The Balinese People: A Reinvestigation of Character - Tapa dura

"This book puts Bateson's and Mead's study into its proper context: it was a brave and radical anthropological experiment produced in a colonial context....This book is not to be ignored, for it is a starting point for more complex discussions of the issues which it raises."--Journal of Asian Studies"Essential for graduate students of anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry and is of general interest to readers of Mead and Bateson."--Choice "This book puts Bateson's and Mead's study into its proper context: it was a brave and radical anthropological experiment produced in a colonial context....This book is not to be ignored, for it is a starting point for more complex discussions of the issues which it raises."--Journal of Asian Studies "Essential for graduate students of anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry and is of general interest to readers of Mead and Bateson."--Choice "This book puts Bateson's and Mead's study into its proper context: it was a brave and radical anthropological experiment produced in a colonial context....This book is not to be ignored, for it is a starting point for more complex discussions of the issues which it raises."--Journal of Asian Studies "Essential for graduate students of anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry and is of general interest to readers of Mead and Bateson."--Choice "This book puts Bateson's and Mead's study into its proper context: it was a brave and radical anthropological experiment produced in a colonial context....This book is not to be ignored, for it is a starting point for more complex discussions of the issues which it raises."--Journal of AsianStudies"Essential for graduate students of anthropology and cross-cultural psychiatry and is of general interest to readers of Mead and Bateson."--Choice

Published exactly 50 years after Gregory Bateson's and Margaret Mead's "Balinese Character" (which still stands as a standard reference on Balinese culture), this study of the Balinese people - a collaboration between a Western psychiatrist with wide experience of Balinese culture and a Western-trained Balinese psychiatrist - finds their basic assumptions inherently flawed. The study concludes that their book presents an inaccurate and misleading characterization of the Balinese as they were 50 years ago. In addition to this critique, the authors present their alternative formulations of psychosocial aspects of Balinese culture, their aim being to establish a more correct and valid portrayal of the life of the Balinese.