Misa, Joshua D.

Socio20
BA Sociology - II

PERSONAL LIFE

Ruth Benedict, an American Anthropologist, was born on June 5, 1887, in New York City,
New York, United States. As a child, she had a hearing problem that made her
withdrawn from the world. She had a long emotional battle of depression as she sought
unsuccessfully in her early career. In 1919, she went to New School for Social Research
met Elsie Clews and Alexander Goldenweiser. They led her to take up Anthropology as a
doctorate degree. In 1947, she became the second women president of the American
Anthropologist Association and later was acknowledged as the outstanding
anthropologist in the USA. She died on September 17, 1948.

Margaret Mead, an American Anthropologist, was born on December 16, 1901, in

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. Her parents were both social scientists, which she was
greatly influenced by her mother. She worked as a curator in the American Museum of
Natural History. She was an outspoken woman being invited to various conferences
speaking about cultural differences and understanding. On November 15, 1978, she
died. A year after she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, in a way, related to psychology. Ruth battled
depression, a mental disorder while Margaret had social scientist parents, and had a
degree in psychology. Their personal stories link to their academic achievements and
contribution to cultural anthropology.

ACADEMIC ACHIEVEMENTS

A common denominator of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead is Franz Boas, who was
already a pillar in the field of Anthropology. He influenced both women to be in
Anthropology and conduct different fieldworks. The first to encounter Boas was Ruth
Benedict.

R. Benedict was an English major, later pursued a doctorate degree in Anthropology at

Colombia University. Finding Anthropology interesting as she sees her personal
undertaking in the psychological and cultural sense, she took off from there. She was
particular in cultural relativism and the method of empiricism in fieldwork, obviously
influenced by Boas. She contributed numerous books from her fieldworks, now
considered as classical anthropological books. She later taught at Colombia University
with Franz Boas, where Margaret Mead will take her doctorate in Anthropology.
Misa, Joshua D. Socio20
BA Sociology - II

Another legacy of Ruth Benedict is the encouragement of women to take up

Anthropology (dominated by men at that time being) as a degree.

Configurationalism – approached cultures hostilically. Configuration then patterns;

agreement – configuration – pattern/trend;

Margaret Mead met professor Franz Boas and his assistant professor, Ruth Benedict, at
Colombia University. She got a bachelor's degree in Psychology and mastered the same
field. In Colombia University, she was convinced by Boas and Benedict to take a
doctorate degree in Anthropology. Boas wanted to refute Freudian Psychology because
for him human psychological development is not fixed by nature and was not universal
but rather culturally bound. Knowing Margaret’s educational background, Boas directed
her to a non-Western culture and study about them.

Mead went to Samoa and Papua New Guinea to conduct fieldwork. Because of
fieldwork, she refuted cultural stereotypes. Stereotype for one is associating Muslims as
terrorists. As the great depression occurred, she used her voice as a platform and took a
stand against stereotyping and discrimination. Moreover, Mead introduced Visual
Anthropology wherein taking visual portrays through photos is done to give a better
illustration of material culture.

Best Known Works And Theories And Show Their Similarities And Differences On The
Study Of Culture And Personality.

Ruth Benedict published classic anthropological observations. One of which is Patterns

of Culture (1934). In this publication, Benedict described personalities of three distinct
cultures – how their rituals and beliefs are different, also personal preferences. After
Patterns of Culture, Race: Science and Politics (1945) followed. Her goal is to spread
awareness of race and politics as political insurgences deeply rooted in racism was
timely to the Germans, the Nazis, and the Americans, the white and people of color.

Then the book The Chrysanthemum And The Sword followed a year after. The book is
about national character, especially to the Japanese. National character pertains to the
dominant personality of a certain nation, like the Filipinos being known to be hospitable.
She used a modern fieldwork which she called culture-at-a-distance. Wherein she
looked into movies and photos and made interviews about Japanese culture without
going to Japan. Another book was the Zuni Mythology, in which she complied and
analyzed tales from the Pueblo Indians (a southwest portion of the US). In there, she
Misa, Joshua D. Socio20
BA Sociology - II

concluded the importance of private stories and tales to the understanding of

psychology – problem personality.

Margaret Mead, like Ruth Benedict, went through fieldwork and published her
observations. Her Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928 was her first anthropological book. It
is a fieldwork about human behavior is whether biologically or culturally bound. She
focused this study on the Samoan adolescent girls. Mead compared and contrasted the
Samoan culture to the American culture. Other books published by Mead were Growing
up in New Guinea (1930) and Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935).
The books speak about gender roles as they are not directed by nature but are culturally
induced.

Ruth Benedict (general wellbeing) and Margaret Mead (focused on sexual character –
reflecting how she viewed on mother, her appreciation in her; also her cultural
background) proffered a new perspective in Anthropology, which later became a new
basis for understanding culture. Both complimented each other’s contribution to
Psychological Anthropology. It is clear that they both used fieldwork to better gathering
information on different cultures thus came to a consensus that cultures differ from one
another – cultural relativism (no culture is greater than the other), brought by Franz
Boas.

For both female contemporary Anthropologists, culture dictates an individual’s

personality as they are going through the process of enculturation. This manifests in
what and how cultures differ from one another but still having commonality in the
bigger picture.