did so much and was so many things including, a great scientist, an explorer, a writer, and a teacher, who educated the human race in numerous and diverse ways. Margaret Mead affected our society in many many different ways, and for this reason her name will be respected in the anthropological fields possibly forever. She was born in Philadelphia on December 16, 1901, and was educated at Barnard College and at Columbia University. In 1926 she became assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and she not only served as associate curator, but as curator as well.
Mead was the first anthropologist to study child-rearing practices. Her work on learning theory and ‘Learning Through Imprinting,’ a method by which children learn, is currently being studied further. (Walker 95-97) Margaret Mead contributed much to the study of primitive people. As an assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Modern History from 1926, she did most of her field work in the South Sea islands, particularly New Guinea, Bali, and Samoa. She was chiefly interested in the problems of temperament and sex in primitive societies. She was interested in learning about how young people grew up and got married in New Guinea, and how they “came of age” in Samoa.
Her work has helped us arrive at a much greater understanding of modern adolescents. (Bateson 40-46) The main thing Mead wanted to learn about, and the main reason why she went to Samoa to do fieldwork, was to learn about adolescence. She had a theory that most agreed with, which was that the biological changes of the adolescence could not be consummated without a large amount of stress and anxiety. They experience psychosomatic and social stress.
Conversely, she discovered that adolescence does not have to be such a difficult period in one’s life. She saw that is was cultural conditions that made it so strenuous. Mead’s Book, “Coming of Age in Samoa,” was acknowledged as indicating the beginning of the personality field and the culture field. (Mead 29-33) Margaret Mead was also director of research in contemporary cultures at Columbia University from 1948 to 1950 and professor of anthropology there after 1954. Participating in several field expeditions, Mead conducted her most notable research in New Guinea, Samoa, and Bali as mentioned before. Much of her work was devoted to a study of patterns of child rearing in various cultures.
She also analyzed many problems in contemporary American society, particularly those affecting young people. Her interests were varied, including childcare, adolescence, sexual behavior, and American character and culture. Margaret Mead taught generations of Americans about looking carefully and openly at other cultures to understand the complexities of being human. (Bateson 80-83) Margaret Mead brought the serious work of anthropology to public consciousness.
Mead studied at Barnard College, where she met the great anthropologist Franz Boas. Franz Boas became her mentor and her advisor when she attended graduate school at Columbia University. Mead’s work is largely responsible for the treasures on view in the Museum’s Hall of Pacific Peoples. (Mead 92) In addition to her work at the Museum, Margaret Mead taught, and wrote more best selling books.
She contributed a regular column to Redbook magazine. She was also lectured, and was frequently interviewed on radio and television. A deeply committed activist, Mead often testified on social issues before the United States Congress and other Government agencies. Mead died in New York City on November 15, 1978. Margaret Mead was an American anthropologist, widely known for her studies of primitive societies and her contributions to social anthropology. She will be remembered everywhere by anthropologist all over the world for this and more.
(Walker 88-90) Mead would often be heard saying things like, ‘We must cherish the life of all the world.” She has become a world renowned anthropologist, who has contributed vastly to the understanding of human history. Her work has, and will continue to impact the daily lives of people around the world. Her 44 books and more than 1, 000 articles have been translated into virtually all languages. Her data has been carefully catalogued and preserved. (Mead 18) As one of the founders of the ‘Culture and Personality School of Anthropology’, she was the first to conduct psychologically-oriented field work. She was instrumental in forging interdisciplinary links between anthropology and other fields.
Her writings and lectures covered a vast array of important topics, what she called ‘Unmapped Country’. She wrote on subjects ranging from mental and spiritual health to ethics and overpopulation. A strong proponent of family, she believed that ‘Children are our vehicles for survival because in them there is hope, and through them what has been, and what will be will not only be perpetrated, but also united.’ Margaret Mead made history by shining a light of understanding on the course of human history. In her publication, “Coming of age in Samoa,” she demonstrated that Samoan young people pass through the teenage years without the emotional crisis regarded as characteristic in Western societies. (Mead 58-62, 75) Mead went on to a career of brilliant field work.
While other anthropologists spent a lifetime studying one primitive tribe, she studied half a dozen. In the 1920 s and 30 s the Pacific Islands and New Guinea still offered conditions that tested a scholar’s mettle. ‘The natives are superficially agreeable,’ she once wrote home, ‘but they go in for cannibalism, headhunting, infanticide, incest, avoidance and joking relationships, and biting lice in half with their teeth.’ She pushed back the boundaries of her science, and her clear style of writing and public speaking brought advanced ideas to the general public. (Preston 34-37) Margaret’s childhood experiences had made her different from others, but generally in ways that she found rewarding rather than alienating, and this was something she wanted to pass on possibly to her children. She was brought up by parents who were not racist, and so they did not share the guilt that others used to mobilize commitment. There is no form of raising a child that does not leave an occasional residue.
Mead was brought up believing that in this country, difference was something we shared. (Bateson 145-146) Mead once said, “If we are to achieve a richer culture, rich in contrasting values, we must recognize the whole gamut of human potentialities. We must weave a social fabric in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.” Mead felt so loved by her parents, and felt that the feeling of belonging was very important for all people. She also believed that if people were to work together and share all of their diverse knowledge, we would be going forward much faster. And like most young girls Mead always wanted a child, preferably a girl. (Mead 63) By the time Margaret met her third husband, Gregory Bateson, she was already famous for her work in Samoa.
She had even established a pattern of tricks to the field and returns in which the work was written up not only as the careful documentation of exotic cultures in Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali, but as relevant to the lives of ordinary American people, to their decisions about how to raise children or order their public or private lives. Gregory was a distinguished geneticist, who attended Cain bridge University. (Bateson 18-22) Off course, Gregory was not her only husband, as Americans do practice habitual monogamy. Her first husband was Luther Cressman, who was a minister and her second was Reo Fortune, an anthropologist from New Zealand. Mead was once heard saying, “Women want mediocre men, and men are working to become as mediocre as possible.” This was rumored to be the reason for her first divorce from Luther Cressman. A woman like her was not mediocre (except in height), and she needed anything but a mediocre man.
(Bateson 207-210) Mead was told in 1926 she would never have children, which also had plenty to do with her divorce from Luther, and from then on she intended to establish a lifetime partnership in research with Reo. She married him never expecting children and had then fallen in love with Gregory as a potential father as well as a scientific collaborator. In 1939, she finally had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who was a very very important part of her life. Mead divorced Bateson, however, when Mary was eleven years old.
(Walker 90-92) Margaret Mead was not only known to her daughter as “mother,” however, but also to the natural and social sciences she is known as a “founding mother.” Mead was very lucky to have Franz Boas in her life as a teacher because in those days most academic authorities did not accept women into their groups. She was very thankful to him for his kindness and for the opportunity he gave her. Franz Boas had once said that there was just something about her that was so rare he could not do anything but give her encouragement about the interest she had in anthropology. (Preston 38-40) Mead also made clear some of her beliefs about what the male form of a female liberationist is. She said that a male liberationist is a man who realizes the unfairness of having to work all his life to support a wife and children so that someday his widow may live in comfort. He is a man who points out that commuting to a job he doesn’t like is just as oppressive as his wife’s imprisonment in a suburb, a man who rejects his exclusion, by society and most women, from participation in childbirth and the most engrossing, delightful care of young children a man, in fact, who wants to relate himself to people and the world around him as a person.
Basically, then again, Mead was ahead of her time in believing in the equality of men and women. (Mead 102-104) Mead did and exhibition in Manus in the Admiralty Islands, which she described in a number of her works including, “Sex and temperament in Three Primitive Societies,” The Mountain Arapesh,” and “Balinese Character” with Bateson. There she mostly studied infant and childcare and sexual behavior. Her interest in the psychology of different cultures lead Mead to a study of national character, which is reflected in “And Keep Your Powder Dry.” During World War II, Margaret served as an executive secretary of the committee on food habits of the National Research Council, and for two years she was president of the World Federation of Mental Health. Mead was awarded the Viking Fund Medal for General Anthropology in 1957, and she was president of the American Anthropological Association from 1959 until 1960. (Walker 93) Mead definitely used her brain life.
She was also very interested not only in learning, but in learning about learning. She believed The ability to learn is older, and much more widespread than is the ability to teach. She also understood that Man’s most human characteristic is not his ability to learn, which he shares with many other species, but his ability to teach and store what others have developed and taught him. Mead was once heard saying, “If one cannot state a matter clearly enough so that even an intelligent twelve-year-old can understand it, one should remain within the cloistered walls of the university and laboratory until one gets a better grasp of one’s subject matter.” For the most part, Mead hated laziness, and felt that learning was a very important part of life. (Mead 53-59) In conclusion, Margaret Mead is undoubtedly one of the most famous anthropologists who ever lived. She helped the discipline of anthropology to flourish by writing for social scientists, the educated public, and the popular press, including a column for Redbook, and many appearances on ‘The Tonight Show.’ Much of her work focused on demonstrating that culture rather than biology or race determines variations in human behavior and personality.
She worked hard to show that life in places the American public thought of as ‘primitive’ was in a number of ways comparable and relevant to their own lives. (Preston 33) WORKS CITED Bateson, Mary Catherine. With a Daughter’s Eye. New York: William Morrow and Company, Inc, 1984. Mead, Margaret.
Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years. New York: Simon and Schuster Publishers, 1972. Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: Morrow, 1928..