Ruth Benedict: Shaping Anthropology through Cultural Relativism

The essay will assess Ruth Benedict’s contribution to anthropology, including how important her exploration into culture and personality was because it led to her most important work in abnormalities. It will explore criticism about the incommensurability of cultures and “the savage slot”, which is captured in Benedict’s hermeneutic approach to fieldwork, whilst discussing the merits and downfall of this alternative approach. The essay will state that Benedict opened feminist discussions in anthropology and how her pursuit of opportunities for women in anthropology is her greatest legacy. The essay’s argument will declare that Benedict’s legacy is not marred by its incurred criticisms, since she was a key contributor to feminist anthropology and became a figure in pursuit of Boasian cultural relativism, determined to dispel any notions of abnormality in society.

Personality and Culture

Benedict’s Patterns of Culture is a reiteration of Boasian work that discusses the relationship between culture and personality. Mead described her approach to culture: “personality writ large” – there is coherence between individual and culture, and culture is a pattern of thoughts, characteristics, and actions too. Benedict used a comparative approach, judging cultures on the opportunities they offer to diverse individuals to thrive, and on the institutional mechanisms used to acquire traits appropriate to the cultural setting – she thought customs and learning gave individuals the power for change. Even using similar terms as institutional mechanisms, Benedict’s work is the opposite of structural-functionalism and it is “personality writ large” that distinguishes it. Radcliffe-Brown suggested the individual had no configuration within society; that social institutions function to maintain society. Benedict argued that opportunities offered to the individual determine the character of the whole society, that culture was made up of choices made by individuals. Sullivan considered this a more important approach to anthropology, “social interactions are incredibly important in developing the individual character…, social machinery should be specifically designed to ensure that individuals of diverse temperaments thrive”. This argument stands to be important in offering opportunities to everyone, and gives prospects to individuals who structural-functionalism ignores because they do not fit into certain social institutions.

However, in her comparative approach, Benedict described cultures as integrated wholes that are each separate entities. Handler criticises Benedict’s work for dictating that culture is incommensurable, which leads to some contradiction. Benedict deconstructed traits of cultures which she said had no cross-cultural identity, but simultaneously constructed cultural groups bounded together in their way of living based on common traits, and proceeded to compare between the cultures. She claims cultures cannot be compared, yet she compares cultures, which suggest confusion about whether cultures should be considered separate wholes. Her description of cultures as integrated units suggests culture exists in the world in the form of well-bound packages, which Trouillot believes falls into ‘the Savage Slot’ since the concept of otherness threads through Benedict’s work. Culture begins to look like race when it is seen as total and isolate constructs, and when studied as an articulated whole appears symbolic and not a true representation.

Anthropology is Her Normal and Abnormal Distinction

Benedict believed that culture, not innate nature, created abnormality; abnormal being an arbitrary category based on a society’s individual dictated normality. This normality was, for Benedict, fundamentally tied with ethical relativism, the idea that morality is not objective – each societal ‘rule’ is based on what it deems immoral or moral. She shows in her fieldwork that normality is culturally defined: in a Melanesian tribe, different kinship groups regard each other as enemies, always trying to poison and use black magic against them. When they accept a gift they say: “if you now poison me, how will I repay this gift”. Extreme paranoia is an abnormality in our culture, often associated with mental illness, such as schizophrenia. Yet paranoia is the foundation of their social structure, illustrating that abnormality is relative to each culture. Further fieldwork substantiates Benedict’s claims: in a study of Thai culture and its consideration of kathoey pre and post American intellectual influence, traditional Thai culture considered kathoeys a natural status – not abnormal. With American influence and intellectual studies on gender identity, Thai culture began to associate transsexuals and transvestites with abnormal categories of homoeroticism that must be “cured” to fit in to society. This is an important contribution, the depiction of extreme variability in the abnormal points to the possibility for creating new normalities in future generations, which would mean ‘abnormals’ not previously supported by their culture, would be. Her criticism of the US for its alienation of those not fitting into dominant cultural traits is a seminal work, because she shows that not fitting in to a culture results in distress, dysfunction, and less opportunity.

Kantian Deontology disputes the idea that morality is subjective. In this theory, morality is objective and universal, with ethical actions following universal moral laws. Kant gives examples of moral laws: do not cheat, lie or steal. This objectivity tests the foundation of Benedict’s work on ethical relativism, denying her theory that moral rules differ between societies. Rachels contests moral relativism, claiming it exaggerates differences between societies to hide underlying shared rules. For example, in Inuit and Yupik culture infanticide is common, apparently displaying a disregard for human life. However, Rachels’ fieldwork shows that infanticide is not a choice, but an inability to share resources and to protect children due to the harsh conditions in which they live. These arguments do not detract from the importance of Benedict’s work because she set a precedent for tangible change; regardless of her theory of moral relativism. Such change that started the disabled activist movement of the 1960s, creating the independent living movement in 1970s America. This was important to break down barriers and misconceptions of disability because it was a system implemented by disabled people. Benedict’s criticism of abnormality as a culturally dictated category, and as a partially deaf anthropologist remains important within anthropology, questioning the difference between habitual and objectively morally good.

Benedict's Culturally Relativistic Fieldwork

Benedict practiced culturally relativistic fieldwork, influenced by Franz Boas. Her fieldwork attempted to be immersive and not blemished by her cultural identity or opinion, nor based on her pre-existing cultural ideas. Being partially deaf, in interviews she had to use an interpreter, which is not the method she would have chosen because of the type of fieldwork she wanted to implement. But she was sure she could develop a more innovative way of doing fieldwork, which began to reflect in her writing, after her work with Native Americans. She had a sensitivity to metaphor and imagery, leading to fieldwork based on insights, not cold data collection or evidence. Her theories did not depend on her own encounters – Patterns of Culture is a combination of Benedict, Boas and Fortune’s fieldwork. But criticisms made by Stocking highlight the hermeneutic nature of her work, as a method of simply theory and interpretation, he considers Benedict to distance herself too far from the subject. Her book on Japanese culture is an example of this distance, the research Benedict conducted for the book was based on reading and trusted informants, which could be compared with the ethnography of the armchair anthropologists – a method which anthropology sought to leave behind. Ryang suggests that the book is not an ethnography, but a political tract, and Benedict’s ignorance of the colonial and imperial history of Japan before 1945 prevents her from achieving a full cultural picture. The importance of Benedict in anthropology lies outside her fieldwork efforts and does not define her as not interested in analytic or theoretical work. Her method of fieldwork does not detract from the importance of her other work, and the wide range of data she collected is actually an example of how her work is pedagogic, not didactic – people making conclusions themselves.

Benedict’s Career as Contribution to Feminism

Benedict’s career is important for women in anthropology. Her work discussed not only disability, but gender and sexuality in terms of being abnormal. Benedict’s perception of being abnormal extended beyond the situation of women in academia, contributing to her discussion of “non-congenial” temperaments, showing how important her experience as a woman was for anthropology. Women in anthropology were not widespread before Benedict and her career path reflects discrimination against women in serious fields of academic study. She was not considered for head of the department and remained an assistant professor until a few months before her death. Benedict was a pioneer, opening opportunities for women within the field, setting a precedent within anthropology for successful women – her relationship with Mead was crucial to the anthropology Mead developed. Benedict’s feminist, activist anthropology is key in showing how women’s perspective influence the history of the discipline.

In conclusion, Benedict contributed an anthropology that produced critical culture consciousness as the basis for change, regarding the range of abnormalities across cultures. Benedict gave significance to the individual, considering it the anthropologist’s duty to present variability in a rational way in order to promote positive, but not enforced change, which was reflected in her pedagogic style of writing and collective fieldwork. Her feminist perspective and position as a woman in anthropology forced the discipline to evolve into a machinery that offers equal opportunity. The essay could further explore Benedict’s theories of folklore and myth, her emphasis of the individual’s importance would cement her status as a pioneering anthropologist.