Foreword p. vii
Preface p. xiii
Acknowledgments p. xvii
Introduction p. xxi
The Science of Custom p. 1
Custom and behaviour
The child's inheritance
Our false perspective
Confusion of local custom with 'Human Nature'
Our blindness to other cultures
Race-prejudice
Man moulded by custom, not instinct
'Racial purity' a delusion
Reason for studying primitive peoples
The Diversity of Cultures p. 21
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 inevitable
The Integration of Culture p. 45
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 detour via primitive tribes
The Pueblos of New Mexico p. 57
An unspoiled community
Zuni 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 Zuni'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
Dobu p. 130
Where ill-will and treachery are virtues
Traditional hostility
Trapping the bridegroom
The humiliating position of the husband
Fierce exclusiveness of ownership
Reliance on magic
Ritual of the garden
Disease-charms and sorcerers
Passion for commerce
Wabuwabu, a sharp trade practice
Death
Mutual recriminations among survivors
Laughter excluded
Prudery
A cutthroat struggle
The Northwest Coast of America p. 173
A sea-coast civilization
The Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island
Typical Dionysians
Cannibal Society
At the opposite pole from the Pueblos
The economic contest
A parody on our own society
Self-glorification
Shaming one's guests
Potlatch exchanges
Heights of bravado
Investing in a bride
Prerogatives through marriage, murder, and religion
Shamanism
Fear of ridicule
Death, the paramount affront
The gamut of emotions
The Nature of Society p. 223
Integration and assimilation
Conflict of inharmonious elements
Our own complex society
The organism v. the individual
The cultural v. the biological interpretation
Applying the lesson of primitive tribes
No fixed 'types'
Significance of diffusion and cultural configuration
Social values
Need for self-appraisal
The Individual and the Pattern of Culture p. 251
Society and individual not antagonistic but interdependent
Ready adaptation to a pattern
Reactions to frustration
Striking cases of maladjustment
Acceptance of homosexuals
Trance and catalepsy as means to authority
The place of the 'misfit' in society
Possibilities of tolerance
Extreme representatives of a cultural type: Puritan divines and successful modern egoists
Social relativity a doctrine of hope, not despair
References p. 279
Index p. 287