Book Reviews

GENERAL AND ETHNOLOGY

Six Cultures: Studies of Child Rearilzg. BEATRICE B. WHITING(ed.) New York: John
Wiley and Sons, 1963, vi, 1017 pp., illustrations. $12.50.
Reviewed by MARGARET
MEAD,The American Museum o j Natural History
This massive study can be viewed in two ways: as a resource for teaching, which
enables students to confront successively six contrasting cultures in the pages of a single
heavy volume, or as the first published volume of a major research enterprise.
The research design called for concentration by six research teams, each consisting
of a man and a woman worker, on obtaining comparative data on child rearing prac-
tices, in cultures about which much was already known, in a cultural context relevant to
the inquiry. This design climaxes many years of work by John Whiting and his associ-
ates in reducing intractable and incomparable field materials to units that can be com-
pared by relatively simple statistical techniques. I n the face of much criticism by critics
who have dealt with the approach as a whole (e.g., Edward Norbeck, Donald E.
Walker, and Mimi Cohen, “The Interpretation of Data: Puberty Rites,” American
Anthropologist, 64 (19621,463-85) and also by field workers who have felt that their own
field work was distorted by a Procrustean framework, John Whiting and his collabora-
tors have continued to insist that the correlation of a series of isolated elements of child
rearing with elements of the whole culture, selected for theoretical relevance, will pro-
duce results of scientific importance.
This project, majorly financed by the Ford Foundation, gave the investigators an
opportunity to design the research well in advance and to make certain that each team,
using like methods, would collect comparable samples of parent-child behavior. At the
same time each field team was accorded generous leeway in stressing those aspects of the

E- -
particular culture in which they themselves were most interested. The general con-
ceptual scheme of the project is presented in a chart (p, 5 ) :
Maintenance
Systems
Econorn
*is\ sjlructun
Adult Adult Behavior

Leisure time
activity, elc.

1
Child Rearing
Cultural Products
Religious beliefs
Theories of disease
Folk tales
Child Behavior
Practices
Games
Cultural Products
Fantasy
Sayings
Recreation
Concepb of world

The principal emphasis on comparability was in the selection of the six samples.
Each field team worked in a community of between 50 and 100 families and with a
sample of 24 mothers, each of whom had at least one child aged 3 to 10 years. The moth-
ers were interviewed on a standard schedule and the children were systematically ob-
658
 Book Reviews 659
served and interviewed. These standard results are combined here with more general
observations in the sections on child rearing. The six cultures studied are Nyansongo: a
Gusii community in Kenya (Robert A. LeVine and Barbara B. LeVine); the Rajputs of
Khalapur, India (Leigh Minturn and John T. Hitchcock); Taira: an Okinawan village
(Thomas W. Maretzki and Hatsumi Maretzki) ;the Mixtecans of Juxtlahuaca, Mexico
(Kimball Romney and Romaine Romney); Tarong: an Ilocos barrio in the Philippines
(William F. Nydegger and Corinne Nydegger); and the New Englanders of Orchard
Town, U S A . (John L. Fischer and Ann Fischer).
The six field teams were provided with a guide (John Whiting et al., Field Guidefor a
Study of Socialization i n Five Societies, 1954), which contains a discussion of the nine
relevant behavioral “systems” to be studied in the field and the hypotheses to be tested
by this comparative work. The theory underlying the choice of behavioral systems and
the full hypotheses to be tested are not presented in this volume, but are only briefly
referred to in the introduction.
Dr. Whiting states in her introduction that this volume presents the cultural mate-
rial, Further volumes will present a preliminary testing of the basic hypotheses, using
the cultural material already presented, and also an analysis based on “individual differ-
ences in the behavior of children and the methods of child rearing reported by individ-
ual mothers” (p. 6). The introduction closes with an expression of hope that readers
with different theoretical interests will be able to use the materials for purposes of com-
parison and also that relevant data for a fuller testing of some of the hypotheses may be
obtained through further studies. The present volume contains no conclusion, no inte-
grating statement about the six cultures that are described. Each of the cultural studies
is presented flatly in two sections. Part I presents the ethnographic background ar-
ranged in categories particular to each field team’s research interests; Part 11,on child
training, presents generalized statements and statistics, for example, on the number of
mothers who said they would let their babies wait for food. The arrangement is more or
less uniform throughout, and the student who is unfamiliar with anthropological mono-
graphs should get from this presentation some sense of the comparabilities and in-
comparabilities which the ethnographic method provides.
No attempt is made in this volume to deal with one very serious theoretical issue
that has been raised in the past in discussions of comparative work in which a section of
a larger society-a ward in a great city, a peasant community in a complex class or caste
society, a small town in a modern nation-is treated as a unit that is comparable with a
tribal group like the Gusii (studied by the LeVines). The perfunctory nature of the
material on Orchard Town (studied by the Fischers) provides new grounds for discuss-
ing this uncritical approach to the problem that is involved. It is time that we had a
full dress study of the comparability of communities of different types and of the cir-
cumstances in which it is useful to treat a part-society as a whole unit.
For purposes of really testing the value of carefully organized research specifically
carried out for cross-cultural comparison, the present volume is quite insufficient. A
series of flat statements or small statistics about child rearing, which are not integrated
with the material on the culture as a whole, provides an inadequate frame of reference
for the reader who does not yet have the rich additional information which the research
group is still in the process of analyzing. However, this indeterminancy about the way
in which the materials will fit into the final ambitious research plan in no way detracts
from some of the richness of the materials in the individual studies. But just because the
different pairs of field workers were left free to develop their own styles and (within the
limits of the formal outline) methods of presentation, the materials are not subject to
660 American Anthropologist [66, 19641
further analysis as they stand. There is no way, for example, in which to test, in this
presentation, the investigators’ assumption that “if these hypotheses are correct, we
would expect consequent differences [following on different childhood situations] in the
social control systems’’ (p. 11, italics supplied). This statement is, in fact, a hypothesis
about the direction of change, and it can be tested only by material on change in the
adult social control system and in child rearing practices.
The university teacher may well find this book a suitable source for intensive study
by students who are beginning to grasp the comparative method. The rest of us must
put this first publication on the shelf until later volumes appear and the full, grand
design is worked out. The book is pleasantly illustrated, but apparently no modern
methods of instrumental recording (such as photography) were systematically used to
increase the comparability of the materials obtained in the field.

Structural Models in Folklore. ELLI-KAIJA KBNGKs,and PIERREMARANDA. (Midwest

Folklore, vol. 12, no, 3.) Bloomington: Indiana University, 1962. pp. 133-192, notes.
$1.00,
Reviewed by ALANDUNDES, Urtiversiiy of Califomia, Berkeley
This monographic article, brilliant in conception, appears to have been delivered
somewhat prematurely. It attempts to bring the techniques of model construction and
structural analysis to bear upon the traditionally theory-poor discipline of folklore.
However, in attempting to provide models for essentially all the genres of folklore and
in seeking to define both structure and folklore in two brief opening paragraphs, the
authors cannot avoid being somewhat tentative and superficial.
Starting with the unproved assumption that folkloristic genres are binarily based,
the Marandas apply a modified version of the LBvi-Strauss brand of structural analysis
to a variety of traditional forms including charms, myths, and riddles. Four models are
presented (in both written and graphic form). Inasmuch as all the models have an iden-
tical point of departure, namely, a situation requiring mediation, the critical differentia
of the four models are the outcome alternatives. I n Model I, Zero Mediation, no at-
tempt is made to alter the initial state of disequilibrium. In Model 11,Failing Media-
tion, an attempt is made by a mediator, but it is unsuccessful. In Model 111, Successful
Mediation: Nullification of the Initial Impact, the mediator is able to remedy the initial
situation. In Model IV, Successful Mediation: Permutation of the Initial Impact, the
final situation is not iust equal to, but in fact greater or better than the initial one.
Assuming that these model distinctions are valid (and it is unfortunate that only one
illustration of Model I1 is provided), the question must be raised as to the universality
of the models. Texts analyzed by the authors include Cheremis sonnets, Finnish leg-
ends, and American Indian creation myths. Ideally, model construction should first be
culturally relative before attempting the construction of cross-cultural models. It is not
altogether clear whether or not the authors consider that their models are applicable to
worldwide folklore. If they are so applicable, one would wish to see the models tested
against folklore materials from such areas as Africa and Oceania.
A more serious question concerns the possible confusion of the structure of text with
the structure of context. For example, in the analysis of charm structure, it is claimed
that one of the constituent structural elements is the healer himself, that is, the person
uttering the charm. The authors themselves comment upon the fact that the mediator
in this instance appears “outside the text,” but they fail to realize that their stated
definition of folklore as “unrecorded mentifacts” could hardly include the utterer of a