Ruth Benedict

Abstract

Ruth Fulton Benedict, an American anthropologist (1887–1948), is best known for her contribution to the “culture and personality” school of American anthropology. Her 1934 book, Patterns of Culture, offers an analysis of cultures in terms of dominant character or, as she writes, a “configuration” based on selection from a wide arc of possible ways of organizing life. The concept of configuration figured in the writings she did over the next two decades, including her 1946 study of Japanese culture, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword. She extended her analysis of the integrity and character of a configuration to assess the freedom and opportunity provided to individuals. In comparing societies on this basis, Benedict qualified the “cultural relativism” for which she is often known, and proposed an anthropology that produced critical culture consciousness as the basis for change. On that theoretical foundation, throughout the 1930s she wrote critically of a contemporary American culture that suppressed and marginalized individuals whose temperaments did not fit the dominant ethos—one of ambition, competition, individualism, and narrow definitions of gender identity. While her writings analyze the impact of cultural values, customs, and ideologies on the individual, she never portrayed culture as deterministic but claimed that individuals have the capacity to change the conditions under which they live. The anthropologist’s duty was to present the variability that might guide individuals to “direct” change in society in a rational and enlightened way. Less well-known is her work as editor of the Journal of American Folklore (1925–1940), and her writings on myths and tales. The stories people tell, she wrote, compose an “autobiography” of their culture. The threat of fascism across the Atlantic pushed Benedict to act on her responsibility as an anthropologist first by publishing a condemnation of racism in Race: Science and Politics (first published 1940) and then by joining the government to serve as a scientist-advisor. A series of reports on nations participating in the global conflict culminated in the influential The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). In her postwar project, Research on Contemporary Cultures (RCC), Benedict pursued her wartime practice of applying anthropological insights to highly complex societies. She did not live to see the fruits of the project or the criticisms that pointed to the dangers of such inquiries in the service of American imperialism.