![]() ![]() Not yet possible to give a generalized account, but that does not absolve us of the task of indicating the significance of the work that has been done and of the problems that have arisen. In certain fields, such as that of religion or of formal marriage arrangements, these wide limits of variability are well known and can be fairly described. These adjustments, whether they are in mannerisms like the ways of showing anger, or joy, or grief in any society, or in major human drives like those of sex, prove to be far more variable than experience in any one culture would suggest. ![]() Modern civilization, from this point of view, becomes not a necessary pinnacle of human achievement but one entry in a long series of possible adjustments. ![]() Most of the simpler cultures did not gain the wide currency of the one which, out of our experience, we identify with human nature, but this was for various historical reasons, and certainly not for any that gives us as its carriers a monopoly of social good or of social sanity. In the higher cultures, the standardization of custom and belief over a couple of continents has given a false sense of the inevitability of the particular forms that have gained currency, and we need to turn to a wider survey in order to check the conclusions we hastily base upon this near-universality of familiar customs. Dyaks and Hopis, Fijians and Yakuts are significant for psychological and sociological study because only among these simpler peoples has there been sufficient isolation to give opportunity for the development of localized social forms. For such a study of diverse social orders, primitive peoples fortunately provide a laboratory not yet entirely vitiated by the spread of standardized worldwide civilizations. Modern social anthropology has become more and more a study of the varieties and common elements of cultural environment and the consequences of these in human behavior. This essay is widely reprinted as making a strong case for ethical relativism. What follows is an abridgment of an essay that first appeared in the Journal of General Psychology, 10:5980 (1934). Apart from more scholarly work, her book Patterns of Culture (1934) was a bestseller. Back at Columbia, she wrote her doctoral dissertation under Franz Boas, receiving her doctorate in 1923, and staying on as a professor. She began her studies in 1919 at Columbia University under John Dewey, then continued at the New School for Social Research with Elsie Clews Parsons. Benedict (1887-1948) was a leading anthropologist of the 20th century. ANTHROPOLOGY AND THE ABNORMAL Ruth Benedict Ruth F. ![]()
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