Never in Anger: Portrait of an Eskimo Family

by Jean L. Briggs

In the summer of 1963, anthropologist Jean Briggs journeyed to the Canadian Northwest Territories (now Nunavut) to begin a seventeen-month field study of the Utku, a small group of Inuit First Nations people who live at the mouth of the Back River, northwest of Hudson Bay. Living with a family as their "adopted" daughter--sharing their iglu during the winter and pitching her tent next to theirs in the summer--Briggs observed the emotional patterns of the Utku in the context of their daily life.

In this perceptive and highly enjoyable volume the author presents a behavioral description of the Utku through a series of vignettes of individuals interacting with members of their family and with their neighbors. Finding herself at times the object of instruction, she describes the training of the child toward achievement of the proper adult personality and the handling of deviations from this desired behavior.

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, Parenting, Ethnography, Indigenous, Sociology, Psychology

408 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1970

About the author

BA, Vassar College 1951
MA, Boston University 1960
PhD, Harvard University, 1967

"Looking back over the 45 years since I first made the acquaintance of Eskimoic cultures, I find two focal interests: interpersonal (social and emotional) relationships in Inuit families and small groups, and Inuit language. These interests have grown in and out of each other and taken various shapes at various times. Most of my fieldwork has been with camp-dwelling Canadian Inuit but, in 1961-62, I visited Alaskan Inupiat and, in the 1990s, very briefly, Siberian Yupik. My writings have all concerned Canadian Inuit. I have written on the cultural construction of the vocabulary of emotion; family life; the management of hostility in hunting camps and families; the emotional underpinnings of "attachment" and of values like "nonviolence", "concern for others", and "autonomy"; the emotional texture of a small child's life and the socialization of small children into socially valued behaviour through playful interactions with adults; gender relations; the nature of "individuality" in relation to "culture"; the psychological uses of personal names; the conceptualization of time; and changes in the operation of some of the above values under modern conditions of living in villages and towns. Since 1995, I have focused more completely on linguistic matters. Three General Grants from the SSHRC have supported, and continue to support, a project to create, with colleagues in the Linguistics Departments of both Memorial University and the University of Toronto, a bipartite bilingual dictionary of the previously undocumented Utkuhiksalingmiut dialect of Inuktitut. This dialect was, and to some extent still is, spoken in the Central Arctic area where I have done a large part of the fieldwork described above. One part of the dictionary will contain word-bases; the other will contain affixes, the linguistic units that attach to bases to create words. Finally, in recent years, I have written, by request, a number of reflective, autobiographical pieces about the development of my ways of thinking and of doing anthropology, especially fieldwork. I have no allegiances to any particular brand of theory; my interpretations tend to develop from the ground up, using AS DATA personal experience and perspectives expressed, verbally or behaviourally, by the actors in an accumulation of small specific incidents - in a manner Piaget would recognize.. I also draw on psychoanalytic ideas when the data seem to point in their direction, especially those of Winnicott about play and Anna Freud about defense mechanisms; and I have discovered that my experientially derived ideas about how social learning occurs, in Inuit society and in my own, are very much in line with practice theory, which I recently encountered in the work of Jean Lave."

Reviews

[Karla · Rating 4 out of 5]

An antropologist records her observations of one of the last remaining Eskimo villages unexposed to white culture. She's intrigued with the complete lack of violence within the culture, and ties it to an underlying philosophy among its people. Anger is considered a sign of insanity. Only small children become angry. An angry adult is not acceptable behavior and the person is driven from the village until the insanity is over. It's been twenty years since i read the book, but i still ponder over what the world would be like if nobody ever did anything in anger.

[Judy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book was on the clearance table in the college bookstore. In pursuit of attaining a solid education, I decided that I should read it. It sat on a shelf for a couple of years, until one winter day when I decided the subject of this book would match the weather. It was such a pleasant surprise! I was expecting stodgy textbook style writing. Instead, it flowed almost like a novel. This was my introduction to the Inuits and the beginning of my library about their vanishing cultures.

I've read it twice and am likely to read it again someday.

[Tim O'neill · Rating 3 out of 5]

I read this because of the "recent" (when I started) trend of articles citing the implicit parenting advice, but three factors mean I don't remember that part very well.
1. It's not actually a huge part of the book. "Eskimos" (as they were then called, at least by American anthropologists) not getting angry and thinking that's immature is a huge theme in the book, if not the theme, but the parenting aspect is just a snippet.
2. I was also a social scientist in the field (linguistics and Madagascar instead of anthropology and Arctic Canada, but still) and while I didn't live with a family like Briggs did, I was still able to identify with a lot of her struggles. Naturally, that part stuck out the most.
3. It took me forever to read this book. I list this third because, for the most part, that was no fault of the book. I just didn't prioritize it and read some other things as well. But over eight months, I obviöusly forgot some stuff. (I do think I would've read it a little faster, especially at the end, if it were organized in one of the two ways I mention below, but in at least one of those cases, I somewhat understand why it was not.)

So, the biggest thing I was thinking while reading this book is: how is this a work of anthropology? One of my advisors wouldn't even let me put the story of how I did my research in a 20-page methodology section, but (until you get to the appendix), the whole book is basically the story of how she did her research. And it's a interesting story, especially for me given #2 above, but I had two main issues with how it was presented.

First, I would have enjoyed it more if she hadn't so heavily foreshadowed her eventual ostracization. And by for foreshadowed, I mean she kept fully referring to it before it happened, but not explaining it. So I wish it had been either more subtly foreshadowed, or written in a more academic way wherein she "spoils" the "plot" up front in her introduction. I do not know why it was written this way.

Secondly, reading the main appendix, I started thinking “This! This is how she should've organized this book: each chapter is an emotion group and file the incidents that way. Mebbe start with an introduction of 50 or so pages where she tells her story narratively (because I actually don't mind the narrative), then focus in on incidents that reveal emotional truth for each family of terms.” I do know why it was wasn't written this way: her original topic was goïng to be about shamans, and then that didn't work out and she didn't have time t’organize her research around a whole new topic before she left. I am both totally sympathetic to this (Yes, I was in Madagascar for 8 1/2 months, and yes, I only recorded 70 speakers) and don't understand (she learned about the lack of shamans pretty quickly,and was living up there for I think more than two years, so why couldn't she reörganize?). I guess I'm sympathetic as a fellow researcher, but as a reader, at least I wish I knew why.

So anyway, read this if you want to know about her fascinating and frequently frustrating experience of beïng a field anthropologist among the Inuït, or for an outsider's look at how the Utko Inuït live(d), or to learn about a whole new way to think about the emotional spectrum. But don't read it for parenting advice.

[Patrick · Rating 4 out of 5]

Briggs writes beautifully, both in her descriptions of the arctic landscape and in her self-aware recounts of her Utku family's daily lives and interactions. Rather frustratingly the thesis of the book seems somewhat unexplored. I believe this is due, largely, to the author's altered subject matter post-arrival in Utku territory. Oftentimes I was left sympathising with the Utku during Briggs' frequent failures to manage her emotions, in particular her frustration and anger. It is a testament to the author, however, and her commitment to ethnographic honesty that she allows her actions throughout her fieldwork to be openly and often harshly judged by the reader. Briggs has built a clever narrative and a compelling account of the rigours and difficulties of anthropological research in an environmentally unforgiving and socially challenging context.

[B Zimp · Rating 2 out of 5]

The idea and thought behind Never in Anger - explaining the anthropologic observations of noticing that Arctic Natives don't respond with strong (negative) emotions to their children or people outside their community - is a useful and pertinent information. Unfortunately the text I had was a university thesis from 1970, so filled with (now very inappropriate) racism, us versus them language, isn't as applicable to the Native community 50 years later, and was chapters of academic dryness.

[Clayton · Rating 4 out of 5]

meticulous
well-written
well-researched (this is a bit of an understatement).

After reading this I feel no desire to be or have the emotional state of Eskimos of ~1960 she describes, but I am very glad she wrote this book and that I was able to read it.

I wish these reviews could be private and for just myself so I could say all of the things that I don't want to be in a public review. I suppose that's what a text file is for.

[TinaGav · Rating 3 out of 5]

I bought this book after reading an interesting article on parenting a while back, which talked about the Utko Inuït community, where adults never get angry and parents don't lose their temper. It took me a while to finish the book, and because it pretty much overflows with detail, I'll let the information settle down and reread it in a couple of years; what I can say for sure is that I find myself thinking about it all the time so, it affected me in a good way.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is my favorite ethnography. Intimate, honest, great storytelling, rich detail.

[Constance · Rating 4 out of 5]

It took me a long while to finally finish, but I had to read this book for my Cultural Anthropology class. It’s a memoir of the 2 years spent by an anthropologist in an Inuit community in Northern Canada, analyzing emotions and their behavior with one another. It’s interesting to understand lifestyles that correspond to environmental conditions. Really enjoyed this anthropological study.

[Eliza · Rating 5 out of 5]

Utterly impressed by Jean's bravery to go on a journey like this! I valued the insights.. Unfortunately I only had access to 1/4 of the book.

[Lgordo · Rating 4 out of 5]

I had previously tried to read Jean Briggs' book about Utku childrearing and gave it up after a few chapters. With the rise of "Hunt Gather Parent" as a parenting manual, I felt compelled to pick this up as the OG source of inspiration.

"Academic anthropology books tell you about norms. You come out with a good idea of the average person’s average life... This book defines the average by describing the outliers... These stories tell you what the social norm is – and also how society reacts when people don’t fit the mold. This last part tells you more about a society than anything else, I think."

This is what I wrote about Elizabeth Marshall Thomas's "The Harmless People," but it applies to this book as well. Briggs spent 18 months living with the Utku, an Inuit/Eskimo people who have powerful norms restricting all emotional expression.

This sounds both impossible and utopian.

It is impossible; this book describes the disapproval and occasional ostracization heaped on the man who expresses love for his wife, the son who is distraught at losing his father, the woman who expresses excitement and frustration regularly.

It is not utopian: Briggs notes the amount of time a little girl spends facing a wall, silent tears streaming down her face as she tries to master her emotional expression. The emotional expression doesn't vanish, it simply moves to another outlet: animals are abused, babies receive all the love, and confrontation is replaced by passive-aggressive sniping and snide gossip.

One can debate if overt anger and fighting is really worse than someone who mocks you, says "just kidding," and then expects you to laugh at your own expense with them. The lack of confrontation also meant that Briggs was ostracized without ever having a chance to explain her "reprehensible" actions (when the opportunity came up months later, she was forgiven). Turns out people are the same everywhere; only the veneer is different.

This book is often presented as "a study of eskimo culture" but there is a severe limitation to that generalization. "The Utku" seem to consist of about four to five nuclear families in total. This hardly feels like a society. The author occasionally footnotes that her own observations don't always match those of previous travelers and ethnographers.

Briggs also spends an unusual amount of time explaining her own feelings and behaviors as a stranger dropped into an alien culture and language. This is relevant to the equally unusual amount of time she spends parsing her understanding of her hosts' behaviors and reactions to her behavior which is equally alien and incomprehensible to them. This felt both tedious and useful. I had never really considered the emotional difficulty of an immersive anthropological experience, and I have both major respect and sympathy for her.

Almost no part of the book really discussed their daily routines, traditions, clothing, food, seasonal roaming, and the minutiae you'd expect from a typical anthropological treatise. You can pick some of it up from her discussion, but not enough to really put together a picture of the life.

Overall, I truly enjoyed this book and found it hard to put down. Definitely recommend.

[Sarah · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is one of my favorite books. I love it for the honesty of the author as she deals with her own feelings, strengths and weaknesses as an outsider living within a very different culture. Imagine being in a world where your role is so different, where the norms are so different that you really can't "be yourself". I have read this book several times and will almost certainly read it again. I read it first for an anthropology class, but I have read it again and again because I find the story so heartbreakingly honest and moving.

[Marius Tungilik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Well written and interesting stories set in the 1960's of an American woman who was "adopted" by a Canadian Inuit family. The misunderstandings are interesting, but I would love to hear the side of the Inuit whom she lived with, to get the whole story.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

I feel for Jean L. Briggs, her emotions compared to those of the Utku gathered as a comfortable story to read. In the middle I lost focus a little but but the last chapter made up for it completely.

[A. S. · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating!

[Amy · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't often read anthropology books, this might actually be my first. I really enjoyed it! Are all of them written in an almost narrative way like this one? I liked Briggs' writing style and the way she described the environment of Northern Canada and the people who lived there in the 1960s.

This book really puts into perspective for me the struggles of anthropology as a field. Briggs is very clear about the limitations of her work and how her own cultural background and linguistic inadequacies act as a filter through which she perceives the Utku people she lives with for over a year.

The life of the Utku, and similar groups, is really fascinating. They live (or were living in the 1960s) a nomadic lifestyle in a harsh environment, without a formal hierarchy. This work is focused specifically on emotion regulation and family dynamics and structure. I was particularly interested in the content about family life, and wished to know more than Briggs was able to learn about. This is really only a small glimpse into the lives of the Utku, but I feel enriched to have read even this much.

[Liralen · Rating 4 out of 5]

In the early 60s, Briggs set off to spend almost eighteen months with an Inuit community in what is now Nunavut. Her original plan was to study their traditional religion, but those plans were put to rest when she found the community (which had, in past decades, been converted to Protestantism) completely unwilling to discuss it; instead, she ended up studying language and family structure.

It must have been a singular experience. The existence she describes is a harsh one, dictated by weather and fishing and a teeny-tiny insular community spread across a vast landscape.

In spring people may be almost constantly on the move. Between the end of April and the middle of July the camp in which I lived moved thirteen times, distances ranging from four feet to forty miles. The long moves were determined by the need for dish. The short ones were dictated by the thaws, which first melted our iglus, then transformed the snow patches where our tents were pitched into waist-deep quagmires of slush and sent us down to exposed gravel strips along the river’s edge, and finally flooded our gravel strips, forcing us uphill in retreat from the advancing water. (29)

Briggs tells the same story twice, in a way: an exploration of what she'd learnt, somewhat chronologically, and then a backtracking to tell of her experience when miscommunication and cultural differences led her to be ostracised by the family with which she was living. The backtracking threw me for a moment but ultimately proved useful; focussing earlier on her isolation would have made the story about Briggs, and really it's about this family.

One of the words for play, pinnguujaqtuq, means “pretend to do,” that is, to imitate; and the children were marvelous mimics. I was one of their favorite models; all aspects of my behavior were copied and, as far as possible, my speech as well. One morning, a few weeks before I left Back River, I was working to fill in a few of the most flagrant gaps in my data, when Allaq, with a low-voiced “Yiini” and a surreptitious nod toward the children, pulled my attention from my notebook. Raigili was lying in bed on the ikliq and Saarak was sitting astride her sister’s stomach, tapping absorbedly with all her fingers on Raigili’s chest. Raigili’s folded arms moved slowly across her chest as Saarak tapped, until they extended far to one side, at which point Saarak abruptly shoved them back again so that they protruded on the other side. Then the process was repeated. Intermittently, Saarak interrupted her tapping to tug the neck of Raigili’s undershirt a little higher on her sister’s chin. She was typing, with Raigili a most efficient instrument! (129)

Not everything still reads well in the modern age. The family with whom Briggs stayed (and who adopted her as an adult child, basically, since her skill set was so far outside what was needed to survive in the Arctic landscape) had a daughter who was off at school: In the fall, children who wished to go to boarding school were picked up from all the villages and outlying camps in the Central Arctic and flown to the government school in Inuvik, a thousand miles away on the Alaskan border (17). Briggs doesn't talk much about this daughter, who in turn didn't (when she was home) talk much about her time in boarding school, but given what we know now (and what Briggs, presumably, didn't have any way of knowing) of the abuse that went down at those government schools—and the pressure parents were under to send their children—I suspect that 'children who wished to go to boarding school' is very much an oversimplification.

If I remember correctly, it's relatively recently that anthropologists/ethnologists have been encouraged to consider their own role in how their subjects act, and Briggs handles that part of things well. At times I wanted a bit more from her conclusions, but by and large she is well aware that, as an outsider in such a small, isolated community, her very presence changes certain actions and interactions.

It's worth reading this NPR article about the idea of 'never in anger'.

[Judit Gueta · Rating 4 out of 5]

The title is really appealing to a parent who regularly uses her temper. Of course, I knew I hold a book in anthropology rather then on parenting in my hands. It started promising. It took years until I finished it. My conclusion is, that people are people everywhere with similar feelings and challenges. The utku might in most cases succeed in transforming anger and frustration into joking and letting it go but it comes with a price. Also, what other option do they have living in such tiny communities with a whole family in the same space all the time? It is interesting, though.
All my respect to the author who spent a year and a half with them, in a culture so different from hers and gave us/me the chance to know a people I would very likely never have a chance to meet personally.

[Tina · Rating 4 out of 5]

I keep coming back to this book in my mind. The author spent more than a year living with the Inuits and describes their way of life and their relationships. I thought it was interesting that they value friendliness and even mannered emotions but they often gossip behind one another’s backs. Every culture has its vices. The author did a wonderful job analyzing her experience. I thought the breakdown of how the Inuits treated her into three seasons was interesting: first like a stranger, then like a child, and then with hostility. I can’t imagine eating mostly fish and living in tents or igloos where the internal temperatures hang below freezing! I thought this book did a great job storytelling so that it flowed along quickly even though it was packed with new information.

[Jennifer Tucker · Rating 5 out of 5]

I went into this book expecting to read a "typical" ethnographic study from the 60s - one involving some outdated terms, outdated ideas, ect. Instead, what I found was a different type of ethnographic study - one that was personal, introspective, almost as evenly about self as about "other" - I really enjoyed the way this author approached her work. It seemed very honest and refreshing, and I intend to read more of her work.

[Peggy Stoll · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is an ethnography--an in depth study of relationships within a certain group of people living in a particular place. It is very interesting to learn about the relationships and practices within a group. I found this study to be somewhat difficult at times to plod through. Perhaps at a future time, it will speak to me a bit easier and keep me more easily engaged.

[Robyn · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great ethnography about the Utku Inuit group. For those interested in the anthropology of emotions, enculturation of children, emic models of cognition and emotion or simply looking for an engaging reflexive fieldwork account, check this out!

[Sofia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great insight into the realm of Inuit emotions and the difficulties of fieldwork (though occasionally Briggs' inner monologue surprised me, she did, in hindsight, seem appropriately aware of her actions). The appendix at the end tied the concepts together well.

[November · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was another textbook I read and it is a case study journal from the 1960s. It wasn't terribly written or anything, and I lent it to my mother and she enjoyed it, but it is just not something I think I will read again in my life, that said, I have read worse!

[Rozemarijn Vroom · Rating 3 out of 5]

Gelezen voor school.
Heeft een duidelijke cultural-relativist approach, maar Briggs is soms wel een beetje tegenstrijdig door impliciet Freud te gebruiken in haar uitleg. Verder wel interessant en makkelijk te lezen, zeker voor een antropologie boek.

[Cassette Tape · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ok haven’t read it and dying to. Anyone know where can you find this to read online? (Non-paperback/hardcover)

[Maggie Gravelle · Rating 2 out of 5]

A good book to learn from, at least.
Jean is a good example of an anthropologist in the field who disregarded Tim Ingold’s plead to “take differences seriously”.

[Frida · Rating 4 out of 5]

*3.5

[Chris · Rating 1 out of 5]

Hunt gather parent brought me here.

[Hailey · Rating 3 out of 5]

I would give this 3.5 if I could! I really enjoyed it and felt like I learned a lot about the Utku.