10 Culture and Personality studies: Mead, Benedict, Kardiner, Linton, Cora-du-Bois

Dharna Sahay

Contents

Introduction

1.  Culture and Personality School

2. Abram Kardiner

3.  Ralph Linton

4.  Ruth Fulton Benedict

5.  Cora-du-Bois

6.  Margaret Mead

Learning Outcomes

• To develop an understanding about the concept of culture and personality
• To gain knowledge about the beliefs and views of the schools of thought associated with the topic
• To know about the contributions made by different scholars
• To know about the theories and concepts propounded by the scholars related to the topic

Introduction

‘Culture and personality’ is the earliest name of the school or thoughts of school. It is important study in psychological anthropology, thus culture and personality studies, also called psychological anthropology. Its beginnings are associated especially with the great American linguist and anthropologist Edward Sapir (1884—1939). Sapir was influenced by German Gestalt psychologists, who had argued that perception could be understood only when the thing perceived was viewed not as an assemblage of separate elements, but as an organized pattern (Gestalt). So when one looks, for example, at a landscape painting, one sees it not as flat planes of colour laid against one another, but as a whole — ‘a landscape’. This example shows us too why a whole may be more than the sum of its parts and have its own essential properties. In this Gestalt view, meaning was a function of organized patterns, and Sapir applied this idea to his analyses of language and of culture and personality. Sapir was suspicious of the contemporary concept of culture, which he described as ‘tidy tables of contents’ attached to particular groups of people. In an influential 1934 essay he argued that ‘the more fully one tries to understand a culture, the more it seems to take on the characteristics of a personality organization’ (1985 [1949]: 594). The study of the development of personality was Sapir’s solution to the problems posed by the way that, in anthropological accounts, culture ‘can be made to assume the appearance of a closed system of behaviour’ (p. 594). But in fact, ‘vast reaches of culture … are discoverable only as the peculiar property of certain individuals’ (p. 594). He recommended that to understand ‘the complicating patterns and symbolisms of culture’, anthropologists should study child development. It is branch of cultural anthropology that seeks to determine the range of personality types extant in a given culture and to discern where, on a continuum from ideal to perverse, the culture places each types. Culture and personality studies apply the methods of psychology to the field of anthropology.

Culture and Personality theory explained relationships between childrearing customs and human behaviours in different societies. Through examination of individual personalities, we can gain an understanding of a culture.

Development in the study of socialization arose principally in the United States in the 1930s. There are many theories that combined elements of psychology, anthropology, and sociology. The elements principally involved the application of psychoanalytic principles to ethnographic material. According to Freudian theory, it emphasized the cultural moulding of the personality and focused on the development of the individual.

1.   Culture and Personality School: 1920 – 1950

The history of culture and personality studies to 1920s is beginning and noticed in the writings of Sigmund Freud (1856-1939). He proposed what is known as `critical-periods hypothesis’ according to which human infants went through a time or stage in which they learnt what they exhibited later in adulthood.

This Freudian hypothesis influenced early anthropological research on culture and personality giving birth to what is known as Psychoanalytic Anthropology, and continues to draw the interest of contemporary anthropologists as well. The perspective is best demonstrated in the work of anthropologists such as Gregory Bateson, Ruth Benedict, Geoffrey Gorer, and Margaret Mead. Margaret Mead has become the main tenet of the School: that different cultures (or societies) produce different personality types as a result of different socialization practices.

2.    Abram kardiner (1891-1981)

American- born physician and psychiatrist Abram Kardiner went to Vienna on 1920’s in order to undertake year psychoanalysis with Freud. In 1939, kardiner and Linton published ‘the individual and society’. In The Psychological Frontiers of Society (1945), Abram Kardiner looked at the way in which personality types are present in cultural patterns. Kardiner and his colleagues argued that religion and politics are screens on to which the basic personality-orientation of a society is projected. In ‘Anthropology and the Abnormal’ (Journal of General Psychology, 1934), Kardiner also influence the culture and personality school. He introduced the idea of “basic personality structure”, in this members of a certain culture share several fundamental personality traits. Thus this idea called as culture’s basic personality structure. He was inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud. Kardiner concept was based on primary institutions (like child rearing practices). After developing the basic personality structure approach, Kardiner argued, along with Ralph Linton, that while culture and personality were similarly integrated, a specific causal relationship existed between them. He and Linton criticized the configurationalist approach as being too broad and vague. Instead, he put forth his own theory- the basic personality structure. After his approach, he distinguished between primary institutions (those which produce the basic personality structure) and secondary institutions (those which are the product of basic personality itself).

Examples of primary institutions are those things which are a product of adaptation within an environment, such as housing, family types, descent types, etc. Secondary institutions, on the other hand, include social organization technology, and child training practices; these are manifested through religion and other social practices.

Drawbacks of Kardiner theory: He could not explain the variations in personalities which found in every society regardless in size.

3. Ralph Linton (1893-1953)

Ralph Linton began his career as an archaeologist, but later turn to cultural anthropology. His ethnographic fieldwork took him to Polynesia and Madagascar, as well as on archaeological expeditions in Latin America and the United states. He was a co-founder of the basic personality structure theory. He sought to establish a basic personality for each culture. . Ralph Linton was born in Philadelphia on February 27, 1893 was one of the best known American anthropologists of the time. He was an international renowned anthropologist of America. He belonged to culture and personality of anthropological thought Linton devoted the majority of his studies to collecting ethnographies of Melanesians and Amerindians. He developed the concepts of status and role in his classic book The Study of Man (1936). In this book, he has clearly shown the adaptation of culture traits in American culture. Linton’s most famous book is, Cultural Background of Personality (1945). In this, he has attempted to define cultures and to classify culture on the basis of behaviour. He emphasized also as to how personality influences cultural behaviour. Linton was a leading figure in the development of the subfield of psychological anthropology in the 1930s and 1940s, and published widely on the topic of culture and personality. He also was instrumental in promoting the study of culture change, and published several studies on the acculturation of Native Americans.

Linton is often identified with “culture and personality school”. Linton do not believed in relationship between culture and personality was unproblematic in terms of culture exerted its influence more or less uniformly across the personalities that it shaped. In 20th century, his writing tells about the modern skills. Kardiner and Linton argued that while culture and personality were similarly integrated, there was a specific causal relationship between them. Both of them were agree with primary institution deals with basic personality structure, while secondary institution is product of basic personality structure.

4. Ruth Fulton Benedict (1887-1948)

She was originator of the configurational approach to culture. She entered anthropology as mature women. With her background in the humanities, she approached a body of cultural materials as a whole, in the sense in which the productive output of a writer or a painter forms a whole, and she conceived of a group of human beings and their culture as forming a total intellectual, religious, and aesthetic construct (Benedict 1922). Ruth Benedict is famous anthropologist and culture and personality theorists. He wrote influential book on patterns of culture. She was leading figure for culture and personality school. Her book patterns of culture (1934), one of the seminal works of the culture and personality school, had an immense impact on both anthropologists and lay readers alike (Bernard and spencer, 2002). She suggested that there is a high degree of consistency between cultural type and patterns of emotions. Culture promotes a personality type: benedict suggested that there is a consistency between the culture you grow up in and the emotions you feel. In her patterns of culture, she explained culture in unique pattern which can be later configured.

According to cultural configuration, this not only deal with the fundamental personality characteristics of people grow up in this culture but also the expression of underlying ideas, value and more that characterize a certain society or culture.

Drawbacks of benedict theory: She failed to provide an explanation of why a culture that the people that grow up in culture personality traits or of how these personality traits are passed on from one generation to the next.

5. Cora-du-Bois (1903- 1991)

Cora Dubois was born in New York City. She earned her M.A. degree in Columbia University and attended the University of Berkeley for her Ph. D degree. She was influenced collaborator Abram Kardiner in cross-cultural diagnosis and the psychoanalytic study of culture. She wrote the book entitled The People of Alor (1944). In this social-psychological study, she advanced the concept of modal personality structure. Cora Dubois stated that individual variation within a culture exists, and each culture shares the development of a particular type which might not exist in its individuals. In 1945, Cora Dubois, Abram Kardiner and Ralph Linton co-authored the book, the Psychological Frontiers of Society which consisted of careful descriptions and interpretations of three cultures (the Comanche culture, the Alorese culture, and the culture of an American rural community). It explained the basic personality formed by the diversity of subject matter in each culture. Bois went to Alor Island in the Dutch East Indies where she collected variety of ethnographic and psychological data. When she returned in 1939 she along with kardiner analyzed the data and arrived at the same conclusion about basic characteristics of Alorese personality on the basis of which she proposed “modal personality”. Du bois is one of the anthropologists who collaborated with Kardiner and introduced the “modal personality”. The model personality according to bois is the type of personality that is statistically the most certain in a society. She argued with the concept of primary institutions lead to formation of a basic characteristic. She did recognize that each person’s own personality is developed and expressed in a unique way leading to variation in personalities within a society. She modified the idea with her concept of the “modal personality”, which, while based on an assumption of a “physic unity of mankind” (1944) allowed for individual variations within a culture. She understood the infant as a blank slate on which the effects of aspects of childcare would have observable effects.

6. Margaret mead (1901-1978)

American anthropologists’ work emphasized the relationship between culture and personality formation. Margaret Mead (1901-1978) also contributed immensely to this field of research by focusing her attention on childhood and adolescence in the Pacific islands. Mead did extensive field work throughout the 1920s and 1930s. She was always joined by a collaborator. Mead and Bateson conducted two years of intensive field work together in Bali, pursuing their different research interests. They pioneered the use of film as a resource for anthropological research, shooting some 22,000 feet of film as well as thousands of still photographs. She also studied groups included the Manus people of the Admiralty Islands, and the Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli, and Iatmul of New Guinea. Mead became convinced of the importance of culture as a determinant of personality, following in the footsteps of Alfred Adler in the field of psychology and Ruth Benedict in anthropology. Mead detailed her theories of character formation and culture in Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935) and expanded further on the role of culture in gender formation in her 1949 work, Male and Female: Study of the Sexes in a Changing World.

Her book on Coming of Age in Samoa (1929/1961) is based on nine months fieldwork, compares Samoan with American adolescent girls.

Her study showed such stresses mainly associated with American adolescents whereas the Samoan adolescents had relatively an easy transition into sexual maturation. In her book on Samoas, she claims that they are taught early in their life that if they behave well or are quiet and obedient they can have their own way. Arrogance, flippancy and courage are not the qualities emphasized either for boy or girl. The children are expected to get up early, be obedient and cheerful, play with children of their own sex, etc. and the adults are expected to be industrious, skilful, loyal to their relatives, wise, peaceful, serene, gentle, generous, altruistic, etc. According to her fieldwork observation, little girls move about together and have antagonistic and avoidance relationship with boys. However, as they grow up boy and girls begin to interact during parties and fishing expeditions. As long as a boy and a girl are not committing incest any amorous activities between them, including slipping into the bush together, are considered natural and adults pay little attention to such relationships.

She concluded that cultural conditioning, not biological changes associated with adolescence, makes it stressful or not. Criticisms notwithstanding, subsequent studies have lent support to her basic theory that childhood upbringing influences formation of adult personality. Mead further writes that among the Arapesh of northeast New Guinea personality attributes like gentleness and mildness are valued.

But among the Munfugumor of the same area men are expected to behave in harsh and violent ways.

Mead’s also interested in psychiatry and turned her attention to the problem of the cultural context of schizophrenia (a mental disorder whose symptoms are a detachment to one’s environment and a breakdown of one’s personality—thoughts, feelings, and actions). She went to Bali, a society where going into a trance (the state of complete unconscious) and other forms of dissociation (an escape from the outer world into an inner one) are culturally approved and encouraged. The extensive use of film made it possible to record and analyze significant details of behaviour that had escaped the pencil-and-paper recordings. Of the 38,000 photographs which Mead and Bateson brought back, seven hundred fifty–nine were selected for Balinese Character (1942), a joint study with Bateson. This publication marks a major change in the recording and presentation of ethnological data and may prove in the long run to be one of her most significant contributions to the science of anthropology.

She also conducted a nationwide study of American food habits prior to the introduction of rationing (process in war time of conserving goods for soldiers by portioning them out sparingly to citizens). She studied psychology especially in terms of learning theory and psychoanalysis. The psychoanalysis basically a type of treatment for emotional disorders in which a patient talks through childhood experiences and looks at the significance of dreams. She highlighted on the development of psychoanalytic theory by emphasizing the importance of culture in personality development. She served on many national and international committees for mental health and was instrumental in introducing the study of culture into training programs for physicians and social workers. She was mead who dominant in developing the field of culture and personality and the related field of national character research.

Mead was criticized by certain other social scientists for neglecting quantitative (measuring) methods and for what has been called “anecdotal” (relying on short stories of interesting incidents for proof) handling of data. She was also accused of applying concepts of individual psychology to the analysis of social process while ignoring historical and economic factors. She was also a role model for American women, encouraging them to pursue professional careers previously closed to women while at the same time championing their roles as mothers. She died in 1978, in New York City and was later awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

 References

• Barnard, A., & Spencer, J. (2002). Encyclopedia of social and cultural anthropology. London. England: Rout ledge.
• Hsu, Francis L.K. 1961. Psychological anthropology: approaches to culture & personality.
• McGee, J.R. & Warms, R.L. (2008), Anthropological theory: An introductory history. New York. McGraw Hill.