Episode number 7 of Series “Faces of culture”.
This program sets out to uncover the links between culture and personality, to know the dancer from the dance. We are shaped and moulded by the core values of the culture we live in, whether subtly, by absorbing all that surrounds us or directly, by teaching, example and indoctrination. The program looks at the early work of Margaret Mead in Samoa and New Guinea, at Ruth Benedict’s study of the Japanese and Eriksen’s studies of German aggression. Other cultures’ core values - kinship in China, rugged individualism in the U.S. are discussed as well as the dangers inherent in reducing human personality to racial stereotypes. Narrated by David Carradine.