Patterns of Culture

Five Basic Questions

● What do people do?

● Are there patterns to what people do?
● Why do people do what they do?
● What causes difference in what they do？
● Why do people change what they do?
Contents

● Malinowski’s method
● Franz Boas: Cultural Relativism
● Ruth Benedict’s principles of cultural pattern
● Benedict’s The Chrysanthemum and Sword
● Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa
● Reflections
Malinowski’s method
Malinowski’s three layers of culture
● “Skeleton”
○ Routine prescribed by custom and tradition (“crystalized bonds” such as ritual,
kinship system, etc.)
○ Concrete and statistical documentation
● “Flesh and blood”
○ Manner in which it is carried out, imponderabilia of actual life and the type of action
○ Ethnographic diary, field notes
● “Spirit”
○ Natives’ commentaries and interpretations
○ Documents of native mentality
○ A collection of typical utterances, folklore and magic
Making use of Malinowski’s method for online
ethnography
● Daniel Miller. 2007. Tales from Facebook
● “Skeleton”
○ Routines of online activities (promoting products, chatting with customers,
responding to enquiries and flirting)
● “Flesh and blood”
○ The manner of making use of social media (messing up with friends, customers and
lovers, deeply embedded in daily life and work)
● “Spirit”
○ Language (“friends”)
○ Erotic and intimate implications of Facebook
The goal is to grasp… ..

● The native’s point of view

● His relation to life
● His vision of his world
Franz Boas: Cultural Relativism
Franz Boas (1858-1942)
● Born in Minden, Westphalia, Germany
● Expedition to Baffin Land, Canadain 1883-1884
● Fieldwork among the Eskimo
● Turned to anthropology and immigrated to US in
1885
● Fieldwork along North Pacific Coast of North
America
● Began to work for museums 1885-1896
● Professor of anthropology at Columbia University
(1899)
● "Father of American Anthropology"
Cultural relativism

● Understanding peoples in terms of their historical, social and

geographic conditions
● All peoples have complete and equally developed culture
● Rejecting Morgan’s and Tylor’s evolutionist views and their
classifications of development stages
● Boas’ views changed American anthropology
Ruth Benedict’s principles of cultural
pattern
Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)

● She studied under Franz Boas

● Patterns of Culture (1934)
● The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946)
Anthropologists’ mission

● Understanding of custom
○ How society comes to be possessed of whole systems of it?
○ How it is stabilized, cross-fertilized
○ How it is inculcated into all its members
Four principles

● Cultures are based upon different principles and have different

emphases and values.
● It is inappropriate and uninformative to explain or evaluate one culture
by the perspectives and values of a different one.
● Each culture is integrated into a whole that tends toward consistency
(configuration).
● Cultures select elements from their environment according
to their suitability for the established configuration.
Inter-related parts

● Temperament and personality

● Behaviour and regulation (reward, punishment and taboo)
● Values
● Social organizations (family, neighborhood, class, etc.)
● Nurturing and education
 Benedict’s The
Chrysanthemum and the
Sword
How to make sense of “inconsistency”
● “… … both aggressive and unaggressive, both
militaristic and aesthetic, both insolent and polite,
rigid and adaptable, submissive and resentful of
being pushed around, loyal and treacherous, brave
and timid, conservative and hospitable to new
ways…” (p.2)
○ Chrysanthemum: Imperial chrysanthemum emblem (菊の
御紋 kikunogomon), is one of the national seals used by the
Emperor of Japan and members of the Imperial Family. It
symbolizes refinement and joy
○ Sword: Summari’s sword (nihontō) symbolizes power,
loyalty, authority, strength, and courage
“Taking one’s proper station”

● Summarizing Japanese temperament with one sentence as a beginning

of understanding culture
● Relating oneself to others (hierarchy)
● Respecting seniors and authorities at all levels: Loyalty to one’s position
in the hierarchy
● Rigid succession system (The eldest son as the only heir)
● Haji (Shame) and On (indebtedness)
● Nurturing and education
Examples

● Example 1: A good soldier, like a samurai, sacrificed his life in war for
repaying his debt owed to the Emperor and fulfilling the obligations of
his position (such as ritual suicide of seppuku)
● Example 2: Etiquette of Bowing: Bowing as an art of recognizing one’s
position in relation to other positions of the hierarchy
Margaret
Mead’s
Coming of Age in Samoa
Unthinking the problems of “adolescence”

● “Discovering adolescence” in the 1920s

○ An age of “storm and stress”
○ G. S. Hall's (1904) view that adolescence is a period of heightened "storm and
stress"
○ Conflict with parents, mood disruptions, and risk behavior
Unthinking the problems of “adolescence”
(cont’)
● Nowadays in Hong Kong, people said … …
○ Adolescence is a “troublesome” period
○ Incapable of dealing with adversities
○ Unresolved problem of the conflict between identity and role confusion（identity
vs. role confusion）（Erikson, 1968）
○ Endocrine disorders, malnutrition and neurotransmitter unbalance
○ Emotional instability (mania, depression) and deviant behavior
● How would anthropologists understand “adolescence” (puberty)?
Margaret Mead (1901-1979)

● Studied Anthropology under Franz Boas and Ruth

Benedict at Columbia university in 1924.
● In 1925 she conducted her fieldwork for 9 months
in Samoa
● Since her publication of Coming of Age in Samoa,
she became a respected and often controversial
anthropologist and public intellectual.
● Her works on the attitudes towards sex in South
Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures
influenced the 1960s sexual revolution.
Samoa
Her question: Nature or Nurture?

● “Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of
adolescence itself or to the civilization?”
● “Under different conditions does adolescence present a different
picture?”
Mead’s fieldwork

● She studied a small group of Samoan girls in

a village of 600 people on the island of Ta'ū
● She made friends with, lived with, observed,
and interviewed 68 young women aged
between 9 and 20 with focus on their daily
living, education, sexual activities, intimate
relationships, family structures, rituals,
etiquette, etc.
Example: Children’s interest in sex

● Interest in sex is common among children

and teenagers
● What makes their interest and its
development unique are :
○ The adult attitudes towards it
○ The human environment in which they express
their interest
○ The social organization into which their sexual
interest develops
Example: Complexity of Sexual Permissiveness

● Adult attitude: Seemliness and Unseemliness rather than restriction

○ Indulgence in sexual conversation or activities is regarded as bad taste.
○ Activities with sexual implications are largely regarded as play
● Human environment: sexual life as a part of life is a field of exploration
○ Searching the village palm groves in search of lovers is recognized as an amusement
for children
○ Sexual talk among children and teenagers are accepted
● Social organization: sexual experiments are allowed for teenagers
before marriage and building up family
○ Samoans rate romantic fidelity in terms of days and weeks.
○ Premarital pregnancy is accepted.
Discussion

● Adult attitude? (Parents, schools, etc.)

● Human environment? (How did you encounter with sex-related scenes
when you were a child?)
● Social organization? (What is the relationship between teenagers’
sexuality and their family and marriage in the future?)
Mead’s conclusion

● The passage from childhood to adolescence in

Samoa is a smooth transition and not marked
by distress, anxiety, or confusion seen in the
United States.
● Samoan girls live in a stable, monocultural
society in which birth, sexual activities,
orientations, bodily functions, and death are
not hidden from them.
Concluding remarks
Challenges to Mead

● Derek Freeman (1916-2001)

● A New Zealand anthropologist known for his
critique of Margaret Mead's work on Samoa.
● In the 1940s and 1966-67 Freeman conducted
fieldwork in Samoa.
● In 1983 Freeman published his book Margaret
Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an
Anthropological Myth
Freeman’s arguments

● Samoan youths suffered from the same problems as Western

adolescents
● The cult of virginity predominates Samoan society
● Juvenile delinquency, sexual violence and suicide are quite common
● Biological determinism
Issues
● Samoa is changing constantly. How to compare
Samoa in the 1920s and that in the 1940s or
1960s?
○ For example, Samoa has been under influence by
western culture such as Christian churches and
boarding schools since the 19th century
● Internal variations of Samoan society
○ Mead: Ta‘ū (Eastern Samoa)
○ Derek: Upolu (Western Samoa)
● Different perspectives
○ Young girls who defied the authorities
○ Adult men and even chiefs who imposed moral rules
on young people
Patterns of Culture?

● Seeing culture as patterns might be a good starting point for describing

and understanding a society. But… ...
● “Patterns” remains to be a static metaphor for culture
○ Failure to capture historical changes and specificities
● Cultural holism rules out or evades the problems related to
ethnographers’ perspectives and problematics.