Benedict Discussion Questions

Both Benedict and the Journal of American Folk-Lore reference industrialization as a threat to certain cultures and customs. In describing the effect of Western "innovations" on the Digger Indians, Benedict writes, "Those things that had given significance to the life of his people, the obligations of the economic system, the succession of ceremonials in the villages, possession in the bear dance, their standards of right and wrong – these were gone, and with them the shape and meaning of their life" (22). Why does industrialization have this effect on traditional customs, according to Benedict? How do the explanations of this problem and the proposed solutions of Benedict and the Journal diverge?

In her forward, Louise Lamphere praises Benedict for rejecting "the view that Western society was the best, the most evolved" and for asserting "that each culture must be seen as it sees itself" (viii) (ie cultural relativism). But in "The Science of Custom," Benedict writes, "Some primitive tribes may have held relatively closer to primordial forms of behavior than civilized man, but this can only be relative…"(18). At one point, Benedict even compares the study of "less complicated groups" to the study of beetles in her argument that Western civilization is too complex to be adequately studied as a whole (56). How are Lamphere's comments – and indeed, Benedict’s own ideas of relativism in the very passage excerpted above - to be reconciled with the notion of cultural primitivism put forth by Benedict? How is Benedict using the word "primitive"?

In "The Nature of Society," Benedict writes, "None of the peoples we have discussed in this volume were studied in the field with any preconception of a consistent type of behavior for which that culture is illustrated. The ethnology was set down as it came…" (229). Given her previous assertion that "no man ever looks at the world with pristine eyes" and that "his very concepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particular traditional customs" (2), is it possible that Benedict has collected information about these cultures without any preconceptions? How would she square these two claims?