#ruthbenedict

Ruth Benedict, from Lapsley’s Intertwined Lives

“We do not see the lens through which we look.” #ruthbenedict #anthropologist #folklorist #readafuckingbook #patternsofculture https://www.instagram.com/p/CK6gzGXhi4W/?igshid=iygftxn3dipp

Ruth Benedict 

Ruth is famously known for her studies in cultural relativism. She was born in New York City on June 5th, 1887. Ruth attended college at Vassar College, an all girls school, in September of 1905. She studied English Literature, as well as her sister, Margery. Following college, she became a teacher at an all girls school in California but stopped teaching and left in 1914. Ruth went back to school in 1921 to earn her Ph.D. at Columbia University. After graduating, she became a professor at the university and taught anthropology. Simultaneously, she studied many things in the field and published many well-known works such as her book Patterns of Culture.

In From Boaz to Black Power, Anderson chooses to go through a historical analysis of anthropological history on the discourse of race and racism in the US. In doing so, he focuses on both identifying and complicating the ideas and legacies of early anthropological scholars on race to understand the history of the discipline. This is evident in Chapter 3 on Ruth Benedict, where he points to her positive implications on defining “racism” but also highlights tensions and contradictions in her scholarship on racism. While she focused on historical accounts on racism and offered new approaches to solving the “race problem”, she also modeled these ideas towards assimilation of European immigrants into “American” culture and citizenship, continuing a white tradition. Anderson, therefore, argues that Benedict actually “minimized the sociocultural consequences of racial distinctions in the US body politics and reproduced a normative relationship between whiteness and America”(93). For Anderson, it is important to acknowledge her successes and shortcomings. But Benedict’s writing, which seemed to be tailored to a white American audience, reminded me of the Alice Goffman TedTalk. This made me think, in current popular culture, would figures like Benedict and Boaz be canceled for some of their problematic ideologies?  Do you think that Ruth Benedict would be affected by cancel culture? Would her positive implications in the field outweigh the negatives? Should she just been taken in the context of the historical era she was writing in? Is cancel culture even applicable in this context? Just some questions I was thinking about when applying Anderson’s thought to our society today. 

#ruthbenedict #chrysanthemum #sword #katana #日本刀 #nihontō #espada #crisantemo https://www.instagram.com/p/B2cAjzrirRy/?igshid=19jshkilziihl