The Study of Culture at a Distance: A Prototype

Abstract

IT IS EXCEEDINGLY DIFFICULT TODAY, more than 30 years later, to recover the elan with which, in 1947, we began work as members of Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures. Contrary to the accepted view of how anthropologists should do research, many of us had already worked for several years on cultures we had no way of approaching in person. Now we felt vindicated in making the attempt. The future was openand there was so much to do. The research about which I am writing here has been known by various names, depending in part on the context of the discussion. It has been called the study of culture at a distance (Mead and Metraux 1953), the study of national character (Gorer 1953; Mead 1951c, 195h3b), the study of national culture, and as it was conceived in the initial research design developed by Ruth Benedict, Margaret Mead, and others, research in contemporary cultures. By whatever name, the research has been concerned centrally with the delineation of regularities in culture patterns and in the character structure of members of a culture through work with individual identified informants and with the available resources of a complex contemporary society as these may be analyzed within an anthropological frame of reference. Carried out at a distance from the living society, the research was seen as a first-stage exploration, to be followed where this was possible by fieldwork (Mead 1953a). Columbia University Research in Contemporary Cultures (RCC), which continued for four years, 1947-51, was the prototype. There were successor projects in which members of the original research group took part; the research methods explored in RCC were used, and the idea of uncovering cultural regularities was a principal aim. These were Studies in Soviet Culture (SSC) and Studies in Contemporary Cultures (SCC), which included separate projects on the Soviet Union and on Germany; both were carried out under the auspices of the American Museum of Natural History, although with different sources of funds. The Soviet studies were directed by Margaret Mead; the German study was carried out jointly by Nelly Schargo Hoyt and myself. At further remove was a medically oriented project, Studies in Human Ecology-China, under the direction of Harold Wolff, at Cornell University Medical College. At still further remove was a study of technical change, directed by Margaret Mead, sponsored by the World Federation for Mental Health and funded by UNESCO; its only product was the book, Cultural Patterns and Technical Change (Mead 1953c). Here, however, I shall discuss only the prototype research.