Ruth Benedict – författare

"One of the best books ever about Japanese society…[A] thoughtful, nuanced study." —U.S. News & World ReportFirst published in 1946, The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is one of the most influential and widely read works on Japan in the twentieth century. Written by cultural anthropologist Ruth Benedict during World War II, the book blends anthropology, history, and cultural analysis, and has shaped decades of cross-cultural discourse.Benedict examines themes of social structure, family roles, self-discipline, and other enduring values, seeking to understand how deeply rooted traditions shaped Japanese society at a moment of profound global changeThis new edition has been completely redesigned for greater readability and features a new foreword by Lois Banner, a pioneer in the field of women's studies.

This book was originally published in 1935. For some years past the scientific study of primitive peoples has experimented in a variety of directions for new methods of investigation. Criticism of the comparative method, of which Sir James Frazer is recognized as the foremost exponent all the world over, has been directed mainly against the fragmentary character of its evidence when torn from its context.In this book Dr Benedict offers an alternative method of approach. The aim of the investigator, she maintains, should be the discovery in the diversity of cultures of the 'configuration' of each - that is the cultural drive in group and individual which determines the characteristic reaction to stimulus in any and every situation in life.

This book was originally published in 1935. For some years past the scientific study of primitive peoples has experimented in a variety of directions for new methods of investigation. Criticism of the comparative method, of which Sir James Frazer is recognized as the foremost exponent all the world over, has been directed mainly against the fragmentary character of its evidence when torn from its context.In this book Dr Benedict offers an alternative method of approach. The aim of the investigator, she maintains, should be the discovery in the diversity of cultures of the 'configuration' of each - that is the cultural drive in group and individual which determines the characteristic reaction to stimulus in any and every situation in life.

In science, race can be a useful concept—for specific, limited purposes. When race, as a way of classifying people, is drafted into the service of politics, religion, or any belief system, then danger follows. That is the focus of this classic repudiation of racism, which is as readable and timely now as when it first appeared.Race: Science and Politics was first published in 1940, in response to the global rise of fascism and its pseudoscientific rationales for marginalizing and even exterminating “inferior” people. Writing for a general audience, Ruth Benedict ranges across the history of Western thought and research on race to illuminate rifts between the facts of race and the claims of racism. Rather than take issue only with the Nazis and their allies, Benedict set out to show that all racist beliefs are objectively groundless—and that is the key to the book’s ongoing relevance.The book’s bonus content includes The Races of Mankind, a pamphlet-length distillation of the book with its own controversial role in dismantling racist theory. This edition also includes a new foreword by Judith Schachter. An anthropologist, historian, and Benedict biographer, Schachter discusses the book’s importance for current readers. Also included is a foreword by anthropologist Margaret Mead from 1958, a time when colonial ties around the world were unravelling and civil rights unrest was a daily occurrence in the United States.

An Anthropologist at Work is the product of a long collaboration between Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. Mead, who was Benedict's student, colleague, and eventually her biographer, here has collected the bulk of Ruth Benedict's writings. This includes letters between these two seminal anthropologists, correspondence with Franz Boas (Benedict's teacher), Edward Sapir's poems, and notes from studies that Benedict had collected throughout her life. Since Benedict wrote little, Mead has fleshed out the narratives by adding background information on Benedict's life, work, and the cultural atmosphere of the time.Ruth Benedict formed her own view of the contribution of anthropology before the first steps were taken in the study of how individual human beings, with their given potentialities, came to embody their culture. In her later work, she came to accept and sometimes to use the work in culture and personality that depended as much upon social psychology as upon cultural anthropology. She came to recognize that society - made up of persons or organized in groups - was as important as a subject of study as the culture of a society.This volume, greatly enhanced by Mead's contributions, is a record of what was important to Benedict in her life and work. It is expertly ordered and assembled in a way that will be accessible to students and professionals alike.