THE PROBLEM HIS paper has a dual purpose : to compare the psychological adaptations T of adult males and females to the exigencies of sociocultural change in an historically primitive but rapidly acculturating population-the Menomini Indians of Wisconsin-and to present the methodology that makes it possible to describe these differences accurately.' In so doing, we hope to help to fill a lacuna in anthropological literature on the differential adjustment of the two sexes in culture change situations, and to illustrate a method of analysis for such situations that may prove useful as a model for comparisons in other situations.Although an awareness of the problem has long existed, few anthropologists have explicitly dealt with differences between the adaptations of males and females in their adjustment to a new environment created by the impact of an alien culture. Among those writing on American Indians, Mead (1932) was one of the first to recognize that acculturating females in one Plains Indian group undergo fewer abrupt changes in role playing than do the males. Joffe (1940) was impressed with the conservatism displayed by Fox Indian women in accu!-turation, as were the Hanks (1950) in their study of the Blackfoot, Vogt (1951) in his study of the Navaho, Elkin (1940) with the Arapaho, and Caudill (1949) with the Ojibwa. In studies where psychological tests such as the Rorschach were used, male-female differences in adjustment were again noted by Hallowell (1942), who found that Saulteaux women were in general making a better adjustment to white culture than were the males. Caudill(l949) likewise found acculturating Ojibwa women less anxious than the men. While these studies are suggestive, they were not mainly concerned with male-female differences, and make little or no attempt to analyze these observed differences systematically.In a general way, the Menomini data fit the model of male-female differences in culture change suggested by these studies. Menomini males appear to be more anxious and less controlled than do the women. And the women are psychologically more conservative. This suggests that for some reason the disruptions created in rapid culture change hit the men more directly, leaving the women less changed and less anxious. We will first demonstrate that these psychological differences are present, and in so doing apply some new techniques of analysis to Rorschach data that will permit accurate location of the sources of these differences on the Menomini acculturative continuum. Then we will turn to the sociocultural context, and particularly to differences in male and female roles, to seek explanation of the psychological observations. 217
Our study examines schooling cross‐culturally by looking at two examples of school culture. We suggest that the recent movement in educational anthropology and ethnography away from cross‐cultural or comparative focus to concerns with classrooms, schools, and schooling in our own society may have contributed to a blurring of focus on culture itself. We define what is meant by the study of culture and then discuss our current research in Schoenhausen, Germany and Roseville, United States (these place names are pseudonyms). Because we see education as cultural transmission, we want to look at the learning that takes place in classrooms as the result of calculated intervention. We use ethnography, the instrumental activities model, and films as evocative stimuli in reflective cross‐cultural interviews.
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