«CULTURE AND PERSONALITY» – GENESIS AND DEVELOPMENT OF A TRANS-DISCIPLINARY RESEARCH FIELD IN US-AMERICAN SOCIAL SCIENCE
Rainer Egloff, Collegium Helveticum, UZH/ETH Zurich
This historical project analyses the rise and decline of «culture and personality studies», a prominent field of knowledge and research within the social sciences of mid-20th century USA. Originating in epistemic and institutional attempts to connect psychiatry and the social sciences more closely, «culture and personality» emerged in the interwar years as an interdisciplinary and comprehensive program to track how specific cultural settings coined human behavior. Under its headings figured influential and far-reaching studies by Ruth Benedict, Erik Erikson, Erich Fromm, Margaret Mead, and Edward Sapir – to name just a few of the most famous exponents.
Exploring the relative importance of biological and cultural imprinting respectively, «culture and personality» collected biographies of criminals, sampled regional distributions of psychopathological incidences and performed intelligence tests on twins in differing environments. Racial and ethnic ethnic groups, tribes and societies were comparatively examined, and universal traits and differences among the humans seeked for.
Without doubt, the fundamental questions «culture and personality» aimed at answering were not novel ones. In terms of history and sociology of scientific knowledge, it therefore appears promising to ask, what actually made this successful field appear so innovative – and to whom.
In their search for cultural patterns, personality types and national characters, researchers involved with «culture and personality» collected data in western and non-western societies to integrate their case studies comparatively into a psychological anthropology. They embraced and debated a multitude of theories and methods from all disciplines dealing with human nature and human relations.
Correspondingly their audiences and supporters covered a wide and varying spectrum. In order to secure funding for their research over time, leaders in the field allied with private foundations and governmental agencies, providing a broad range of expertise, for example on juvenile delinquency, on gender and sexuality, or on morale. But while the field provided publishers with popular bestsellers, its reputation among the academic disciplines declined in the decades after World War II.
William Isaac Thomas (1863–1947), most famous for pioneering biographical studies and qualitative methods in sociology, takes a center stage in this research project on «culture and personality». Thomas played a role of paramount importance in the early development of the field. His role is documented in primary sources, but has not yet been widely acknowledged in the secondary literature. The project thus also reevaluates Thomas’s significance within 20th century social science. Taking the scientific work of Thomas as a focal point, the historical reconstruction of the rise and relative fall of «culture and personality» focuses on the identity, organization and alimentation of the field in its making and development. It aims at connecting the knowledge producing strategies and the practices of involved researchers and funding agencies with relevant developments in the social, cultural and political regimes of the USA.