SOURCE: "Society versus the Individual: Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture, 1934," in Famous American Books, McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1971, pp. 290-97.

[Downs is an American librarian and critic who has published a variety of works, including literary studies and several surveys examining books that have had a significant social influence. In the following essay, he discusses Benedict's approach to anthropology in Patterns of Culture.]

For a serious and scholarly anthropological study to achieve sales in excess of a million copies was unheard of until the publication in 1934 of Ruth Benedict's Patterns of Culture. In hardback and paperback editions this extraordinary work has made publishing history by reaching best-sellerdom in the English language and in numerous translations.

There may be significance in the fact, too, that Ruth Benedict's student and close friend Margaret Mead is also the author of several extraordinarily popular and successful studies of primitive societies. The two writers broke away from traditional approaches to anthropology and started new trends, which continue to dominate the field. Conceivably, the feminine viewpoint brought a warmth and understanding of human beings that was lacking in the dry, technical reports of their male confreres.

The older anthropologists were generally theorists who relied upon materials gathered by others—such as travelers' and missionaries' accounts. Attempts were made to reconstruct human history historically, using methods developed for the study of archaeology, linguistics, and biological evolution. Attention was centered on the diffusion of cultural traits, with the aim of tracing the spread of the human species, the history of inventions and technologies, etc. A leading early-twentieth-century anthropologist and Ruth Benedict's teacher, Franz Boas, emphasized exact descriptions. The case for the old anthropology is well stated in an introductory passage in Patterns of Culture:

Anthropological work has been overwhelmingly devoted to the analysis of culture traits, rather than to the study of cultures as articulated wholes. This has been due in great measure to the nature of earlier ethnological descriptions. The classical anthropologists did not write out of first-hand knowledge of primitive people. They were armchair students who had at their disposal the anecdotes of travelers and missionaries and the formal and schematic accounts of the early ethnologists. It was possible to trace from these details the distribution of the custom of knocking out teeth, or of divination by entrails, but it was not possible to see how these traits were embedded in different tribes in characteristic configurations that gave form and meaning to the procedures.

Nevertheless, Ruth Benedict did not reject the types of sources utilized by her predecessors. She found of value, for example, old eyewitness accounts of American Indians, such as those recorded in the Jesuit Relations. But the documentary sources were extensively and intensively complemented by field work among the Indians for firsthand observation of their cultures.

Attempts to study the customs of various cultures and then to draw overall deductions from them, for example, in mating or death practices, were compared by Mrs. Benedict to the building up of "a kind of mechanical Frankenstein's monster with a right eye from Fiji, a left from Europe, one leg from Tierra del Fuego, and one from Tahiti, and all the fingers and toes from still different regions. Such a figure corresponds to no reality in the past or present."

A definition of anthropology preferred by Ruth Benedict, and exemplified in Patterns of Culture, as stated by the author, is "the study of human beings as creatures of society. It fastens its attention upon those physical characteristics and industrial techniques, those conventions and values, which distinguish one community from all others that belong to a different tradition." The premise is that every culture has individual features, that is, practices, beliefs, and institutions, which distinguish it from every other culture. A society must be viewed as a whole, in all its facets, and should not be judged in terms of isolated details. As a corollary, the individuals who go to make up a given society are molded by the culture into which they have been born. Man's life is lived according to the traditions of his group, and it is a rare individual who tries to break out of the mold.

The diversity of cultures is a paramount fact in the study of anthropology, and the range of differences is infinite. Further, cultural differences are only partially, if at all, explained by race, or by the accidents of geography, climate, or other features of the physical environment. The rate of change in a culture is far slower than in an individual member of a society. The latter, of course, is limited at best to a few score years, whereas a culture is "time binding," perhaps perpetuating itself for thousands of years.

For illustrative purposes, Ruth Benedict selected three radically different cultures. Two are American Indian and the other is that of a Melanesian people who live on the island of Dobu off the northern shore of Eastern New Guinea. Reasons for the decision to treat these three primitive civilizations in detail are thus stated by the author:

A few cultures understood as coherent organizations of behaviour are more enlightening than many touched upon only at their high spots. The relation of motivations and purposes to the separate items of cultural behavior at birth, at death, at puberty, and at marriage can never be made clear by a comprehensive survey of the world. We must hold ourselves to the less ambitious task, the many-sided understanding of a few cultures.

Certainly, a worldwide search could scarcely have found three more diverse societies than those treated in depth in Patterns of Culture. The first is the Pueblo Indians of the Southwest, one of the most widely known tribes of aborigines in Western civilization. Despite the fact that they live in mid-America and are much visited by outsiders, their culture is relatively unspoiled, and they continue to live after the old native fashion. The ancient dances of the gods are performed in their stone villages, life follows traditional routines, and anything taken from the white-man's civilization is adapted to their attitudes and requirements. The individual person is subordinated to the group. It is social values that count, and personalities must give way to the needs of the larger society.

Several Indian tribes lived in the Pueblos of the Southwest United States. Patterns of Culture concentrates principal attention on the Zufii, who belong to the great western Pueblos. Pueblo culture, with a long homogeneous history behind it, is oddly a culture at wide variance with those surrounding it and indeed different from the rest of North America. The Zuffi are a ceremonious people, sober and inoffensive, their lives filled with cults of masked gods, healing, the sun, and sacred fetishes concerning war and the dead. "Probably most grown men among the western Pueblos," Mrs. Benedict observes, give to ritual "the greater part of their waking life," and the daily conversation of all the people in the Pueblo centers about it. The reason for the preoccupation is that Zuffi religious practices are believed to be supernaturally powerful.

The Zuñi place great reliance upon imitative magic. Their prayers are traditional formulas that ask for orderly life, pleasant days, and shelter from violence. Religious observances have one primary purpose: to bring rain and to increase fertility, both in the gardens and in the tribe. Given the culture's religious foundation, the priesthoods naturally stand on the highest level of sanctity. The heads of the major priesthoods make up the ruling body of the Zuñi, constituting a theocracy. The cult of the masked gods is popular; more than a hundred different masked gods exist in the Zuñi pantheon. The dances of the masked gods are conducted by a tribal society of all adult males, organized in six groups, each with its "kiva," or ceremonial chamber. When boys reach the proper age, they are initiated into a kiva.

Another great division of the Zuñi ceremonial structure is that of the medicine societies, whose supernatural patrons are the beast gods, chief of whom is the bear. The societies have amassed great stores of esoteric knowledge, imparted to the members, both men and women, throughout their lives. The Zuñi group war and hunting and clowning cults with the medicine societies.

Domestic affairs like marriage and divorce are casually arranged among the Zuñi. Marriages take place almost without courtship. Divorce is easy, though most marriages are permanent and peaceful. Economic wealth is comparatively unimportant, outweighed by membership in a clan with numerous ceremonial prerogatives.

In contrasting the Pueblo Indians with other North American Indians, Mrs. Benedict emphasizes a fundamental difference. The Indians of North America outside the Pueblos have what she characterizes as a "Dionysian" culture, the most conspicuous feature of which is the practice of obtaining supernatural power in a dream or vision, induced by hideous tortures, drugs, alcohol, fasting, or the frenzy of marathon dancing. The Pueblos, whose culture is described as "Apollonian," do not seek or tolerate any experiences outside of ordinary sensory sources. They "will have nothing to do with disruptive individual experiences of this type," notes Mrs. Benedict. "The love of moderation to which their civilization is committed has no place for them."

Individual authority is strictly subordinated among the Zuiii. Both in domestic and religious situations, the group is most important, and responsibility and power are always distributed. In their economic life, too, all activity is on a community basis: the planting, harvesting, and storing of crops; the building of houses; the herding of sheep, etc. Anger, marital jealousy, grief, and violent emotions of any kind are suppressed. Suicides are virtually unknown. The Zuili priests and medicine men engage in supernatural practices, but not in malicious sorcery. Mrs. Benedict sums up the prevailing mores with the statement: "In the Pueblos, therefore, there is no courting of excess in any form, no tolerance of violence, no indulgence in the exercise of authority, or delight in any situation in which the individual stands alone."

The natives of Dobu Island provide a vivid contrast to the Zuili. The Dobuans exist on rocky volcanic upcroppings with scanty pockets of soil. They are one of the most southerly of the peoples of northwestern Melanesia, and the population presses hard upon limited resources. Their barren environment is reflected in their reputations, for Patterns of Culture describes them as "the feared and distrusted savages of the islands surrounding them.… They are noted for their dangerousness. They are said to be magicians who have diabolic power and warriors who halt at no treachery." Until stopped by white men, they were cannibals. In short, the Dobuans are lawless and treacherous, and every man's hand is against every other man. All is suspicion, and a pleasant person is regarded as foolish, if not actually insane.

The Dobuan culture is classified as "Dionysian"; it includes the desire, in personal experience or in ritual, to attain a certain psychological state, to achieve excess. Such an emotion may be gained by drunkenness or working oneself into a state of frenzy.

The Dobuans function in groups of villages in a particular locality. Every grouping is a war unit and is on terms of permanent hostility with every other similar locality. There is also internecine warfare: "People with whom one associates daily are the witches and sorcerers who threaten one's affairs." It is believed that individuals within one's own locality "play havoc with one's harvest, they bring confusion upon one's economic exchanges, they cause disease and death." The only persons from whom one may expect any backing or for whom any affinity is felt are those in the mother's line. Within this line inheritance passes and cooperation exists.

Marriage is surrounded by elaborate customs. Husband and wife remain mutually antagonistic, and the illness or death of either is assumed to have been caused by evil sorcery on the part of the other. The jealousy, the suspicion, the fierce exclusiveness of ownership characteristic of all Dobu culture are strongly evident in Dobuan marriage. A sort of mania runs through the society, convincing the Dobuan that "all existence is cut-throat competition, and every advantage is gained at the expense of a defeated rival."

Religion among the Dobu is primarily concerned with magic:

Yams cannot grow without incantations, sex desire does not arise without love magic, exchanges of valuables in economic transactions are magically brought about, no trees are protected from theft unless malevolent charms have been placed upon them, no wind blows unless it is magically called, no disease or death occurs without the machinations of sorcery or witchcraft.

In summary, Mrs. Benedict characterizes the Dobuan as dour, prudish, and passionate, consumed with jealousy, suspicion, and resentment, and certain that any prosperity he has achieved has been wrung from a hostile world. "Suspicion and cruelty are his trusted weapons in the strife and he gives no mercy, as he asks none."

For her treatment of a third primitive society, Mrs. Benedict turns again to America, but to a culture vastly different from the Pueblos: that of the Kwakiutl Indians of the Northwest Coast, a culture which fell into ruin during the latter part of the nineteenth century. The Kwakiutl lived on a narrow strip of Pacific seacoast from Alaska to Puget Sound. The economic basis of their society was fish, obtainable in great quantities with a minimum of effort. Practically all transportation, commerce, and intercommunication were by water, by seagoing canoes. Aside from fishing and hunting, the men's chief occupation was woodworking.

The tribes of the Northwest Coast were Dionysian in their culture, like most American Indians—except those of the Southwest Pueblos. In their religious ceremonies, the aim was to achieve states of ecstasy. Their dancers would work themselves into frenzies, during which they lost all selfcontrol and were capable of doing irreparable harm, unless severely restrained. Among the Kwakiutl, one group, the Cannibal Society, whose members had a passion for human flesh, outranked all others. The Cannibal would even attack onlookers and bite flesh from their arms. But unlike the cannibals of Africa and Oceania, the Kwakiutl abhorred the actual eating of human flesh, and the Cannibal spat out or voided that which he took into his mouth. Many weird customs and ceremonies were associated with the cannibalistic rituals.

Extensive possessions were held by the tribes of the Northwest Coast: areas of the land and sea, fishing territories, such material things as houseposts, spoons, and heraldic crests, and such immaterial possessions as names, myths, songs, and special privileges. The women made great quantities of mats, baskets, and cedar-bark blankets, while the men accumulated canoes and the shells, or "dentalia," used for money.

Other striking features of the Kwakiutl culture included the acquisition of status by marriage; that is, a man transferred his privileges to his son-in-law. Further prerogatives and property were bestowed upon the son-in-law upon the birth of children. Both secular and religious organizations existed; that is, the tribes were organized in lineages, and there were also societies with supernatural powers—the Cannibals, the Bears, the Fools, etc. Behavior was dominated at every point by attempts to demonstrate the greatness of the individual and the inferiority of his rivals.

The culture of the Northwest Coast, Ruth Benedict observes, "is recognized as abnormal in our civilization," but "the megalomaniac paranoid trend is a definite danger in our society." In further defense of her detailed analyses of all three societies dealt with in Patterns of Culture, the author asserts:

It is one of the philosophical justifications for the study of primitive peoples that the facts of simpler cultures may make clear social facts that are otherwise baffling and not open to demonstration.… The whole problem of the formation of the individual's habit-patterns under the influence of traditional custom can best be understood at the present time through the study of simpler peoples.