Ruth Benedict: Stranger in This Land

by Margaret M. Caffrey

Poet, anthropologist, feminist—Ruth Fulton Benedict was all of these and much more. Born into the last years of the Victorian era, she came of age during the Progressive years and participated in inaugurating the modern era of American life. Ruth Stranger in This Land provides an intellectual and cultural history of the first half of the twentieth century through the life of an important and remarkable woman. As a Lyricist poet, Ruth Benedict helped define Modernism. As an anthropologist, she wrote the classic Patterns of Culture and at one point was considered the foremost anthropologist in the United States—the first woman ever to attain such status. She was an intellectual and an artist living in a time when women were not encouraged to be either. In this fascinating study, Margaret Caffrey attempts to place Benedict in the cultural matrix of her time and successfully shows the way in which Benedict was a product of and reacted to the era in which she lived. Caffrey goes far beyond providing simple biographical material in this well-written interdisciplinary study. Based on exhaustive research, including access for the first time to the papers of Margaret Mead, Benedict's student and friend, Caffrey is able to put Benedict's life clearly in perspective. By identifying the family and educational influences that so sharply influenced Benedict's psychological makeup, the author also closely analyzes the currents of thought that were strong when Victorianism paralleled the Modernism that figured in Benedict's life work. The result is a richly detailed study of a gifted woman. This important work will be of interest to students of Modernism, poetry, and women's studies, as well as to anthropologists.

Genres: Biography

448 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1989

Reviews

[Kristin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Although this book was dense, it was fascinating to dive into the philosophies of Ruth Benedict and the differing opinions of her colleagues. I found it very thought-provoking.

Picking up just a few salient points;
Religion:
She found that religion is often used for power rather than for a closer relationship to the Supreme and should not be used to derive morality.
Culture:
Benedict wanted people to become more culture conscious and look at the “givens" or the actual motivations of their culture that lay below the rationalized, commonly accepted ones. These are not fixed. To become culture conscious is then to be guided by intelligence.
Neuroses can be brought on by individuals being considered abnormal by society and forcing the adjustment of the individual to their culture. However, since culture is flexible, what is abnormal in one society might be perfectly acceptable to another culture. She felt that if homosexuality were institutionalized, most people would be homosexual.
Respecting other cultures does not mean devaluing your own. Aggression is learned and not innate. She equated cannibalism with war.
Racism:
Race prejudice is caused by fear because when afraid, people pick out scapegoats to blame for their fears.
“Racist doctrines are invoked for political ends” by those who travesty science for authority.
“In a working democracy a rapidly dwindling chorus of racists would sing its song of bitterness and hate to an empty house”.

Society: (particularly relevant today)
A secure group has a siphon system of economics in which wealth constantly moves through the community, never concentrating for very long.
An insecure society has a funnel system of economics which collects and channels wealth toward the already rich.
Cultures with low synergy have social structures that frustrate the individual's needs and desires, where the individual gains advantage only at the expense of others. This discourages social solidarity.
High synergy cultures occur when the leader takes responsibility for the well-being of his followers, sharing for mutual benefit rather than hoarding for private advantage.
A society’s freedom is threatened when a privileged group can act arbitrarily and without responsibility and still retain its privileges. They use war to create an artificial state of high synergy. “Our social order starves when in peacetime for gratifications they only get in time of war”.

During her life she fought against racism, Nazism and the Un-American Activities Committee and their accusations against liberal and radical organizations as being Communist because of their support of Roosevelt's plan. By reading this book, I was reminded how she effectively set a new course for the study of anthropology. Recommended for anyone who wants to gain perspective.

[Eric Ramirez-Ferrero · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall, I thought this book was strong, but a bit uneven. Caffrey seemed least comfortable writing about Benedict's early personal history. Some better, judicious editing would have been helpful here. She was most skilled in writing about Benedict's intellectual life, her ideas, and how they fit into or challenged the intellectual currents of her time. I learned/relearned a lot, and I definitely gained a new appreciation for the areas and depths of Benedict's important contributions to anthropology, helping to shape American opinion on key social issues, and the war effort (WWII). Recommended!