Customer Reviews

Patterns of Culture

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This book describes several diverse cultures in depth and detail. The emphasis is on overall world view and the conceptual foundations of each culture. The writing is lucid, involving and evocative. This book sheds more light on the issue of what is basic to all human nature, and what is culturaly influenced, then any other I know.

I read this book many years ago and I haven't looked at it lately. So, this is strictly from memory. What I remember about the book is that from the book I acquired this "insightful idea" : that as we learn our own culture we become a "prisoner" of our ONE culture. We become a prisoner because we only know ONE culture. If we only know ONE culture we have "no choice" but to "live and think" WITHIN that ONE culture. But, if we know two or three or twenty cultures we can then "free" outselves from living and thinking and perceiving in ONE way. We will then have choices BETWEEN more than one way of life, we will have choices between more than one way of thinking and we will have choices between more than one way of perceiving the world. The knowledge of more than one culture gives us "more freedom" of choice. Thus we cease to be "a prisoner of culture". We become somewhat of an "overman" because we are "free to choose" among many cultural possibilities that people with only ONE culture cannot. And, we can become a "participant observer" among many cultures. We can choose how to live, perceive, and think among many more possibilities which gives us "more freedom" of action. This "insight" has freed me to choose "the best" aspects among many cultures thus enriching my life and giving me more choices about how to live my life. If this book does the same for you, then it has served its purpose. I recommend the book because of the "cultural freedom" you may acquire from reading it. Email: Boland7214@aol.com

Very, very easy to digest. Anyone interested in the history of anthropology or in Native American Indians will find this book a good read. It's a bit dated, but if you can let that go, you'll get a lot out of it.

I had to read this book for my writing about cultures course this summer. While this book is considered to be a classic work in anthropology, doesn't mean that it is easy or enjoyable to read.

Benedict wrote this book with multiple writing styles that made it seem like the individual chapters were disjointed from one another. In chapters where she was not writing about what she knew like the introduction, she uses a very rigid, academic, jargon filled style that was near impossible to read even for an anthropology student. I had to read the first chapter four times to get anything out of it. Then you have the second chapter which is a contrasts with the style of the first chapter because it becomes more like prose with almost a poetic quality in portions especially when she tells the story about how the cup is broken.

There is a lot of really good insight about the way culture was studied in the 1930s, and its also provides readers with a deeper understanding of Benedict herself, but there are some portions of the book that you just have to dig through and carry on.

To put it bluntly, this book is garbage. The language is so dry and the tone of the anthropologist so condescending, it makes one picture Ms. Benedict smoking a pipe in an armchair of a library somewhere.

This book should come under fire because Benedict let others do much of the research for her. This is a theme revisited in many of her works (i.e. "The Chrysanthemum and the Sword"). She received much flack for it, as well she should. Anthropology lived vicariously is not anthropology at all.