Patterns of Culture

Patterns of Culture
Author: Ruth Benedict
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Total Pages: 318
Release: 1989
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

A study of the civilization of the Zuni Indians, the native of Dubu, and the Kawakiutl Indians.

American Cultural Patterns

American Cultural Patterns
Author: Edward C. Stewart
Publisher: Nicholas Brealey
Total Pages: 315
Release: 2011-06-24
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0983955832

A fully revised edition of the seminal classic This classic study was originally written by Edward Stewart in 1972 and has become a seminal work in the field of intercultural relations. In this edition, Stewart and Milton J. Bennett have greatly expanded the analysis of American cultural patterns by introducing new cross-cultural comparisons and drawing on recent reseach on value systems, perception psychology, cultural anthropology, and intercultural communication. Beginning with a discussion of the issues relative to contact between people of different cultures, the authors examine the nature of cultural assumptions and values as a framework for cross-cultural analysis. They then analyze the human perceptual process, consider the influence of language on culture, and discuss nonverbal behavior. Central to the book is an analysis of American culture constructed along four dimentions: form of activity, form of social relations, perceptions of the world, and perception of the self. American cultural traits are isolated out, analyzed, and compared with parallel characteristics of other cultures. Finally, the cultural dimentions of communication and their implications for cross-cultural interaction are examined.

Patterns of Culture

Patterns of Culture
Author: Ruth Benedict
Publisher: HMH
Total Pages: 319
Release: 2013-04-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 0547523920

An anthropologist compares three diverse societies in this groundbreaking, “unique and important” cultural study (The New York Times). A remarkable introduction to cultural studies, Patterns of Culture made history in exploring the role of culture in shaping our lives. In it, the renowned anthropologist Ruth Benedict offers an in-depth look at three societies—the Zuñi of the southwestern United States, the Kwakiutl of western Canada, and the Dobuans of Melanesia—and demonstrates the diversity of behaviors in them. Benedict’s groundbreaking study shows that a unique configuration of traits defines each human culture and she examines the relationship between culture and the individual. Featuring prefatory remarks by Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, and Louise Lamphere, who calls it “a foundational text in teaching us the value of diversity,” this provocative work ultimately explores what it means to be human. “That today the modern world is on such easy terms with the concept of culture . . . is in very great part due to this book.” —Margaret Mead

Patterns for America

Patterns for America
Author: Susan Hegeman
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 275
Release: 1999-05-21
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 1400823226

In recent decades, historians and social theorists have given much thought to the concept of "culture," its origins in Western thought, and its usefulness for social analysis. In this book, Susan Hegeman focuses on the term's history in the United States in the first half of the twentieth century. She shows how, during this period, the term "culture" changed from being a technical term associated primarily with anthropology into a term of popular usage. She shows the connections between this movement of "culture" into the mainstream and the emergence of a distinctive "American culture," with its own patterns, values, and beliefs. Hegeman points to the significant similarities between the conceptions of culture produced by anthropologists Franz Boas, Edward Sapir, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, and a diversity of other intellectuals, including Randolph Bourne, Van Wyck Brooks, Waldo Frank, and Dwight Macdonald. Hegeman reveals how relativist anthropological ideas of human culture--which stressed the distance between modern centers and "primitive" peripheries--came into alliance with the evaluating judgments of artists and critics. This anthropological conception provided a spatial awareness that helped develop the notion of a specifically American "culture." She also shows the connections between this new view of "culture" and the artistic work of the period by, among others, Sherwood Anderson, Jean Toomer, Thomas Hart Benton, Nathanael West, and James Agee and depicts in a new way the richness and complexity of the modernist milieu in the United States.

Four Overarching Patterns of Culture

Four Overarching Patterns of Culture
Author: Robert Strauss
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2019-08-20
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1532693184

Justice has been the dominant cultural framework of people in the West for two centuries, ever since the rise of constitutional democracies. Consciously or not, most people in the West have a strong awareness of right and wrong. Their sense of morality is generally rooted in an obligation to the rule of law. In democratic societies, the rule of law ultimately relies on constitutional documents ratified by a widely-accepted process of development and implementation. For millennia, honor has been the dominant cultural framework of most people in the East and Middle East. Here, people know that speech and behavior display respect or disrespect. While pervasive in all relationships, honor and shame are most important in the family, extended family, and local community. In the East, honor is not necessarily an internal feeling, as it is in a justice culture. Honor is more often an external attribution bestowed by others rather than claimed by oneself. Harmony is prevalent globally in indigenous cultures. Many indigenous peoples do not distinguish between the supernatural and natural worlds. All aspects of life are connected. Interactions with spirit beings are the key to maintaining harmony in order to be secure. Reciprocity is a common cultural framework in the Global South. Here, one learns to develop connections with the right people in given circumstances for needed resources. These connections may or may not be characterized as “friendships” and provide not so much close friendships as reciprocal exchange. In some places, reciprocity is the means whereby one survives.

Anthropology: Culture Patterns & Processes

Anthropology: Culture Patterns & Processes
Author: Alfred Louis Kroeber
Publisher: Harvest Books
Total Pages: 294
Release: 1963
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

A selection of those chapters of ... [the author's Anthropology [rev. ed., 1948] that deal specifically with matters of culture patterns and processes.

Patterns of Culture

Patterns of Culture
Author: Ruth Benedict
Publisher:
Total Pages: 224
Release: 2019-11-04
Genre:
ISBN: 9781946963321

Facsimile of 1935 Edition. The essential idea in Patterns of Culture is, according to Margaret Mead, "her view of human cultures as 'personality writ large.'" 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. These traits comprise an interdependent constellation of aesthetics and values in each culture which together add up to a unique gestalt. 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 which should not be dismissed or trivialized. We should not try to evaluate people by our standards alone. Morality, she argued, was relative to the values of the culture in which one operated. Contents: I. The science of custom -- II. The diversity of cultures -- III. The integration of culture -- IV. The Pueblos of New Mexico -- V. Dobu -- VI. The northwest coast of America -- VII. The nature of society -- VIII. The individual and the pattern of culture

Patterns of Culture

Patterns of Culture
Author: Ruth Benedict
Publisher: Boston ; New York : Houghton Mifflin Company
Total Pages: 1028
Release: 1934
Genre: Social Science
ISBN:

A study of the civilizations of the Zuni Indians, the natives of Dobu, and the Kwakiutl Indians.

Four Overarching Patterns of Culture

Four Overarching Patterns of Culture
Author: Robert Strauss
Publisher:
Total Pages: 239
Release: 2019-08-23
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1532693192

Justice has been the dominant cultural framework of people in the West for two centuries, ever since the rise of constitutional democracies. Consciously or not, most people in the West have a strong awareness of right and wrong. Their sense of morality is generally rooted in an obligation to the rule of law. In democratic societies, the rule of law ultimately relies on constitutional documents ratified by a widely-accepted process of development and implementation. For millennia, honor has been the dominant cultural framework of most people in the East and Middle East. Here, people know that speech and behavior display respect or disrespect. While pervasive in all relationships, honor and shame are most important in the family, extended family, and local community. In the East, honor is not necessarily an internal feeling, as it is in a justice culture. Honor is more often an external attribution bestowed by others rather than claimed by oneself. Harmony is prevalent globally in indigenous cultures. Many indigenous peoples do not distinguish between the supernatural and natural worlds. All aspects of life are connected. Interactions with spirit beings are the key to maintaining harmony in order to be secure. Reciprocity is a common cultural framework in the Global South. Here, one learns to develop connections with the right people in given circumstances for needed resources. These connections may or may not be characterized as "friendships" and provide not so much close friendships as reciprocal exchange. In some places, reciprocity is the means whereby one survives.