Editing Ruth Benedict (section)

===''Patterns of Culture''===
Benedict's ''Patterns of Culture'' (1934) was translated into fourteen languages and was for years published in many editions and used as standard reading material for anthropology courses in American universities.

The essential idea in ''Patterns of Culture'' is, according to the foreword by Margaret Mead, "her view that human cultures are 'personality writ large.{{Single double}} As Benedict wrote in that book, "A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action." Each culture, she held, chooses from "the great arc of human potentialities" only a few characteristics, which become the leading personality traits of the persons living in that culture. Those traits comprise an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and values in each culture which together add up to a unique [[wikt:gestalt|gestalt]].

For example, she described the emphasis on restraint in [[Puebloan peoples|Pueblo]] cultures of the [[American Southwest]] and the emphasis on abandon in the [[Native Americans in the United States|Native American]] cultures of the [[Great Plains]]. She used the [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzschean]] opposites of [[Apollonian and Dionysian|"Apollonian" and "Dionysian"]] as the stimulus for her thought about these Native American cultures.

She describes how in [[ancient Greece]] the worshipers of [[Apollo]] emphasized order and calm in their celebrations. In contrast, the worshipers of [[Dionysus]], the god of [[wine]], emphasized wildness, abandon, and letting go, like Native American groups living on the Great Plains. She described in detail the contrasts between rituals, beliefs, and personal preferences among people of diverse cultures to show how each culture had a "personality", which was encouraged in each individual.

Other anthropologists of the [[Psychological anthropology#Configurationalist approach|culture and personality school]] also developed those ideas, notably Margaret Mead in her ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]'' (published before "Patterns of Culture") and ''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies'' (published just after Benedict's book came out). Benedict was a senior student of Franz Boas when Mead began to study with them, and they had extensive and reciprocal influence on each other's work. [[Abram Kardiner]] was also affected by these ideas, and in time, the concept of "modal personality" was born: the cluster of traits most commonly thought to be observed in people of any given culture.

Benedict in ''Patterns of Culture'', expresses her belief in [[cultural relativism]]. She desired to show that each culture has its own moral imperatives that can be understood only if one studies that culture as a whole. It was wrong, she felt, to disparage the customs or values of a culture different from one's own. Those customs had a meaning to the people who lived them that should not be dismissed or trivialized. Others should not try to evaluate people by their standards alone. [[Morality]], she argued, was ''relative'' to the values of the culture in which one operated.

As she described the [[Kwakiutl]] of the [[Pacific Northwest]] (based on the fieldwork of her mentor Boas), the Pueblo of [[New Mexico]] (among whom she had direct experience), the nations of the Great Plains, and the [[Dobu Island|Dobu]] culture of [[New Guinea]] (regarding whom she relied upon Mead and [[Reo Fortune]]'s fieldwork), she gave evidence that their values, even where they may seem strange, are intelligible in terms of their own coherent cultural systems and should be understood and respected. That also formed a central argument in her later work on the Japanese following World War II.

Critics have objected to the degree of abstraction and generalization inherent in the "culture and personality" approach. Some have argued that particular patterns that she found may be only a part or a subset of the whole cultures. For example, David Friend Aberle writes that the [[Pueblo people]] may be calm, gentle, and much given to ritual in one mood or set of circumstances, but they may be suspicious, retaliatory, and warlike in other circumstances.

In 1936, she was appointed an [[professor|associate professor]] at [[Columbia University]]. However, Benedict had already assisted in the training and guidance of several Columbia students of anthropology including [[Margaret Mead]] and [[Ruth Landes]].<ref>Smithsonian Institution, Department of Anthropology. Guide to the National Anthropological Archives and Human Studies Film Archives</ref>

Benedict was among the leading [[cultural anthropology|cultural anthropologists]] who were recruited by the [[Federal government of the United States|US government]] for war-related research and consultation after the US entered [[World War II]].