社科院英语真题

Patterns ofculture 2hEB?ZAQZ  
by RUTH BENEDICT D%(9ot{!e  
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Custom has not been commonly regarded as asubject of any great moment. The inner workings of our own brains we feel to beuniquely worthy of investigation， but custom have a way of thinking， is behaviour at its most commonplace. As a matter of fact， it is the other way around.Traditional custom， taken the world over， is a mass of detailed behaviour more astonishing than what any oneperson can ever evolve in individual actions，no matter how aberrant. Yet that is a rather trivial aspect of thematter. The fact of first-rate importance is the predominant role that customplays in experience and in belief， and the very great varieties it may manifest. ZLy
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No man ever looks at the world withpristine eyes. He sees it edited by a definite set of customs and institutionsand ways of thinking. Even in his philosophical probings he cannot go behindthese stereotypes； his veryconcepts of the true and the false will still have reference to his particulartraditional customs. John Dewey has said in all seriousness that the partplayed by custom in shaping the behaviour of the individual as over against anyway in which he can affect traditional custom， is as the proportion of the total vocabulary of his mother tongue overagainst those words of his own baby talk that are taken up into the vernacularof his family. When one seriously studies the social orders that have had theopportunity to develop autonomously，the figure becomes no more than an exact and matter-off-factobservation. The life history of the individual is first and foremost anaccommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in hiscommunity. From the moment of his birth the customs into which he is born shapehis experience and behaviour. By the time he can talk， he is the little creature of hisculture， and by thetime he is grown and able to take part in its activities， its habits are his habits， its beliefs his beliefs， its impossibilities hisimpossibilities. Every child that is born into his group will share them withhim， and no childborn into one on the opposite side of the globe can ever achieve the thousandthpart. There is no social problem it is more incumbent upon us to understandthan this of the role of custom. Until we are intelligent as to its laws andvarieties， the maincomplicating facts of human life must remain unintelligible. jV\M`=4IC  
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The study of custom can be profitable onlyafter certain preliminary propositions have been accepted， and some of these propositionshave been violently opposed. In the first place any scientific study requiresthat there be no preferential weighting of one or another of the items in theseries it selects for its consideration. In all the less controversial fieldslike the study of cacti or termites or the nature of nebulae， the necessary method of study isto group the relevant material and to take note of all possible variant formsand conditions. In this way we have learned all that we know of the laws ofastronomy， or of thehabits of the social insects， let us say. It is only in the study of man himself that the majorsocial sciences have substituted the study of one local variation， that of Western civilization. kuu9'Sqc'b  
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Anthropology was by definition impossibleas long as these distinctions between ourselves and the primitive， ourselves and the barbarian， ourselves and the pagan， held sway over people's minds. Itwas necessary first to arrive at that degree，of sophistication where we no longer set our own belief over againstour neighbour's superstition. It was necessary to recognize that theseinstitutions which are based on the same premises， let us say the supernatural， must be considered together， our own among the rest. 1B'i7  
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风俗一般未被认为是什么重要的课题。我们觉得，只有我们大脑内部的活动情况才值得研究，至于风俗呢，只是些司空见惯的行为而已。事实小，情况正好相反。从世界范围来看，传统风俗是由许多细节性的习惯行为组成，它比任何一个养成的行为都更加引人注目，不管个人行为多么异常。这只是问题的一个次要的侧面。最重要的是，风俗在实践中和信仰上所起的举足轻重的作用，以及它所表现出来的极其丰富多采的形式。 E87/B%R  
没有一个人是用纯洁而无偏见的眼光看待世界。人们所看到的是一个受特定风俗习惯、制度和思想方式剪辑过的世界。甚至在哲学领域的探索中，人们也无法超越这此定型的框框。人们关于真与伪的概念依然和特定的传统风俗有关。约翰.杜威曾经非常严肃地指出：风俗在形成个人行为方面所起的作用和一个对风俗的任何影响相比，就好像他本国语言的总词汇量和自己咿呀学语时他家庭所接纳的他的词汇量之比。当一个人认真地研究自发形成的社会秩序时，杜威的比喻就是他实事求是观察得来的形象化的说法。个人的生活史首先是适应他的社团世代相传形成的生活方式和准则。从他呱呱坠地的时刻起，他所生于其中的风俗就开始塑造他的经历和行为规范。到会说话时，他就是传统文化塑造的一个小孩子；等他长大了，能做各种事了，他的社团的习惯就是他的习惯，他的社团的信仰就是他的信仰，他的社团不能做的事就是他不能做的事。每一个和他诞生在同一个社团中的孩子和他一样具有相同的风俗；而在地球的另一边。诞生在另一个社团的孩子与他就是少有相同的风俗。没有任何一个社会问题比得上风俗的作用问题更要求我们对它理解。直到我们理解了风俗的规律性和多样性，我们才能明白人为生活中主要的复杂现象。 _Jk-nZgn  
只有在某些基本的主张被接受下来、同时有些主张被激烈反对时，对风俗的研究才是全面的，才会有收获。首先，任何科学研究都要求人们对可供考虑的诸多因素不能厚此薄彼，偏向某一方面。在一切争议较小的领域里，如对仙人掌、白议或星云性质的研究，应采取的研究方法是。把有关各方面的材料汇集起来，同时注意任何可能出现的异常情况和条件。例如，用这种方法，我们完全掌握了天文学的规律和昆虫群居的习性。只是在对人类自身的研究。只要我们同原始人，我们同野蛮人，我们同异教徒之间存有的区别在人的思想中占主工导地位，那么人类学按其定义来说就无法存在。我们首先需要达到这样一种成熟的程度：不用自己的信仰去反对我们邻居的迷信。必须认识到，这些建立在相同前提基础上的风俗，暂且可以说是超自然的东西，必须放在一起加以考虑，我们自己的风俗和其他民族的风俗都在其中。 j$T2ff6  
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这个RuthBenedict是何许人也？害得我们社科学子噤若寒蝉，她就是《菊与刀》的作者！ j8?$Hk  
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鲁思·本尼迪克特是美国当代著名文化人类学家，民族学家，诗人。1887年6月5日生于纽约，原姓富尔顿(Fulton)，两岁丧父，其祖先曾参加美国独立战争。1909年毕业于瓦萨尔学院，大学时期主修英国文学,获文学学士学位。1910年赴欧，回国后曾执教于加利福尼亚某女子中学。1914年回纽约。1919年进入哥伦比亚大学，师从美国文化人类学之父博亚斯专攻文化人类学，1923年获博士学位。之后留校任教，历任讲师、副教授和教授，从1936年起任该校人类学系代理主任。1927年研究印第安部落的文化，写成《文化的类型》(Patterns of Culture，1934年出版)一书。1940年著《种族：科学与政治》(Race：Science and Politics)，批判种族歧视。第二次世界大战期间从事对罗马尼亚、荷兰、德国、泰国等国民族性的研究，而以对日本的研究，即《菊与刀》一书成就最大。战后，她继续在哥伦比亚大学参加“当代文化研究”，于1948年9月病逝,享年61岁。 C@pDX>~2=b  
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