Ruth Benedict was an American anthropologist and a leading figure of the culture and personality school associated with her teacher Franz Boas. In Patterns of Culture (1934) she argued that each culture selects and organizes a distinctive configuration of traits from the wide range of human behavioral possibility, comparing several societies to show how deeply culture shapes individual personality and values, and the book became one of the most widely read works of American anthropology and a major popularization of cultural relativism. During and after the Second World War she applied similar methods to complex modern societies, most notably in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946), a study of Japanese culture prepared for the United States government.
Facts
Nationality / Culture Defining ContributionAdvanced the view that cultural traits form integrated patterns rather than isolated units, an early formulation of cultural relativism 1 Notable WorkPatterns of Culture (1934) 1 Ruth Benedict
Connections
Associated With
Ruth Benedict, Boas's student, extended cultural relativism through Patterns of Culture (1934).
Source Wikipedia: Cultural Relativism
Informed By
Benedict was Boas doctoral student at Columbia and later a senior figure in his department, developing the culture and personality approach.
Practices Studied
Ruth Benedict's paper The Vision in Plains Culture, American Anthropologist 24 (1922), pp. 1-23, is the classic comparative ethnographic study of the vision quest among Plains peoples.
In the Other Atlases
Sources
1. Ruth Benedict (Wikipedia)
Wikipediainfobox, Born field
June 5, 1887, New York City, U.S.
infobox, Died field
September 17, 1948 (aged 61), New York City, U.S.
lead sentence
Ruth Fulton Benedict (June 5, 1887 - September 17, 1948) was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
article body, Patterns of Culture sentence
She studied the relationships between personality, art, language, and culture and insisted that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency, a theory that she championed in her 1934 book Patterns of Culture.
article body, Patterns of Culture sentence, contribution citation
She studied the relationships between personality, art, language, and culture and insisted that no trait existed in isolation or self-sufficiency, a theory that she championed in her 1934 book Patterns of Culture.
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