Describing the legacy of Patterns of Culture to average Americans,
Margaret Mead said: "That today the modern world is on such easy terms with the concept of culture, that the words 'in our culture' slip from the lips of educated men and women almost as effortlessly as do the phrases that refer to period and to place, is in very great part due to this book" (Mead 1959a:vii). Although Gilkeson suggests that Mead overstates the case, he agrees that Patterns of Culture shaped popular opinion about anthropology and culture, and brought Boasian notions of both into the public consciousness (Gilkeson 1991:165); and many others similarly characterize the continuing importance of Patterns of Culture (cf. Barnard 2000:103; Erikson and Nielson 2001:62).
In Patterns of Culture, Benedict presents sketches of three cultures, the Zuni, the Dobu, and the Kwakiutl, and uses these cultures to elaborate her theory of 'culture as personality-writ-large.' Before introducing the ethnographies, Benedict includes two theoretical chapters and introduces the term 'pattern,' which she interchanges with similar phrases in the rest of the text. Indeed, although she rarely uses the word 'pattern,' she articulates her theory of cultural patterns within the first chapter, stating:
"What really binds men together is their culture – the ideas and the standards they have in common" (Benedict 1934:16).
"A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action" (Benedict 1934:46);
"The nature of the trait will be quite different in the different areas according to the elements with which it has combined" (Benedict 1934:37);
"If we are interested in cultural processes, the only way in which we can know the significance of the selected detail of behavior is against the background of the motives and emotions and values that are institutionalized in that culture" (Benedict 1934:49; my emphasis).
Thus, by her definition, every culture has a system of beliefs -- the ideas and standards, the institutionalized motives, emotions, and values -- that enables internal coherence. This theory links individuals, almost like fractals, to the general cultural shape in which they participate. A culture can be understood as an individual personality, and each person within a culture can be understood in relation to the pattern, traits, or types which characterize their particular culture.
Implicit in her argument, and played out in the rest of the book, is a call for the comparative method. To best witness cultural patterns, she suggests, it is necessary to evaluate cultures in relation to each other, thereby emphasizing the cultural differences. Further, she suggests, this comparative method will, almost accidentally, provide a lens through which to simultaneously understand "our own cultural processes" (Benedict 1934:56). Although she includes only three ethnographic chapters, Benedict's repeated references to "American culture" suggest the fourth cultural site that underpins her argument.
This tension between the explicit analysis of the Zuni, Dobu, and Kwakiutl cultures, and the implicit analysis of 'American culture' is exacerbated by how Benedict explains the utility of studying 'primitive cultures.' In this work (and in contrast to her later work The Chrysanthemum and the Sword), she suggests that "primitive cultures" provide the best data for analysis; although these cultures include cultural patterns, their relative simplicity, and implicit lack of cultural change, makes a more complete analysis possible.
"The careful study of primitive societies is important today rather, as we have said, because they provide case material for the study of cultural forms and processes. They help us to differentiate between those responses that are specific to local cultural types and those that are general to mankind. Beyond this, they help us to gauge and understand they immensely important rôle of culturally conditioned behaviour" (Benedict 1934:20).
Further, she continues, modern 'American culture' is simply too complicated and messy to provide fodder for quality analysis:
"Western civilizations, with their historical diversity, their stratification into occupations and classes, their incomparable richness in detail, are not yet well enough understood to be summarized under a couple of catchwords" (Benedict 1934:54).
At this point, she begins to label each of the three "primitive cultures" with a series of catchwords.
The ethnographic chapters:The Zuni
Indeed, Benedict's analysis of the Zuni, Dobu and Kwakiutl cultures hinges on the shorthand phrases she uses to describe their cultural personality types. Employing Friedrich Nietzsche's terms for Greek tragedy -- Apollonian and Dionysian -- Benedict describes the Zuni as Apollonian, and defines their cultural patterns in relation to what they're not:
"The Dionysian pursues them [the values of existence] through 'the annihilation of the ordinary bounds and limits of existence'; he seeks to attain his most values moments escape from the boundaries imposed upon him by his five senses, to break through into another order of experience. The closest analogy to the emotions he seeks is drunkenness, and he values the illuminations of frenzy. The Apollonian distrusts all of this, and has often little idea of the nature of such experiences. He keeps the middle of the road, stays within the known map, does not meddle with disruptive psychological states" (Benedict 1934:78-9).
The order and lack of frivolity in Zuni life can be found throughout the culture, in various cultural forms; from dances, to marriage and divorce, to funerals. Benedict further emphasizes the almost puritanical simplicity of the Zuni by constantly comparing it with other Native American cultures, describing, for example, a Mojave myth about murder and then stating "Such a state of affairs is impossible to imagine in Zuni" (Benedict 1934:121). This ethnographic chapter, devoid of subheadings or other organizational breaks, jumps regularly between Apollonian and Dionysian examples, constituting each in comparison to the other.
The Dobu
The ethnographic section on the Dobu, stemming from research done by Reo Fortune in eastern New Guinea, paints a similarly complete image of the Dobu culture. Like the Zuni, almost every aspect of Dobu life reflects their general cultural pattern, although, for the Dobu, their cultural trait revolves around a common and constant treachery. Benedict include ethnographic vignettes that epitomize this constant underlying pattern, punctuating her analysis with illustrative, though anonymous, examples:
"The treacherous conflict which is the ethical ideal in Dobu is not palliated by social conventions of what constitutes legality. Neither is it ameliorated by ideas of mercy or kindness. The weapons with which they fight carry no foils. Therefore they do not waste breath and risk interference with their plans by indulging in challenge and insult. Only in the one ritual feast of which we have spoken is insult traditionally indulged. In ordinary converse the Dobuan is suave and unctuously polite. 'If we wish to kill a man we approach him, we eat, drink, sleep, work and rest with him, it may be for several moons. We bide our time. We call him friend.'' As Dr. Fortune says, 'The Dobuans prefer to be infernally nasty or else not nasty at all'" (Benedict 1934:170-1).
As reproduced in the above citation, Benedict quotes two sources to describe Dobu patterns but only attributes the later quote to an individuated person (Reo Fortune, in this case). Thus, although she includes Dobu 'voices' -- some sense of a emic description of culture -- Benedict's description of Dobu culture remains totalizing and undifferentiated. Like her descriptions of the Zuni and Kwakiutl, this picture of Dobu culture includes few examples of cultural deviance, resistance or individuals who do not conform to the dominate cultural type.
The Kwakiutl
Referring to the Kwakiutl ethnographic library created by Franz Boas, Benedict describes the culture of the northwest American coast in her final example. Returning to Nietzsche's concept of 'Dionysian,' Benedict suggests that the Kwakiutl can be understood through their overarching cultural idiom of excess, as epitomized in their religious dances:
"In their religious ceremonies the final thing they strove for was ecstasy. The chief dancer, at least the high point of his performance, should lose normal control of himself and be rapt into another state of existence. He should froth at the mouth, tremble violently and abnormally, do deeds which would be terrible in a normal state. Some dancers were tethered by four ropes held by attendants, so that they might not do irreparable damage in their frenzy" (Benedict 1934:175-6).
In a criticism that presages debates about The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Codere takes issue with the totalizing implicit in the theory of cultural patterns: "The Kwakiutl are more real, more complex, more human than they have been represented to be" (Codere 1956:349-50; quoted in Barnouw 1957:533). Indeed the most common method of criticism includes further ethnographic instances that demonstrates counter-examples to Benedict's patterns (cf. Barnouw 1957:535).
In her concluding theoretical chapters, Benedict suggests that, although cultural patterns can best be illuminated when cultures are placed in contrast to each other, this comparative method should not include moralizing judgments. Precisely because each culture conforms to an internal logic, an overarching morality would be a futile attempt to reconcile the "incommensurable" (Benedict 1934:223). Thus, Benedict ends her work with a call for cultural relativism as facilitated through the comparative method and culture as personality-writ-large.
In his analysis of Benedict as anthropological "author," Geertz labels her concluding remarks in Patterns of Culture as an "infamous" and vaguely schizophrenic reflection of the academic context in which she was working (Geertz 1988:115). Yet, although she elaborated Boasian notions of culture, and cultural relativism (later also furthering his thinking on race), Benedict's Patterns of Culture links anthropology with both the humanities and psychology, themes she would continue to address throughout her career (Barnard 2000:102; Benedict 1947:459; Mintz, 1981:142).
Compared to her later work, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Patterns of Culture emphasizes Benedict's theories of culture-as-personality, cultural comparison and relativity. Although she includes ethnographies (mostly as researched by other field workers) in Patterns of Culture, Benedict articulates a theoretical approach to cultural theories and comparisons.
Thus, the theories Benedict applies to 'primitive' cultures in Patterns of Culture are similar to those employed in Chrysanthemum. As Mintz suggests: [Benedict] "moved from the study of small-scale societies toward the problems posed by big ones, at or about the same time - in the postwar years" (1981:152).