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I hate to say this, because I think Herskovits was a really good anthropologist. But he was not a very good philosopher.

Herskovits was very loose in his use of terms like 'valid' and he never seems to have questioned the idea that the dominant values of a culture are binding within it. Today, after the civil rights movement and the women's movement, many people would question that.

Ruth Benedict made similar mistakes. She thought that morality was simply another name for socially approved habits. I doubt that any moral philosopher would agree. If it were true, none of us could criticize the habits that are socially approved. After all, if what is right in my culture is simply that which is socially approved, how could I meaningfully and consistently say that the dominant (i.e., socially approved) view is mistaken or immoral? But we do this all the time.