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Quote by Ruth Benedict

“The life history of the individual is first and foremost an accommodation to the patterns and standards traditionally handed down in his community”

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Ruth Benedict

American anthropologist known for her contributions to cultural anthropology and social anthropology. Benedict focused on the differences between cultures and how these differences affect human behavior and social structures. more

“Perhaps the individual is so viable a god because he can actually understand the ceremonial significance of the way he is treated, and quite on his own can respond dramatically to what is proffered him. In contacts between such deities there is no need for middlemen; each of these gods is able to serve as his own priest.”

Way Needs Able Individual Treated Contact Priests Significance Deities God Is Able Middlemen

Book:Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face to Face Behavior

Source: Interaction Ritual: Essays in Face to Face Behavior

“Choose your self-presentations carefully, for what starts out as a mask may become your face.”

May Self Faces Mask Your Face Presentation

Author:Erving Goffman

“Any group of persons – prisoners, primitives, pilots, or patients – develop a life of their own that becomes meaningful, reasonable and normal once you get close to it.”

Persons Groups Normal Patient Meaningful Reasonable Prisoner Pilots

Book:Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates

Source: Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates

“A performer may be taken in by his own act, convinced at the moment that the impression of reality which he fosters is the one and only reality. In such cases we have a sense in which the performer comes to be his own audience; he comes to be performer and observer of the same show. Presumably he introcepts or incorporates the standards he attempts to maintain in the presence of others so that even in their absence his conscience requires him to act in a socially proper way.”

Way May Moments Shows Reality Cases Audience Taken Standards Conscience Convinced Absence Impression Performers Observers

Author:Erving Goffman

“Our sense of being a person can come from being drawn into a wide social unit; our sense of selfhood can arise through the little ways in which we resist the pull. Our status is backed by the solid buildings of the world, while our sense of personal identity often resides in the cracks”

World Way Littles Persons Social Identity Building Wide Arise Cracks Units Sense Of Self Personal Identity

Author:Erving Goffman

Quote by Ruth Benedict

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