Anomie, the Ammassalik, and the Standardization of Error

N 1937 there appeared a volume of selected case studies of thirteen societies illustrating variations on the themes of cooiperation, competition, and individualism in their dominant cultural patterns. This book, Cooperation and Competition in Primitive Societies (edited by Margaret Mead), was one of the early publications in the field of "culture-personality," and it still forms a convenient and popular collection ofreadings for the beginning student in anthropology. In at least one large university of my acquaintance it is often used as a source of ethnographic sketches ofdifferent peoples. In addition, however, the book has recently provided material for another work in social science which apparently enjoys wide circulation-the two volume introductory text, Societies Around the World.2 One of the societies intensively examined isthe Eskimo; and in the section dealing with the Eskimo is included most of a chapter which ad originally appeared in the Mead-edited volume of 1937, "The Eskimo f Greenland," written by Jeanette Mirsky. The chapter also appears in a subsequent one-volume edition of Societies Around the World which was edited by Becker.3 This account of the Eskimo f Greenland is of interest from several points of view. The first thing to be noted is the gross over-generalization of the title, for the discussion pertains only to the inhabitants of East Greenland, a small fraction of the total native population. Secondly, however, if the account of the Ammassalik Eskimo (the term commonly used in referring to the East Greenlanders) as depicted by the author be correct, we have here almost a type case for a study in social disorganization or "anomie,"4 a veritable and unmatched anarchy; for the concluding and presumably summarizing paragraph of the chapter states that he Ammassalik