procedure could be cited. But those given should serve to show that in practice Dr. Benedict views the problem of significance in a totally different light from that which her formal statements would indicate. Other incisive critiques treat behavior at death, competition, attitudes toward homosexuals, the position of women. There is no room in the present account for an elaborate delineation of the theory of value which runs through all. But tentatively it can be said that the premiums on non-violence, on cooperation and equality, on life-affirming activity in general are all aspects of the same test: the test of consequences. Consequences, consequences for further living, is the bar of judgment to which Dr. Benedict's culture traits—both ends and means—repair.

Needless to say Dr. Benedict does not put the matter so explicitly. Formally she sticks to relativism. Her pragmatism is not so much at the tip of her tongue as bred in the bone. Try as she may to maintain the pose of relativism the test of consequences intrudes. This is most noticeable, as is fitting, in a theoretical confusion. It has been noted that Dr. Benedict—like anthropologists in general—holds to the doctrine of cultural uniqueness. "… Adequate social orders can be built indiscriminately upon a great variety of foundations.…" "… Ends and … means in one society cannot be judged in terms of those of another society, because essentially they are incommensurable." "No man can thoroughly participate in any culture unless he has been brought up and has lived according to its forms."

All this would seem to be clear enough. The statements are not equivocal. Yet we find the same writer judging these "incommensurable" ends and means, fussing at societies for their lack of discrimination, questioning wholesale the significance of cultures. She speaks of cultures combining "the most alien situations," traits which have "no intrinsic relation one with the other." Again and again one is told that "all cultures… have not sharpened their thousand items of behaviour to a balanced and rhythmic pattern." "If at one moment certain social orders seem to be pursuing certain ends, at another they are off on some tangent apparently inconsistent with all that has gone before…. ""… Lack of integration seems to be… characteristic of certain cultures.…" British Columbia tribal patterns are "un-coordinated," a "hodge-podge" of "contradictory bits." Some civilizations are "saner" than others.

Now in making these statements Dr. Benedict is plainly violating her canon of tolerance. It does not show much empathy with the British Columbian to tell him that his culture is a hodge-podge, un-coordinated and contradictory. After indiscriminatingly building a culture foreguaranteed to be adequate, the perplexed native finds its most striking characteristic to be "lack of integration." He is not likely to be convinced that one believes his ends and means cannot be judged when one proceeds to find his most cherished practices "off on some tangent" and "inconsistent with all that has gone before."

Happily, at least when talking to her own fellow-citizens, Dr. Benedict seems to recognize her inconsistency and urges the Common Man to forget the easygoing tolerance she has preached and adopt the stern self-criticism, the objective examination of ends and means she has practised. Attention has already been called to her indictment of Puritanism and of educational and child-rearing inanities. Similar indictments occur throughout the book. And in a passage near the end Dr. Benedict lays down her practising creed in words of such force that they deserve quoting at some length.

There is [she writes] one difficult exercise to which we may accustom ourselves as we become increasingly culture-conscious. We may train ourselves to pass judgment upon the dominant traits of our own civilization. It is difficult enough for anyone brought up under their power to recognize them. It is still more difficult to discount, upon necessity, our predilection for them. They are as familiar as an old loved homestead. Any world in which they do not appear seems to us cheerless and untenable. Yet it is these very traits which by the operation of a fundamental cultural process are most often carried to extremes. They overreach themselves, and more than any other traits they are likely to get out of hand. Just at the very point where there is greatest likelihood of the need of criticism, we are bound to be less critical. Revision comes, but it comes by way of revolution or of breakdown. The possibility of orderly progress is shut off because the generation in question could not make any appraisal of its overgrown institutions. It could not cast them up in terms of profit and loss because it had lost its power to look at them objectively. The situation had to reach a breakingpoint before relief was possible.

Appraisal of our own dominant traits has so far waited till the trait in question was no longer a living issue. Religion was not objectively discussed till it was no longer the cultural trait to which our civilization was most deeply committed. Now for the first time the comparative study of religions is free to pursue any point at issue. It is not yet possible to discuss capitalism in the same way, and during wartime, warfare and the problems of international relations are similarly tabu. Yet the dominant traits of our civilization need special scrutiny. We need to realize that they are compulsive, not in proportion as they are basic and essential in human behaviour, but rather in the degree to which they are local and overgrown in our own culture. The one way of life which the Dobuan regards as basic in human nature is one that is fundamentally treacherous and safeguarded with morbid fears. The Kwakiutl similarly cannot see life except as a series of rivalry situations, wherein success is measured by the humiliation of one's fellows. Their belief is based on the importance of these modes of life in their civilization. But the importance of an institution in a culture gives no direct indication of its usefulness or its inevitability. The argument is suspect, and any cultural control which we may be able to exercise will depend upon the degree to which we can evaluate objectively the favoured and passionately fostered traits of our Western civilization.

Such advice the Common Man can get his teeth in. And the advice is complete in itself, requiring no additional dicta of "tolerance." The same resolutely objective examination and appraisal of institutional behavior which will make short work of Jim Crow and the business cycle will also stop this side of that nihilism which views what Nazis and Southerners do as "their own business" and "all right for them." The field-worker, like the citizen, "must be faithfully objective." But it is just such objectivity which condemns a great many institutions and behaviors and makes us careful in granting significance to our own or other cultures. For we can separate (in terms of their consequences) good and valid behavior from social exploitation, sadism, and that "endless ceremonialism not designed to serve major ends of human existence." It is possible, as Dr. Benedict has made so clear,

to scrutinize different institutions and cast up their cost in terms of social capital, in terms of the less desirable behaviour traits they stimulate, and in terms of human suffering and frustration.

Such is Dr. Benedict's emphasis in a good half of her book. In the other half the emphasis, as we have seen, is on tolerance. This second emphasis is either superfluous or pernicious. Toward the conclusion of Patterns of Culture the well-documented and beautifully expressed plea for objective examination of cultures (including our own) is dominant. It is all the more sad, therefore, and all the more confusing for the Common Man, that the closing sentence again bids acceptance of "the coexisting and equally valid patterns of life which mankind has created for itself from the raw materials of existence."