CONTENTS
A New PREFACE BY MARGARET MEeap
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
[NTRODUCTION BY Franz Boas
I. Tue Science or Custom
Custom and behaviour — The child's inheritance — Our
false perspective — Confusion of local custom with ‘Human
Nature’ -— Qur blindness to other cultures ~ Race-prejudice
_ Man moulded by custom, not instinct — ‘Racial purity” a
delusion — Reason for studying primitive peoples.
[I. Tue Diversity oF CULTURES
The cup of life — The necessity for selection — Adolescence
and puberty as treated in different societies — Peoples who
never heard of war — Marriage customs — Interweaving of
cultural traits — Guardian spirits and visions — Marriage
and the Church — These associations social, not biologically
‘nevitable.
(II. Tue InTEGRATION OF CULTURE
All standards of behaviour relative — Patterning of culture
— Weakness of most anthropological work — The view of the
whole — Spengler’s ‘Decline of the West’ — Faustian and
Apollonian man — Western civilization too intricate for
study — A détour via primitive tribes.
[V. Tue Puesros or New MEexIco
An unspoiled community — Zufi ceremonial — Priests and
masked gods — Medicine societies — A strongly socialized
culture — ‘The middle road’ — Carrying farther the Greek
ideal -— Contrasting customs of the Plains Indians —
Dionysian frenzies and visions — Drugs and alcohol — The
Zufii's distrust of excess — Scorn for power and violence —
Marriage, death, and mourning — Fertility ceremonies
Sex symbolism — ‘Man’s oneness with the universe’
The typical Apollonian civilization.
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