Ruth Fulton Benedict 1887-1948

Ruth Benedict died on September 17, 1948, of a coronary thrombosis, after a five day illness, just ten days after she had returned from a summer’s teaching and travelling in Europe. She was sixty-one, and had been an active professional anthropologist since 1923.

Her death brought to the world of social scientists, both to those who knew her personally and those who knew her only through her work, a poignant sense of how seldom such a combination of gifts is found in one single human being, how few there are who have the wisdom to bring integration into this transitional phase of our human history, how impoverished by her death is the small community of those who wish to press forward to deeper solutions.

She was born of old American farming stock, six of her ancestors fought in the Revolutionary War, both her mother’s and her father’s parents lived in Norwich, New York, and the homes of her grandparents remained a firm anchorage in her memory. Much of her writing was done on the old farm which she inherited. She remained one of the few anthropologists who could communicate easily with rural people, and her firm sense of her sturdy yeoman antecedents was a refuge, which she articulately recognized, from the uncertainties and incompatible learnings which accompany more recent migration or shifting urban backgrounds. Her father, who was a physician, graduate of New York Homeopathic Medical College, died before she was two, leaving her mother, an early graduate of Vassar, with two young children to support. During a rigorously frugal childhood, Ruth Benedict learned that material things were unimportant, above a certain minimum, but that that minimum was desperately important; this understanding stayed with her in all the years when the small amounts of money which she could find—oftener than they knew from her own resources—for students and young colleagues, were all that made it possible for them to go on being anthropologists at all. Throughout her life she maintained the attitude that money existed to be spent as an underpinning for work, as a way of freeing people to be and do what they could do best.

She graduated from Vassar in 1909, a Phi Beta Kappa, without the sense that her period offered her any intellectual or broad social role which had any meaning. A scholarship year in Europe with two classmates gave her her first cross-cultural experience, and she returned to teach in a secondary school. In 1914, she married Stanley Benedict, who at his death in 1936 was Professor of Biochemistry at Cornell Medical College. During the early years of her marriage, when she hoped for children, she continued to experiment very tentatively without any commitment, with what her culture had to offer—dancing, literature, social work, biography, and poetry. She lacked the concept of culture which was to provide her with an integrating idea, a rubric under which she could classify both the great achievements of the human spirit, and the intractability of that spirit which made some members of each society feel like strangers, with no words ready to their tongues.

Benedict in 1937

Photo: World-Telegram / Library of Congress

Her first work in anthropology was with Elsie Clews Parsons at the New School for Social Research, where she also worked with Alexander Goldenweiser. She then entered the Columbia graduate school to work under Boas, taking the Ph.D. in 1923. During those early years, she began to work on American Indian religion, publishing The Vision in Plains Culture, and later her Ph.D. thesis, The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America. Her first field work was done in the summer of 1922, among the Serrano, under A. L. Kroeber’s introductory tutelage, which she always referred to with gratitude for the sensitivity of her initiation. Partially deaf from childhood, field work was never easy for her. She had to limit herself to interviews with English speaking informants or to the use of interpreters, and to the observation of ceremonies where the eye could replace the ear. She had learned lip reading, but was never able to learn new phonetic patterns, and the part of teaching which involved understanding questions or following discussion always remained an ordeal. Two of her characteristics which all those who worked closely with her will remember vividly were the smile which accepted the general position the details of which she had only half caught, and the rephrasing of a question which made the questioner out to be so much more intelligent than had the original question; both were connected with her deafness, combined with her willingness to trust to what she felt were the essential elements in other people and in problems. She had the rare gift of taking the half-articulate groping interest of a student and illuminating it with a warmth which was like an accolade.

Her first teaching appointment was as assistant to Franz Boas, in his undergraduate class at Barnard, in 1922-23. At that time, speaking as well as participating in discussion was still an ordeal, even completing single sentences in front of a group sometimes brought on extreme shyness, and she often wondered if she would ever be able to get through a lecture without miserable stumbling. The long battle to learn to focus attention, lose herself in what she had to say enough, but not too much, was sometimes reflected in recent years when she gave a lecture to an audience of hundreds, by an undercurrent of mischievous gaiety, a lightheartedness which would have seemed almost irresponsible against a different background. She had little rote memory, and a tendency to reduce material rapidly to its essence, to trenchant clear statements of meaning after which all elaboration and illustration seemed unnecessary. This made teaching always a chore, a matter of material to be looked up again and again, organized and reorganized in notes which had to be used in detail. In occasional lectures she achieved an elegance closer to poetry than to common speech. In the most halting lecture there would come, in a student’s phrase, “between the uh and the ah, a bombshell of light which changed everything.”

In 1924 she started teaching in the graduate school at Columbia University, simultaneously working on concordances of American folklore, under a grant from the Southwest Society, which was the institutional name under which Elsie Clews Parsons supplemented the very meager funds available for field work and research. “…between the uh and the ah, a bomb­shell of light which changed everything.” Ruth Benedict was just too old for any of the fellowships which were just opening up in the field. The anomalousness introduced in her position by her age, was one more factor which added to her feeling for those who by age or sex or temperament or accidents of life history were out of the main current of their culture, and needed special help. But her commitment to anthropology as a career was not yet very deep. She thought the approach was one which reduced a large amount of hitherto incomprehensible material to order, which made it possible to think as well as feel about the complexities of life, an approach which was appropriate for an age in which science was so largely replacing the arts and humanities as the principal path to meaning.

It was not until the medical evidence was definite that she would never have children, that she began to consider a greater commitment to anthropology; and not until her field trip to the Pima in 1927, when she suddenly saw the possibilities of viewing culture, not only as a condition within which personality developed, but as essentially like a personality writ large, that she assumed the responsibility of genuine contribution to anthropological thinking, rather than simply doing chores for anthropology in return for the rewards of using anthropological ways of thought in giving her a personal interpretation of life. The theory which underlay Patterns of Culture was worked out in the winter of 1927-28, and given as a paper at the XXIII Congress of Americanists in the summer of 1928. But it was not until 1931, after three more years of graduate teaching, that she decided to write Patterns of Culture. When Patterns of Culture was published in 1934, she had done eleven years of scholarly, anthropological work, all essentially within the framework of the Boas school, using diffusion data as material for the understanding of process.

Patterns of Culture, translated into five languages, used as text and reference book in hundreds of college courses, giving a first glimpse of what anthropology could mean to the psychological disciplines on the one hand, and to the humanities and an understanding of the arts on the other, remains one of the great books of the second quarter of the twentieth century, responsible for bringing students, scholars, and fellow scientists a sense of how an understanding of culture could increase an understanding of life.

The years between her appointment as assistant professor of anthropology, in 1930, in the Graduate Faculty of Philosophy, Anthropology, and Psychology, and her first sabbatical, in 1938-39—which she devoted to writing Race: Science and Politics—were busy years, covering Professor Boas’ retirement, She suddenly saw the possibilities of viewing culture … like a personality writ large the years when she was acting chairman of the department, the long struggle during the depression to find funds for field work, write-up money, positions for students. She was editor of the Journal of American Folklore, 1928-1939. She directed two summer field trips, one to the Apache, in 1930, and one to the Blackfoot in 1938. Two volumes of Zúni mythology, based on field work in 1924, 1925, and 1927, were published in 1935. She did an immense amount of reviewing, consulting, teaching, advising. Race: Science and Politics was part of the consistent service she rendered to those social movements designed to remove all handicaps based on race or sex, and to building a world in which each human being could act with dignity. The small pamphlet, Races of Mankind, which she wrote with Gene Weltfish, went into millions of copies, was translated into film, and film script and cartoon forms, and has proved perhaps the most important single translation into genuine popular education of the many years of careful research on race differences to which anthropologists have made a major contribution. She was never a crusader, but was rather in the tradition of a consistently religious ancestry who had identified service to mankind with service to God. She felt there were some things which, as an anthropologist, and a human being, one must say and must do, places where one could not keep silent, places where long hours of work on committees, or in revising drafts and manuscripts were essential.

These years of her major teaching activity were the years in which the word culture was becoming a familiar term in the social sciences, the years in which interrelationships between psychology and psychiatry and anthropology were developing. Ruth Benedict was a part of this interdisciplinary movement, and some of its leaders were her close friends. She sat on committees, advised students and older scientists from other fields, and patiently subjected imperfectly conceived research programs to analysis. One of her frequent questions to young psychologists used to be, “Do you want to find out something about the test, or about the people?” If it was about the test, she was not interested. She never considered either the specific methods and the working hypotheses of the social sciences as anything but tools; it was impossible to enlist her interest in teaching even methods of field work itself. The only method she recognized was a method which flowed from an understanding of culture, from a genuine surrender to what the data, derived from the observation of living people, or their words, could give. But as her impatience with what she felt to be a sterile approach was usually expressed by withdrawal rather than active opposition, it did not prevent her making a rich and continuing contribution to interdisciplinary thinking—to which her two papers, “Anthropology and the Abnormal,” and “Continuities and Discontinuities in Cultural Conditioning” are perhaps her two most outstanding theoretical contributions.

In psychology her work acted as a corrective for an approach which often stressed testing hypotheses more than looking for new material; in psychoanalysis her writing focused attention on the variety of ways in which other cultures could order human relationships, which early psychoanalytic theory did not take into account. But her own work remained essentially and almost rigorously anthropological in character, the conceptions which she used came from the philosophies of other cultures—as for example her use of the Dionysian and Apollonian contrast from Greek life—rather than from the hypotheses of contemporary science. More than any other contemporary anthropologist interested in personality and culture, except perhaps Malinowski, her work was dependent upon a comparison of cultural forms, rather than upon the insights and findings of the biological and psychological sciences. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946) was based on an intensive analysis of interview and literary material on themes in Japanese culture; childhood training, and the common items in man’s basic biological nature were drawn upon very slightly. The book has gone a long way to make the culture and personality approach acceptable in circles in which human behavior is more often referred to political and religious institutions than to biology.

Ruth Benedict’s interest in religion was another persistent theme, beginning with her earliest researches on the vision. In an age when religion has been almost completely neglected except in the formal terms in which every ethnologist must deal with it, she considered that the religious systems of primitive peoples were intrinsically interesting, and provided the best materials for comparison with the individual art products of more complex cultures. Her lack of preoccupation with dogma and orthodoxy left her free for a sympathetic study of all religious phenomena. Other occupations prevented her writing anything substantial in the field since the chapter in General Anthropology which was actually written in 1928. The chapter she had planned for a forthcoming volume on psychiatry which was to have been devoted to a discussion of religion is an irreplaceable loss. Perhaps in this area, even more than in her treatment of the varied ways in which relationships between persons were patterned in different cultures, she demonstrated the extent of her possession of one of the great requisites in a pioneer scientist-the willingness to accept the currently discounted or hitherto unknown. The war brought her an entirely new area of interest, the application of anthropological ways of thought to contemporary societies, a reversal of the process by which she had taken her knowledge of her own tradition as background for a deeper interpretation of primitive materials. After a few small consultative memoranda on aspects of Chinese culture relevant to the selection of personnel, on Norwegian attitudes which were essential to an understanding of relief, she accepted a research post in Washington, where she worked consecutively on Romania, Siam, Germany, Holland and to a lesser extent other western European occupied countries, and finally, near the end of the war, on Japan. Here, in addition to teaching in the outpost schools, consulting and writing immediate materials for a variety of purposes, she had an opportunity to develop a new form of application of the culture area approach to these higher cultures.

This war experience left her convinced that anthropology had a substantial contribution to make to understanding between contemporary civilizations, and she returned to Columbia in 1946, after finishing The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, to organize a seminar on European culture, and in the spring of 1947, to undertake a large research project, Research in Contemporary Cultures, under the Office of Naval Research, which combined the functions of research and training. In 1946 there had been a proposal for her to go to Germany to inaugurate and supervise cultural studies of German communities, but the military medical authorities refused to let her go on grounds of health. When in the summer of 1948, she was asked to lecture in a UNESCO summer school in Prague, no doctor’s approval was needed. During this last summer of her life, she visited five countries, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium and Holland, whose cultures she had studied by the methods of interviewing used during the war, and had the intensely rewarding experience of finding that observations among the people themselves checked with the hypotheses which she had developed.

Ruth Benedict cared very little about matters of personal status and prestige, yet she realized the importance of such formal considerations in placing students, in getting support for field work, and opportunities to develop new approaches. It was in this sense that she valued the various academic honors and awards which came to her through the years:

• Anna Howard Shaw Memorial Lecturer, Bryn Mawr, 1941
• American Design Award, 1946
• Achievement Award, American Association of University Women, 1946
• Doctor of Science, Russell Sage College, 1947
• Editor of the Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology
• Assistant Editor of Psychiatry, 1946
• Editorial Board, The American Scholar
• President, American Ethnological Society, 1927-29
• Vice-President, American Psychopathological Ass’n. 1946
• Fellow, Washington School of Psychiatry, 1945
• President, American Anthropological Ass’n, 1947

She was a figure of transition, binding the broken sureties of a past age, to which she was a full heir, to the uncertainties which precede a new integration in human thinking. We shall not look upon her like again.

Bibliography 1922-19481 1. Compiled by Mary E. Chandler.

1. 1922 “The Vision in Plains Culture,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 24, pp. 1-23.
2. 1923 “The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America,” Thesis. Ph.D. Columbia University, New York. Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, No. 29, p. 1-97.
3. “Critical Note on the Relation of Folklore to Custom, etc.” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 36, p. 104.
4. 1924 “A Brief Sketch of Serrano Culture,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 26, pp. 366-392.
5. 1925 Review: The North American Indian, Vol. 12: The Hopi by Edward S. Curtis, American Anthropologist, Vol. 27, pp. 458-460.
6. Review: Shoshone Folk-Lore by Sarah Emilia Olden, American Anthropologist, Vol. 27, p. 461.
7. 1926 “Serrano Tales,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 39, pp. 1-17.
8. 1927 Review: Actes des Congres International d’Histoire des Religions, Paris, 1923, in Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 24, pp. 608-612.
9. Review: How Natives Think by L. Levy-Bruhl, Memphis Commercial Appeal, January 16.
10. 1928 Poem: “Eucharist,” Nation, Vol. 127, September 26, p. 296. (Pseudonym, Anne Singleton.)
11. Poems: “Earthborn,” “For The Hour After Love,” “For Rly Mother,” “I Shall Not Call,” “Intimacies,” “Lift Up Your Heart,” Poetry, Vol. 31, January. (Pseudonym, Anne Singleton.)
12. “Psychological Types in the Cultures of the Southwest,” Proceedings. Twenty-third International Congress of Americanists, pp. 572-581.
13. Review: Environment and Race by Griffith Taylor, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), January 22.
14. Review: L’Ame Primitive by L. Levy-Bruhl, Journal of Philosophy, Vol. 25, pp. 717-719.
15. Review: The Story ofthe American Indian by Paul Radin, Nation, Vol. 126, p. 456.
16. 1929 Poem: “Death is the Citadel,” Nation, Vol. 128, February 20, p. 231. (Pseudonym, Anne Singleton.)
17. Review: The Sexual Life of Savages by Bronislaw Malinowski, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), July 28.
18. “The Science of Custom,” The Century Magazine, Vol. 117, pp. 641-649.
    Reprinted in The Making of Man edited by V. F. Calverton, Modern Library, pp. 805-817.
    Reprinted in Seminar on Human Relations, Anthropology, 1934, Vol. 1, Section 1. Columbia University Department of Anthropology, New York, N. Y.
19. 1930 “Animism,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 2, pp. 65-67.
20. “Child Marriage,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 3, pp. 395-397.
21. “Eight Stories from Acoma,” Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 43, pp. 59-87.
22. Poems: “Countermand,” “Dead Star,” “Love that is Water,” “November Burning,” “Unicorns at Sunrise,” “Unshadowed Pool,” Poetry, Vol. 35, March. (Pseudonym, Anne Singleton).
23. Review: Der Ursprung der Gottesidee; Teil 2 Die Religionen der Urölker; Band 2; Der Religionen der Urvölker Americas by P. Wilhelm Schmidt, S.V.D., Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 43, pp. 444-445.
24. Review: Growing Up in New Guinea by Margaret Mead, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), September 21.
25. Review: Tepotzlan, a Mexican Village by Robert Redfield, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), November.
26. Review: Witchcraft in Old and New England by George L. Kittredge, Journal of American Folklore, Vol. 43, pp. 120-121.
27. 1931 “Dress,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 5, pp. 235-237.
28. “Folklore,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 6,pp. 288-293.
29. “Professor Franz Boas, President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science,” Scientific Monthly, Vol. 32, pp. 278-280
30. Review: California Indian Nights Entertainments by Edward W. Gifford and Gwendoline Harris Block, American Anthropologist, Vol. 33, pp. 432-433.
31. “Tales of the Cochiti Indians,” Bureau of American Ethnology, Bulletin 98, 256 pp., Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D. C.
32. 1932 “Configurations of Culture in North America,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 34, pp. 1-27.
33. Review: Dancing Gods: Indian Ceremonials of New Mexico and Arizona by Erna Fergusson, American Anthropologist, Vol. 34, pp. 719-720.
34. Review: Ethical Relativity by Edward Westermarck, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), August 6.
35. Review: Eskimo by Peter Freuchen, American Anthropologist, Vol. 34, pp. 720-721.
36. 1933 “Magic,” Encyclopedia ofthe Social Sciences, Vol. 10, pp. 39-44.
37. “Myth,” Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, Vol. 11, pp. 178-181.
38. Poem: “Ways Not Winds Ways,” Nation, Vol. 137, p. 655.
39. Review: Conquest of a Continent by Madison Grant, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), December.
40. Review: Life in Lesu by Hortense Powdermaker, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), July.
41. 1934 “Anthropology and the Abnormal,” Journal of General Psychology, Vol. 10, pp. 59-82.
42. Patterns of Culture, 260 pp., Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston and New York.
    Reprinted by Routledge, London, 1935.
    Reprinted by Penguin Books, New York, 1946.
    Pages 5-16 reprinted in When Peoples Meet by A. L. Locke and B. J. Stern, pp. 12-18, Hinds, Hayden and Eldredge, Philadelphia, 1942 and 1946.
43. “Puberty Rituals Among the Indians of the Plateau Region of British Columbia,” Seminar on Human Relations, Anthropology, Vol. 2, Section 4, pp. A-IV-g-1 to A-IV-g-13, Columbia University Department of Anthropology, New York, N. Y. (Mimeographed)
44. Review: The Dawn of Conscience by James H. Breasted, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), January 21.
45. Review: The Racial Myth by Paul Radin, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), August 12.
46. Review: Rebel Destiny: Among the Bush Negroes of Dutch Guiana by Melville J, and Frances S. Herskovits, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), June 10.
47. “Ritual,” Encylcopedia ofthe Social Sciences, Vol. 13, pp. 396398.
48. 1935 Zuñi Mythology,” 2 vols., Vol. 1, 342 pp, Vol. 2, 345 pp., Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, No. 21, Columbia University Press, New York, N. Y.
49. Review: Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies by Margaret Mead, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), June 2.
50. Review: Are We Civilized? by Robert Lowie, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), September 15.
51. Review: Sex and Culture by J. D. Unwin, American Anthropologist, Vol. 37, pp. 691-692.
52. 1936 “Marital Property Rights in Bilateral Society,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 38, pp. 368-373.
53. Review: Manus Religion by R. F. Fortune, Review of Religion, Vol. 1, pp. 48-50.
54. 1937 “Unemployment and Society,” Social Work Today, Vol. 4, May, pp. 11-12.
55. “Anthropology and the Coronation,” Time and Tide, England, May 8, p. 606.
56. Review: Chan Kom: A Maya Village by Robert Redfield and Allfonso Villa R., American Anthropologist, Vol. 39, pp. 340-342.
57. Review: Naven: A Survey of the Problems Suggested by a Comparative Picture of a New Guniea Tribe Drawn from Three Points of View, by Gregory Bateson, Review of Religion, Vol. 2, No.1, pp. 63-66.
58. Review: Life in a Haitian Valley by Melville J. Herskovits, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), April 16.
59. Review: Savage Civilization by Tom Harrison, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), October 10.
60. Review: Primitive Intelligence and Environment by S. D. Porteus, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), October 10.
61. Review: Primitive Religion by Paul Radin, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), October 17.
62. 1938 “Religion,” General Anthropology, Chapter 14, pp. 627-665, edited by Franz Boas, D. C. Heath and Company, Boston and New York.
63. “Continuities and Discontinuities in Cultural Conditioning,” Psychiatry, Vol. 1, pp. 161-167.
64. Review: Die Frau im öffentlichen Leben in Melanesien by Joachim Henning, American Anfhropologist, Vol. 40, p. 163.
65. Review: The Neurotic Personality of Our Time by Karen Horney, Journal of Social and Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 33, pp. 133-135.
66. 1939 “Edward Sapir,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 41, pp. 465-477.
67. “A Reply to Dr. Aginsky,” Character and Personality, Vol. 7, pp. 344-345.
68. “Sex in Primitive Society,” a discussion of Dr. Wortis’ paper, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Vol. 9, pp. 570-574.
69. “Some Comparative Data on Culture and Personality with Reference to the Promotion of Mental Health,” American Association for the Advancement of Science, Publication No. 9, pp. 245-249.
70. “El Hombre y la Cultura; Investigacion sobre las Origines de la Civilizacion Contemporanea,” in Editorial Sudamerican.
71. 1940 “Alexander Goldenweiser,” Modern Quarterly, Vol. 11, pp. 32-33.
72. “Educative Process, A Comparative Note,” Mental Health in the Classroom, 13th yearbook, pp. 122-127, National Education Association, Department of Supervisors and Directors of Instruction.
73. Race: Science and Politics, 274 pp., Modern Age Books, New York. Reprinted by The Viking Press, New York, 1943, and 1945 (Revised).
    Chapter 6, “Who is Superior?” reprinted in Of Time and Truth edited by F. W . Lorch, pp. 69-93. Dryden Press, New York, 1946 and in New Worlds in Science, edited by H. Ward, pp. 289-312, R. M. McBride Company, 1941.
    Also printed in Spanish as Raza: Ciencia y Politica, translated by E. de Champourica, Fondo de Cultura Economica, Mexico, D. F. 1941.
    English edition is Race and Racism, 176 pp. Routledge Company, London, 1942.
74. “Tribute to Dr. Margaret Mead (on Receipt of National Achievement Award of Chi Omega),” The Eleusis of Chi Omega, Vol. 42, pp. 390-396.
75. “Women and Anthropology,” The Education of Women in a Democracy, edited and published by The Institute of Professional Relations for the Women’s Centennial Congress, New York, N. Y.,November.
76. Review: Pueblo Indian Religion by Elsie Clews Parsons, Review of Religion, Vol. 4, pp. 438-440.
77. 1941 Foreword: Jungle People by Jules Henry, J. J. Augustin, New York, pp. xi-xiii.
78. Letter regarding declaration of war: New Republic, Vol. 105, pp. 279-280.
79. “Our Last Minority: Youth,” New Republic, Vol. 104, pp. 271-272.
80. “Privileged Classes: An Anthropological Problem,” Frontiers of Democracy, Vol. 7, pp. 110-112.
81. “Race Problems in America,” Annals, American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Vol. 216, pp. 73-78.
82. Review: Search for a Social Philosophy by Frederic William Eggleston, Christian Century, October 1.
83. Review: Pasua: a Yaqui Village in Arizona by Edward H. Spier, American Historical Review, Vol. 47, pp. 170-171.
84. 1942 “American Melting Pot, 1942 Model,” Americans All: Studies in Intercultural Education, Yearbook of the National Education Association, Washington, pp. 14-24.
85. “Ammunition to Slay the Race Myth,” American Unity, A Monthly Educational Guide, Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 18-22.
86. “Anthropology and Cultural Change,” American Scholar, Vol. 11, No. 2, pp. 243-248.
87. Comments on The Comparative Study of Cultures by Margaret Mead, Second Symposium on Science, Philosophy and Religion held at Columbia University, September 8, 9, 10, 11, 1941, Columbia University, New York, pp. 69-77.
88. Editorial on war: American Scholar, Vol. 12, pp. 3-4.
89. “Nature Builds No Barriers,” Asia and the Americas, Vol. 42, pp 697-699.
90. “Pre War Experts,” New, Republic, Vol. 107, pp. 410-411.
91. “Primitive Freedom,” Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 169, pp. 756763.
92. “Science and the War,” The Link, Parent-Teachers Association of Lincoln School of Teachers College, Columbia University, New York, N.Y., Vol. 12, No. 3, pp. 8-9.
93. “Teachers and the Hatch Act,” Frontiers of Democracy, Vol. 8, pp. 165-166.
94. “Victory Over Discrimination and Hate; Differences Versus Superiorities,” Frontiers of Democracy, Vo1.9, pp. 81-82.
95. “We Can’t Afford Race Prejudice,” Frontiers of Democracy, Vol. IX , No. 71, p. 2.
96. “Race and Cultural Relations: America’s Answer to the Myth of the Master Race” (With M. Ellis), Problems of American Life, No. 5, p. 60, National Council of Social Studies, National Association of Secondary School Principals, Department of the National Education Association.
97. Reviw: An Apache Life Way by Morris E. Opler, American Anthropologist, Vol. 44, pp. 692-693.
98. Review: Becoming a Kwonza, Teaching and Learning in a New Guinea Tribe by John M. Whiting, Journal of Social and Abnormal Psychology, Vol. 37, pp. 409-410.
99. Review: The Crisis of Our Age and Social and Cultural Dynamics by P. Sorokin, New Republic, Vol. 106, p. 154.
100. Review: Escape from Freedom by Erich Fromm, Psychiatry, Vol. 5, pp. 111-113.
101. Review: Principles of Anthropology by E. D. Chapple and C. S. Coon, Psychiatry, Vol. 5, pp. 450-45 1.
102. Review: Propaganda for Democracy through Public Opinion by Harold D. Lasswell, Saturday Review of Literature Vol. 25, No. 19, March 7.
103. Review: When Peoples Meet by Alain Locke and Bernhard Stern, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), February 8.
104. Review: Indians of South America by Paul Radin, Books (Kew York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), April 26.
105. Review: Men Before Adam by Anne Terry White, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), December 27.
106. 1943 “Franz Boas,” American Sociological Review, Vol. 8, p. 223.
107. “Franz Boas,” The Nation, Vol. 156, pp. 15-16.
108. “Franz Boas,” Science, n.s. Vol. 97, pp. 60-62.
109. “Franz Boas as an Ethnologist,” Memoirs of the American Anthropological Association, No. 61, pp. 27-34.
110. “Human Nature Is Not a Trap,” Partisan Review, Vol. 10, pp. 159-164.
111. “Racial Differences,” Encyclopedia of Child Gtridance, pp. 348-351.
112. “Recognition of Cultural Diversities in the Postwar World,” Annals, the American Academy of Political and Social Sciences, Philadelphia, Vol. 228, pp. 101-107.
113. “Two Patterns of Indian Acculturation,” American Anthropologist, Vol 45, pp. 207-212
114. “Transmitting our Democratic Heritage in the Schools,” American Journal of Sociology, Vol. 48, pp. 722-727.
115. “On Supplementing the Regional Training Curriculum by the Use of Material on the Contemporary Peoples, Their Culture and Character,” (With G. Bateson, L. Bryson, L K. Frank, Margaret Mead, P. E. Mosely, and L. bl. Rosenblatt), in Suggested Materials for Training Regional Specialists, Army Program, Prepared in collaboration with the Institute for Intercultural Studies, 15 West 77th Street, New York, N. Y.
116. The Races of Mankind, (With Gene Weltfish), Public Affairs Pamphlet No. 85, Public Affairs Committee, Inc. New York.
117. Humanidade, Brazil, 1945.
     Reprinted in Race: Science and Politics, Revised edition, 1945, Viking Press, New York.
     Reprinted in Literature for our Time, edited by L. S. Brown, Holt, New York, pp. 175-189. Reprinted in Primer for White Folks, edited by Bucklin Moon, Doubleday Doran, New York, pp. 403-421.
118. 1944 Review: A Scientific Theory of Culture and Other Essays by Bronislaw Malinowski, Books (New York Herald Tribune Weekly Book Review), November 5.
119. 1946 “Anthropology in Your Life,” Vassar Alumnae, Vol. 32, pp. 10-11.
120. The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, Palterns of Japanese Culture, 324 pp., Houghton, Mifflin Company, Boston.
121. “The Future of Race Prejudice,” American Scholar, Vol. 15, No. 4, pp. 455-461.
122. “Japanese Are So Simple,” Asia and the Americas, Vol. 46, pp. 500-505.
123. “Let’s Get Rid of Prejudice,” National Parent-Teacher, Vol. 40, pp. 7-9.
124. “Racism is Vulnerable,” English Journal, Vol. 35, pp. 299-303.
125. “The Study of Cultural Patterns in European Nations,” Section on Anthropology for May 27, Transactions of the New York Academy of Science, Series 11, Vol. 8, No. 8, pp. 274-279.
126. Rumanian Culture and Behavior, Distributed by the Institute for Intercultural Studies, 15 West 77th Street, New York.
127. Thai Culture and Behavior, Distributed by the Institute for Intercultural Studies, 15 West 77th Street, New York, N. Y.
128. Review: Prehistoric Cave Paintings by Max Raphael, Books (New York Herald.Tribune Weekly Book Review), January 27.
129. Review: Hiroshima by John Harvey, The Nation, Vol. 163, pp. 656-658.
130. Review: Meeting of East and West: An Inquiry Concerning World Understanding by F. S. C. Northrop, New Republic, Vol. 115, pp. 299-300.
131. 1947 “Franz Boas, Pre-eminent Professor of Menschenkunde,” published in German in Forum, November, Karl Obermann, editor, Berlin.
132. In Henry’s Backyard, The Races of Mankind, (With Gene Weltfish), 57 pp., H. Schuman, New York.
133. Interview on Closer Home-School Relations, New York Times, Section VI, p. 36, Col. 2, September 2. (Mimeographed, available at Columbia University, Department of Anthropology.)
134. “The Puzzling Moral Code of the Japs,” Science Digest, Vol. 21, pp. 89-92.
135. “Superior Races: The World’s Most Tragic Myth,” The United Nations World.
136. “The Viking Fund,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 49, pp. 527-530.
137. Review: Richer by Asia by Edmond Taylor, Saturday Review of Literature, July 26, p. 13.
138. Review: Evolution and Ethics by Sir Arthur Keith, New York Times Book Review, p. 22, August 3.
139. Review: The Road of Life and Death, A Ritual Drama of the American Indians by Paul Radin, American Anthropologist, Vol. 49, pp. 282-283.
140. 1948 “Anthropology and the Humanities,” American Anthropologist, Vol. 50, Pt. I, pp. 585-593.
141. Foreword: Zulu Woman by Rebecca Hourich Reyher, Columbia University Press, Columbia University, New York, N. Y.
142. “The Kinsey Report,” Saturday Review of Literature, Vol. 30, pp. 34-35.
143. “What Are We Educating For?” National Association for Nursery Education Bulletin, Vol. 3, pp. 5-9.