Response on 'PATTERNS OF CULTURE' by RUTH BENEDICT

Ruth Benedict discusses culture in her book “Patterns of culture”. Benedict, being a student of Franz Boas, was influenced by his ideas, as reflected in her writing. Just as Boas, Benedict believes that we see other cultures through the lens of our own culture. Benedict puts this idea beautifully by saying “No man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes.” To us, some cultures might seem ‘inferior’ because their practices are different than ours; because their culture is strange and foreign to us.

Benedict speaks of the “white men”. She says that the Western civilization, “because of fortuitous historical circumstances,… has standardized itself over most of the globe”. Benedict stresses on the fact that it is wrong to trivialize a culture just because it is different than our own culture. We should not evaluate other people by our own standards. Rather we should understand that customs have meaning and significance for the people who live them. The idea is quite similar to Malinowski’s theory of functionalism, which stated that every custom, every ritual has a function. He challenged ideas of earlier anthropologists like Edward Tyler, who believed that the ‘primitives’ had no reason and hence labelled them ‘savages’. Malinowski tried to prove that these so-called ‘savages’ are not absurd in any way, in fact they are very much like us.

Ruth Benedict also challenges earlier notions and says that we need to let go of our prejudices and we need to look at other cultures through a clean lens. As opposed to earlier ideas of racial or biological determinism, she says that culture provides the ‘patterns’. Culture is learned rather than acquired.

Patterns of culture by Ruth Benedict : https://books.google.com.pk/books/about/Patterns_of_Culture.html?id=Da78mq9fUWcC&redir_esc=y

Image source : https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ruth-Benedict