American Academy of Political and Social Science

Review: [untitled]
Author(s): Hortense Powdermaker
Reviewed work(s):
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies by Margaret Mead
Source: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Vol. 181, The State
Constitution of the Future (Sep., 1935), pp. 221-222
Published by: Sage Publications, Inc. in association with the American Academy of Political
and Social Science
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1019425
Accessed: 24/11/2009 17:01

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 BOOK DEPARTMENT
right, to be sure, in contending that mate-
rial culture has all too often been over-
looked by ethnologists absorbed in the
details of social organization and the like,
but his cure is worse than the disease, or at
least equally malign. Simply to concen-
trate on material culture is no remedy for
the neglect of material culture.
But if we assume that other ethnologists
or Sayce himself will eventually place his
evidence and conclusions in their proper
context, or, to descend to mere pedagogy, if
the instructor using the book will expend
the energy necessary to weld it into the rest
of the circle of which it is only a segment,
the labor already put into it will not have
been in vain. The presentation is interest-
ing, the illustrations are good, and the
style is straightforward. Unfortunately
there is a certain lack of clarity and dialectic
skill in setting forth arguments for and
against a number of conclusions, and all too
often the suspended judgments delivered
seem evidence of temperamental indecision
rather than legitimate scientific caution.
There is no satisfactory presentation of the
contentions of opposing schools, and little
evidence that any but British ethnology is
taken seriously.
Opinion: a useful collection of data with
good indices, but not a first-rate or even a
well-organized book.
Bomann's classic description of the
antecedents and nineteenth-century modes
of peasant life in lower Saxony is now in its
third edition, and well merits the recogni-
tion it has slowly gained. It is relatively
free from the fault of artificial separation of
things belonging together that mars Sayce's
effort (but in justice to the British scholar,
one must say that a monograph covering a
limited area is immeasurably easier of
successful execution than a work attempt-
ing to combine the particular and the
universal). The illustrations of the Ger-
man study are excellent and numerous, and
the text is clear, but there is no index. We
badly need translations of just this kind of
book. More of them would cure our
sociologists of that curious blind spot which
would lead the man from Mars to infer,
after perusal of their works, that nothing
had happened between "the beginning of
things and the coronation of George the
221
Fifth." In other words, here is a contribu-
tion to historical sociology.
HOWARD BECKER
Smith College
MEAD, MARGARET. Sex and Temperament
in Three Primitive Societies. Pp. 335.
New York: William Morrow & Co.,
1935. $3.00.
Dr. Mead has undertaken "to discover to
what degree temperamental differences
between the sexes were innate and to what
degree they were culturally determined,
and furthermore to inquire minutely into
the educational mechanisms connected
with these differences." The author draws
material from three cultures in New Guinea
and from our own society, making use of
both anthropological and psychiatric con-
cepts. She describes two of the New
Guinea societies, the Arapesh and the
Mundugumor, as making no distinction
between male and female personality. The
ideal for both sexes among the Arapesh is a
gentle, cooperative type, while among the
Mundugumor the ideal is the opposite-a
violent, aggressive, and competitive type.
On the other hand, the Tchambuli have an
ideal differing for men and women, the man
being the less responsible and an emo-
tionally dependent person, while the
woman is the dominant, impersonal, man-
aging type. The author describes in some
detail, particularly for the Arapesh, the
early conditioning of the child in these
societies. This part of the study, dealing
with the influences which mold the per-
sonality in childhood, is of much signifi-
cance and value to those interested in
trying to understand how an individual
takes on his cultural role, and is a subject
much neglected by students of primitive
societies.
The reader of any book about an un-
known people is forced to picture the
society according to the author's inter-
pretation. Observers might differ in their
interpretation of the same society. For
instance, in discussing the consummation of
marriage among the Arapesh, the author
writes that it is done "without haste, with-
out a due date to harry them with its
inevitableness." The assumption is that
the setting of a date for a marriage cere-
 222 THE ANNALS OF THE AMERICAN ACADEMY
mony is a harrowing experience for a
normal person. This is open to question.
If there is a justifiable doubt in the inter-
pretation of rather well-known phenomena
of our society, there is still more leeway for
differing in the interpretation of little-
known societies. Taking another example,
the author writes: "Men carry nothing on
these occasions except pigs and other heavy
loads of meat and the large logs that are
used for cigarette lighting fires in the
center of the village. . . . But the women
plod up and down the mountain paths with
loads of sixty and seventy pounds sus-
pended from their foreheads, and sometimes
also with a suckling baby in a bark sling at
the breast." It is explained that the pigs
are carried on poles slung on the shoulders
of several men. But the divided burden of
the pigs, and the heavy loads of meat, and
the large logs, hardly seem the slacker's
share.
The author concludes from her observa-
tions that the personalities (or tempera-
ments) of the two sexes can be and are
socially produced, and that behavior can-
not be regarded as sex-linked. The ob-
vious physiological differences between the
sexes and the psychiatric implications of
these on personality are not discussed, and
in the introduction, Dr. Mead says that she
will not discuss any universal or funda-
mental sex differences. To omit a study of
these in a study of sex and temperament
seems to run counter to what modern
psychiatric theory teaches about their
significance, and is similar to the case of an
economist making a study of our economic
system and deciding to leave currency and
material goods completely out of considera-
tion. It would be interesting to know
what a psychiatrist would think of the
psychiatric concepts Dr. Mead does use,
particularly those concerned with the
identification of child and parent and her
description of the modern psychiatric
classification of neurotics. There would
probably be some disagreement.
In the final chapter the author makes a
plea that our culture should allow all types
of personalities to function and be con-
sidered of equal social value. One does not
question the desirability of such tolerance,
but one may question its feasibility. The
book is devoted to showing that all per-
sonality types arise purely out of culture.
At the same time we are urged to achieve a
completely unselective society. Could such
a society exist? If so, how would per-
sonality types arise?
HORTENSE POWDERMAKER
Institute of Human Relations,
Yale University
HOFSTRA, SJOERD. Dzfferenzierungser-
scheinungen in einigen afrikanischen
Gruppen: ein Beitrag zur Frage der
primitiven Individualitdt. Pp. vii, 214.
Amsterdam: Scheltema and Holkema's
Boekhandel N. V., 1933. $4.50.
JORDAN, LEO. Schule der Abstraktion und
Dialektik. Pp. 160. Munich: Ernst
Reinhardt, 1932. RM 4.80 paper, 6.80
linen.
In a recent American translation of one of
Durkheim's major works, there is a brash
and callow assertion to the effect that in the
United States there has been little knowl-
edge of or interest in the theories of this
supreme pontiff of contemporary French
sociology. 'Tiens, tiens! What of Allport's
attacks on the group fallacy, Goldenweiser's
discussion of the crowd theory of religious
origins, Radin's study of primitive man as
philosopher, Gehlke's analysis of the phil-
osophical and logical structure of the Durk-
heimian edifice, Barnes's early articles in
the Political Science Quarterlyon the socio-
logical-political evangel of our learned
Frenchman, Sorokin's concise but inclusive
resume in the widely studied Contemporary
Sociological Theories, Faris's exposition and
critique in his seminars and his famous
course on social origins, Watson's census of
the division of labor in "mechanical"
groups, Hankins's penetrating treatment of
"collective representations" and the like in
his well-known textbook, and so on, and
so on, and so on? One can understand if
not condone the Gallic ignorance of every-
thing that has been written outside the
mutual admiration society that constitutes
the Durkheim school, but even an American
Ph.D. candidate should know a little more
than our French epigoni and their satellites.
Let us therefore greet the Dutchman
Hofstra with open arms, for he has said, in
effect, "If the Durkheimians are right in