AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGY IN AMERICAN CULTURE: THE PROBLEM OF INFLUENCE

2012 ◽  
Vol 9 (3) ◽  
pp. 721-732
Author(s):  
RICHARD HANDLER
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Cultural Criticism ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Public Voice ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Ruth Benedict

American anthropologists have a PR problem. We know it, and it bothers us. A left-of-center discipline finds it difficult to get across its cultural criticism in a country with center-right mass media. To make matters worse, the discipline is cursed by the fact of having ancestors who hang around, whose contemporary public presence seems greater than anything the anthropologists of this world can muster. The greatest of these anthropological ghosts is Margaret Mead, whom some anthropologists have never forgiven for her celebrity. Even for those of us who admire her, her presence and that of a few other ancestral figures, like Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, throw a glaring light on our own lack of a public voice.

Anthropological Fictions: On Character, Culture, and Sexuality in the Work of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Virginia Woolf

Prospects ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Kimberly Engber
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Subsequent Response ◽  
Vassar College ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Ruth Benedict

In January 1932, anthropologist Ruth Benedict writes a letter to her colleague Margaret Mead on fieldwork in New Guinea, bringing Mead up to date on the health of “Papa” Franz Boas. Boas, the academic mentor that Benedict and Mead shared at Columbia University, acts as only the momentary locus for their continuing exchange about life and work and the relationship between the two. After giving “her hospital report,” Benedict turns eagerly to another conversation with Mead, asking, “Did you likeThe Waves? And did you keep thinking how you'd set down everybody you knew in a similar fashion? I did. I suppose I'm disappointed that she didn't include any violent temperaments, and I want my group of persons to be more varied” (Mead,Anthropologist at Work, 318). Focusing on the depiction of characters in Virginia Woolf's 1931 novelThe Waves, Benedict presents modernist fiction as a model for ethnography. However, she completely avoids the literary termcharacterin her discussion of Woolf, a particularly odd omission since Benedict had majored in English at Vassar College and since she and Mead regularly exchanged novels and their own poetry in letters.Ruth Benedict's reading ofThe Waveshas been cited as evidence of her tendency toward a vaguely “poetic” anthropology, an argument that tends to separate the aesthetic from the sociopolitical in both Benedict and Woolf. In this essay, I consider Benedict's reading of Woolf, together with Margaret Mead's subsequent response, as evidence of a shared critical engagement with character, culture, and sexuality in the early 20th century.

The School in American Culture. Margaret Mead

1952 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-120
Author(s):  
Kenneth V. Lottick
Keyword(s):  
American Culture ◽  
Margaret Mead

Klinghoffer in Brooklyn Heights

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 173-213 ◽  
Author(s):  
ROBERT FINK
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
Mass Media ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
John Adams ◽  
Self Identity ◽  
Ideological Position ◽  
American Jewish ◽  
The Death Of Klinghoffer ◽  
Brooklyn Academy Of Music

Is The Death of Klinghoffer anti-Semitic? Performances of the opera at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in September 1991 were at the epicentre of a controversy that continues to this day; the New York audience was – and remains – uniquely hostile to the work. A careful reception analysis shows that New York audiences reacted vehemently not so much to an ideological position on the Israeli–Palestinian conflict, but to specific nuances in the satirical portrayal of American Jewish characters in one controversial scene later cut from the opera, a scene that must be read closely and in relation to specifically American-Jewish questions of ethnic humour, assimilation, identity and multiculturalism in the mass media. I understand the opera's negative reception in the larger context of the increasingly severe crises that beset American Jewish self-identity during the Reagan-Bush era. Ultimately the historical ability of Jews to assimilate through comedy, to ‘enter the American culture on the stage laughing’, in Leslie Fiedler's famous formulation, will have to be reconsidered. A close reading of contested moments from the opera shows librettist Alice Goodman and composer John Adams avoiding the romance of historical self-consciousness as they attempt to construct a powerful yet subtle defence of the ordinary and unassuming.

scholarly journals Reclaiming Women’s Perspective: Feminist Anthropology and the Androcentric Bias

2019 ◽  
pp. 93-106
Author(s):  
Maja Muhić
Keyword(s):  
Social Sciences ◽  
The Other ◽  
Power Relationship ◽  
Male Bias ◽  
The Past ◽  
Feminist Anthropology ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Dialogical Relation ◽  
Ruth Benedict

The past few decades have been marked by an increasing discussion on the role of dialogue in anthropology, especially following the anthropological turn of the 80s, when the discipline was looked upon as one “writing a culture” rather than understanding it from the insider’s perspective, while the ethnographer was thought of as the epistemic dictator, incapable of establishing a dialogical relation with his subjects of inquiry. The power relationship was indeed one of the most prominent problems in creating an equal, dialogical setting between the anthropologist and the other culture. This paper aims at revisiting feminist anthropology tracing the elements which constituted it, its original inspiration, and main motifs of action mostly gathered around the strong male bias of the discipline. This bias was predominantly manifested in the monological, androcentric understanding and exploration of cultures. In tracing these aspects, and acknowledging the more egalitarian status of this discipline since its early days versus other social sciences (Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict were among the most prominent women anthropologists), the paper will look at early women anthropologists works some of which were excluded from the canon. It will also point to the existence of strong male bias in ethnography and the discipline as a whole, thus triggering the emergence of feminist anthropology with its capacity for reflexivity and accountability in ethnographic work.

scholarly journals Book Review: American Myths, Legends, and Tall Tales: An Encyclopedia of American Folklore

2017 ◽  
Vol 56 (3) ◽  
pp. 215
Author(s):  
Jennifer A. Bartlett
Keyword(s):  
Mass Media ◽  
Science Fiction ◽  
American Culture ◽  
Historical Events ◽  
Conspiracy Theories ◽  
American Myths ◽  
John Lennon ◽  
American Folklore ◽  
Brer Rabbit

Compilations of American folklore are constantly being rewritten to reflect the increasing diversity and variety of American culture. Many readers grew up with Benjamin Botkin’s classic collection A Treasury of American Folklore (Crown 1944), which featured a foreword written by Carl Sandburg and stories about Pecos Bill, Johnny Appleseed, Brer Rabbit and other popular myths, legends, and tall tales. Today, new legends are entering the folklore lexicon to reflect the influence of urban myths, historical events, science fiction, conspiracy theories, and mass media. This three-volume set offers a fascinating look at both traditional and newer folklore, including “Internet Hoaxes,” the “John Lennon shooting,” “Roswell,” and “Slender Man.”

scholarly journals Educação como tradição: a relação adulto-criança na antropologia culturalista de Margaret Mead e Ruth Benedict

Zero-a-Seis ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 21 (39) ◽  
pp. 120-135
Author(s):  
Karina Augusta Limonta Vieira
Keyword(s):  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Ruth Benedict

A criança tem feito parte de pesquisas antropológicas e educacionais na última década no Brasil. E é a partir desse interesse que esse artigo apresenta a educação como tradição na perspectiva antropológica. Esse artigo, então, tem como objetivo apresentar e discutir de maneira original a educação como tradição na compreensão das relações adulto-criança na perspectiva das contribuições da antropologia cultural. O artigo, então, tem como questões norteadoras: Qual o papel desempenham o adulto e a criança na perspectiva da antropologia cultural de Mead e Benedict? Há dinamicidade educacional no diálogo entre adulto e criança? Essa relação adulto-criança, na perspectiva da educação como tradição, está representada aqui nos trabalhos que Margared Mead e Ruth Benedict desenvolveram no início do século XX. Os trabalhos mostram a existência dos padrões de cultura, na preservação das relações e na formação do adulto ideal por meio da educação entre gerações.

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