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Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s. She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College of Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia. Mead served as president of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
in 1975. Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic. Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s
sexual revolution The sexual revolution, also known as the sexual liberation, was a social movement that challenged traditional codes of behavior related to sexuality and interpersonal relationships throughout the United States and the developed world from the 1 ...
. She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions.


Early life and education

Margaret Mead, the first of five children, was born in Philadelphia but raised in nearby Doylestown, Pennsylvania. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily (née Fogg) Mead, was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants. Her sister Katharine (1906–1907) died at the age of nine months. That was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named the girl, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years. Her family moved frequently and so her early education was directed by her grandmother until, at age 11, she was enrolled by her family at Buckingham Friends School in Lahaska, Pennsylvania. Her family owned the Longland farm from 1912 to 1926. ''Note:'' This includes Born into a family of various religious outlooks, she searched for a form of religion that gave an expression of the faith with which she had been formally acquainted, Christianity. In doing so, she found the rituals of the United States Episcopal Church to fit the expression of religion she was seeking. Mead studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College. Mead earned her bachelor's degree from Barnard in 1923, began studying with professors
Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
and Ruth Benedict at Columbia University, and earned her master's degree in 1924. Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in Samoa. In 1926, she joined the
American Museum of Natural History The American Museum of Natural History (abbreviated as AMNH) is a natural history museum on the Upper West Side of Manhattan in New York City. In Theodore Roosevelt Park, across the street from Central Park, the museum complex comprises 26 inter ...
, New York City, as assistant curator. She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929.


Personal life

Mead was married three times. After a six-year engagement, she married her first husband (1923–1928), Luther Cressman, an American theology student who later became an anthropologist. Before departing for Samoa in 1925, Mead had a short affair with the linguist Edward Sapir, a close friend of her instructor Ruth Benedict. However, Sapir's conservative stances about marriage and
women's roles A gender role, also known as a sex role, is a social role encompassing a range of behaviors and attitudes that are generally considered acceptable, appropriate, or desirable for a person based on that person's sex. Gender roles are usually cent ...
were unacceptable to Mead, and as Mead left to do field work in Samoa, they separated permanently. Mead received news of Sapir's remarriage while she was living in Samoa. There, she later burned their correspondence on a beach. Between 1925 and 1926, she was in Samoa from where on the return boat she met Reo Fortune, a New Zealander headed to Cambridge, England, to study psychology. They were married in 1928, after Mead's divorce from Cressman. Mead dismissively characterized her union with her first husband as "my student marriage" in her 1972 autobiography ''Blackberry Winter'', a sobriquet with which Cressman took vigorous issue. Mead's third and longest-lasting marriage (1936–1950) was to the British anthropologist
Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...
with whom she had a daughter,
Mary Catherine Bateson Mary Catherine Bateson (December 8, 1939 â€“ January 2, 2021) was an American writer and cultural anthropologist. The daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, Bateson was a noted author in her field with many published monographs. ...
, who would also become an anthropologist. She readily acknowledged that Bateson was the husband she loved the most. She was devastated when he left her and remained his loving friend ever afterward. She kept his photograph by her bedside wherever she traveled, including beside her hospital deathbed. Mead's
pediatrician Pediatrics ( also spelled ''paediatrics'' or ''pædiatrics'') is the branch of medicine that involves the medical care of infants, children, adolescents, and young adults. In the United Kingdom, paediatrics covers many of their youth until the ...
was Benjamin Spock, whose subsequent writings on child rearing incorporated some of Mead's own practices and beliefs acquired from her ethnological field observations which she shared with him; in particular, breastfeeding on the baby's demand, rather than by a schedule. Mead also had an exceptionally close relationship with Ruth Benedict, one of her instructors. In her memoir about her parents, ''With a Daughter's Eye'', Mary Catherine Bateson strongly implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual.Bateson 1984; Lapsley 1999. Mead never openly identified herself as
lesbian A lesbian is a Homosexuality, homosexual woman.Zimmerman, p. 453. The word is also used for women in relation to their sexual identity or sexual behavior, regardless of sexual orientation, or as an adjective to characterize or associate n ...
or
bisexual Bisexuality is a romantic or sexual attraction or behavior toward both males and females, or to more than one gender. It may also be defined to include romantic or sexual attraction to people regardless of their sex or gender identity, whi ...
. In her writings, she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual's sexual orientation may evolve throughout life. She spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with the anthropologist
Rhoda Metraux ''Rhoda'' is an American television sitcom created by James L. Brooks and Allan Burns starring Valerie Harper that originally aired on CBS for five seasons from September 9, 1974, to December 9, 1978. It was the first spin-off of ''The Mary Ty ...
with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead's daughter clearly express a romantic relationship. Mead had two sisters and a brother, Elizabeth, Priscilla, and Richard. Elizabeth Mead (1909–1983), an artist and teacher, married the cartoonist William Steig, and Priscilla Mead (1911–1959) married the author Leo Rosten. Mead's brother, Richard, was a professor. Mead was also the aunt of Jeremy Steig.


Career and later life

During World War II, Mead was executive secretary of the National Research Council's Committee on Food Habits. She was curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1946 to 1969. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948, the United States
National Academy of Sciences The National Academy of Sciences (NAS) is a United States nonprofit, non-governmental organization. NAS is part of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, along with the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) and the Nati ...
in 1975, and the American Philosophical Society in 1977. She taught at The New School and Columbia University, where she was an adjunct professor from 1954 to 1978 and a professor of anthropology and chair of the Division of Social Sciences at
Fordham University Fordham University () is a Private university, private Jesuit universities, Jesuit research university in New York City. Established in 1841 and named after the Fordham, Bronx, Fordham neighborhood of the The Bronx, Bronx in which its origina ...
's Lincoln Center campus from 1968 to 1970, founding their anthropology department. In 1970, she joined the faculty of the University of Rhode Island as a Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Anthropology. Following Ruth Benedict's example, Mead focused her research on problems of child rearing, personality, and culture. She served as president of the Society for Applied Anthropology in 1950 and of the
American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
in 1960. In the mid-1960s, Mead joined forces with the communications theorist Rudolf Modley in jointly establishing an organization called Glyphs Inc., whose goal was to create a universal graphic symbol language to be understood by any members of culture, no matter how "primitive." In the 1960s, Mead served as the Vice President of the New York Academy of Sciences. She held various positions in the
American Association for the Advancement of Science The American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) is an American international non-profit organization with the stated goals of promoting cooperation among scientists, defending scientific freedom, encouraging scientific respons ...
, notably president in 1975 and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors in 1976. She was a recognizable figure in academia and usually wore a distinctive cape and carried a walking stick. Mead was a key participant in the Macy conferences on
cybernetics Cybernetics is a wide-ranging field concerned with circular causality, such as feedback, in regulatory and purposive systems. Cybernetics is named after an example of circular causal feedback, that of steering a ship, where the helmsperson m ...
and an editor of their proceedings. Mead's address to the inaugural conference of the American Society for Cybernetics was instrumental in the development of second-order cybernetics. Mead was featured on two record albums published by
Folkways Records Folkways Records was a record label founded by Moses Asch that documented folk, world, and children's music. It was acquired by the Smithsonian Institution in 1987 and is now part of Smithsonian Folkways. History The Folkways Records & Service ...
. The first, released in 1959, ''An Interview With Margaret Mead'', explored the topics of morals and anthropology. In 1971, she was included in a compilation of talks by prominent women, ''But the Women Rose, Vol. 2: Voices of Women in American History''. She is credited with the pluralization of the term " semiotics". In later life, Mead was a mentor to many young anthropologists and sociologists, including Jean Houston, author
Gail Sheehy Gail Sheehy (born Gail Henion; November 27, 1936 – August 24, 2020) was an American author, journalist, and lecturer. She was the author of seventeen books and numerous high-profile articles for magazines such as ''New York'' and ''Vanity ...
,
John Langston Gwaltney John Langston Gwaltney (September 25, 1928 – August 29, 1998) was an African-American writer and anthropologist focused on African-American culture, best known for his book '' Drylongso: A Self Portrait of Black America''. Early life Gwaltney lo ...
,
Roger Sandall Frederick Roger Sandall (18 December 1933 – 11 August 2012) was a New Zealand-born Australian anthropologist, essayist, cinematographer, and scholar. He was a critic of Romanticism, romantic primitivism, which he called designer tribalism, and ...
, filmmaker
Timothy Asch Timothy is a masculine name. It comes from the Greek name ( TimÏŒtheos) meaning "honouring God", "in God's honour", or "honoured by God". Timothy (and its variations) is a common name in several countries. People Given name * Timothy (given name) ...
, and anthropologist
Susan C. Scrimshaw Susan Crosby Scrimshaw is an American scholar of medical anthropology and university administrator. She served as president of Simmons University, The Sage Colleges, and dean of the School of Public Health at the University of Illinois Chicago. ...
, who later received the 1985
Margaret Mead Award Margaret Mead Award is an award in the field of anthropology presented (solely) by the Society for Applied Anthropology from 1979 to 1983 and jointly with the American Anthropological Association afterwards. This award was named after anthropologi ...
for her research on cultural factors affecting public health delivery. In 1976, Mead was a key participant at
UN Habitat I The term Habitat I refers to the first United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, in Vancouver, British Columbia in Canada, 31 May – 11 June 1976, which was convened by the United Nations as governments began to recognize the magnitude and c ...
, the first UN forum on human settlements. Mead died of
pancreatic cancer Pancreatic cancer arises when cell (biology), cells in the pancreas, a glandular organ behind the stomach, begin to multiply out of control and form a Neoplasm, mass. These cancerous cells have the malignant, ability to invade other parts of t ...
on November 15, 1978, and is buried at Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery,
Buckingham Buckingham ( ) is a market town in north Buckinghamshire, England, close to the borders of Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire, which had a population of 12,890 at the 2011 Census. The town lies approximately west of Central Milton Keynes, sou ...
, Pennsylvania.


Work


''Coming of Age in Samoa'' (1928)

Mead's first ethnographic work described the life of Samoan girls and women on the island of Tau in the Manu'a Archipelago in 1926. The book includes analyses of how children were raised and educated, sex relations, dance, development of personality, conflict, and how women matured into old age. Mead explicitly sought to contrast adolescence in Samoa with that in America, which she characterized as difficult, constrained, and awkward. In the foreword to ''Coming of Age in Samoa'', Mead's advisor,
Franz Boas Franz Uri Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical ...
, wrote of the book's significance:
Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.
In this way, the book tackled the question of nature versus nurture, whether adolescence and its associated developments were a difficult biological transition for all humans or whether they were cultural processes shaped in particular societies. Mead believed childhood, adolescence, gender, and sex relations were largely driven by cultural practices and expressions. Mead's findings suggested that the community ignores both boys and girls until they are about 15 or 16. Before then, children have little social standing within the community. Mead also found that marriage is regarded as a social and economic arrangement in which wealth, rank, and job skills of the husband and wife are taken into consideration. Aside from marriage, Mead identified two types of sex relations: love affairs and adultery. The exceptions to these practices include women married to chiefs and young women who hold the title of taupo, a ceremonial princess, whose virginity was required. Mead described Samoan youth as often having free, experimental, and open sexual relationships, including homosexual relationships, which was at odds with mainstream American norms around sexuality. In 1970, National Educational Television produced a documentary in commemoration of the 40th anniversary Mead's first expedition to New Guinea. Through the eyes of Mead on her final visit to the village of Peri, the film records how the role of the anthropologist has changed in the forty years since 1928.


Criticism by Derek Freeman

After her death, Mead's Samoan research was criticized by the anthropologist
Derek Freeman John Derek Freeman (15 August 1916 – 6 July 2001) was a New Zealand anthropologist knownTuzin, page 1013. for #Freeman_vs._Mead:_A_self_described_heresy, his criticism of Margaret Mead's work on Samoan society, as described in her 1928 ethno ...
, who published a book arguing against many of Mead's conclusions in '' Coming of Age in Samoa''. Freeman argued that Mead had misunderstood Samoan culture when she argued that Samoan culture did not place many restrictions on youths' sexual explorations. Freeman argued instead that Samoan culture prized female chastity and virginity and that Mead had been misled by her female Samoan informants. Freeman found that the Samoan islanders whom Mead had depicted in such utopian terms were intensely competitive and had murder and rape rates higher than those in the United States. Furthermore, the men were intensely sexually jealous, which contrasted sharply with Mead's depiction of "free love" among the Samoans. Freeman's book was controversial in its turn and was met with considerable backlash and harsh criticism from the anthropology community, but it was received enthusiastically by communities of scientists who believed that sexual mores were more or less universal across cultures. Later in 1983, a special session of Mead's supporters in the
American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
(to which Freeman was not invited) declared it to be "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." Some anthropologists who studied Samoan culture argued in favor of Freeman's findings and contradicted those of Mead, but others argued that Freeman's work did not invalidate Mead's work because Samoan culture had been changed by the integration of Christianity in the decades between Mead's and Freeman's fieldwork periods. Eleanor Leacock traveled to Samoa in 1985 and undertook research among the youth living in urban areas. The research results indicate that the assertions of
Derek Freeman John Derek Freeman (15 August 1916 – 6 July 2001) was a New Zealand anthropologist knownTuzin, page 1013. for #Freeman_vs._Mead:_A_self_described_heresy, his criticism of Margaret Mead's work on Samoan society, as described in her 1928 ethno ...
were seriously flawed. Leacock pointed out that Mead's famous Samoan fieldwork was undertaken on an outer island that had not been colonialized. While Freeman had undertaken fieldwork in an urban slum plagued by drug abuse, structural unemployment, and gang violence. Mead was careful to shield the identity of all her subjects for confidentiality, but Freeman found and interviewed one of her original participants, and Freeman reported that she admitted to having willfully misled Mead. She said that she and her friends were having fun with Mead and telling her stories. In 1996, the author
Martin Orans Martin may refer to: Places * Martin City (disambiguation) * Martin County (disambiguation) * Martin Township (disambiguation) Antarctica * Martin Peninsula, Marie Byrd Land * Port Martin, Adelie Land * Point Martin, South Orkney Islands Austral ...
examined Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress and credits her for leaving all of her recorded data available to the general public. Orans points out that Freeman's basic criticisms, that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead, were equivocal for several reasons. Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that corresponds to Fa'apua'a Fa'auma'a's account to Freeman, and Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Orans points out that Mead's data support several different conclusions and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an
interpretive __NOTOC__ An interpretive discussion is a discussion in which participants explore and/or resolve interpretations often pertaining to text (literary theory), texts of any medium containing significant ambiguity in meaning. Education Interpretiv ...
, rather than positivist, approach to culture. Orans went on to point out concerning Mead's work elsewhere that her own notes do not support her published conclusive claims. Evaluating Mead's work in Samoa from a positivist stance, Orans's assessment of the controversy was that Mead did not formulate her research agenda in scientific terms and that "her work may properly be damned with the harshest scientific criticism of all, that it is '
not even wrong "Not even wrong" is a phrase often used to describe pseudoscience or bad science. It describes an argument or explanation that purports to be scientific but uses faulty reasoning or speculative premises, which can be neither affirmed nor denied a ...
'."Orans, Martin (1996), ''Not Even Wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Samoans''. On the whole, anthropologists have rejected the notion that Mead's conclusions rested on the validity of a single interview with a single person and find instead that Mead based her conclusions on the sum of her observations and interviews during her time in Samoa and that the status of the single interview did not falsify her work. Others such as Orans maintained that even though Freeman's critique was invalid, Mead's study was not sufficiently scientifically rigorous to support the conclusions she drew. In 1999, Freeman published another book, ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research'', including previously unavailable material. In his obituary in ''The New York Times'', John Shaw stated that Freeman's thesis, though upsetting many, had by the time of his death generally gained widespread acceptance. Recent work has nonetheless challenged Freeman's critique. A frequent criticism of Freeman is that he regularly misrepresented Mead's research and views.Shankman, Paul 2009 ''The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy''. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press In a 2009 evaluation of the debate, anthropologist Paul Shankman concluded:
There is now a large body of criticism of Freeman's work from a number of perspectives in which Mead, Samoa, and anthropology appear in a very different light than they do in Freeman's work. Indeed, the immense significance that Freeman gave his critique looks like 'much ado about nothing' to many of his critics.
While nurture-oriented anthropologists are more inclined to agree with Mead's conclusions, some non-anthropologists who take a nature-oriented approach follow Freeman's lead, such as Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker, biologist
Richard Dawkins Richard Dawkins (born 26 March 1941) is a British evolutionary biologist and author. He is an emeritus fellow of New College, Oxford and was Professor for Public Understanding of Science in the University of Oxford from 1995 to 2008. An ath ...
, evolutionary psychologist David Buss, science writer Matt Ridley, classicist Mary Lefkowitz,. In her 2015 book ''
Galileo's Middle Finger ''Galileo's Middle Finger'' is a 2015 book about the ethics of medical research by Alice Dreger, an American bioethicist and author. Dreger explores the relationship between science and social justice by discussing a number of scientific controv ...
'', Alice Dreger argues that Freeman's accusations were unfounded and misleading. A detailed review of the controversy by Paul Shankman, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2009, supports the contention that Mead's research was essentially correct and concludes that Freeman cherry-picked his data and misrepresented both Mead and Samoan culture. A survey of 301 anthropology faculty in the United States in 2016 had two thirds agreeing with a statement that Mead "romanticizes the sexual freedom of Samoan adolescents" and half agreeing that it was ideologically motivated.


Mead's ''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies'' became influential within the feminist movement since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (now spelled Chambri) Lake region of the Sepik basin of Papua New Guinea (in the western Pacific) without causing any special problems. The lack of male dominance may have been the result of the Australian administration's outlawing of warfare. According to contemporary research, males are dominant throughout Melanesia. Others have argued that there is still much cultural variation throughout Melanesia, especially in the large island of New Guinea. Moreover, anthropologists often overlook the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some areas of high population density were not, for example, present in the same way in
Oksapmin Oksapmin is a Trans–New Guinea language spoken in Oksapmin Rural LLG, Telefomin District, Sandaun, Papua New Guinea. The two principal dialects are distinct enough to cause some problems with mutual intelligibility. Oksapmin has dyadic kins ...
,
West Sepik Province Sandaun Province (formerly West Sepik Province) is the northwesternmost mainland province of Papua New Guinea. It covers an area of 35,920 km2 (13868 m2) and has a population of 248,411 (2011 census). The capital is Vanimo. In July 1998 the a ...
, a more sparsely-populated area. Cultural patterns there were different from, say, Mount Hagen. They were closer to those described by Mead. Mead stated that the
Arapesh people The Arapesh languages are several closely related Torricelli languages of the 32,000 Arapesh people of Papua New Guinea. They are spoken in eastern Sandaun Province and northern East Sepik Province, Papua New Guinea. The Arapesh languages are a ...
, also in the Sepik, were
pacifist Pacifism is the opposition or resistance to war, militarism (including conscription and mandatory military service) or violence. Pacifists generally reject theories of Just War. The word ''pacifism'' was coined by the French peace campaign ...
s, but she noted that they on occasion engage in warfare. Her observations about the sharing of garden plots among the Arapesh, the egalitarian emphasis in child rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives are very different from the "big man" displays of dominance that were documented in more stratified New Guinea cultures, such as by
Andrew Strathern Andrew Jamieson Strathern (born 19 January 1939) is a British anthropologist. Strathern earned a doctorate at the University of Cambridge, and teaches at the University of Pittsburgh, where he serves as Andrew Mellon Professor of Anthropology. He ...
. They are a different cultural pattern. In brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles: * "Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war. * "Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament. * "And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men 'primped' and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones—the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America."
Deborah Gewertz Deborah B. Gewertz (born 1948) is an American anthropologist. She is the G. Henry Whitcomb 1874 Professor of Anthropology at Amherst College. Gewertz is a fellow of the Association for Cultural Anthropology and the Association for Social Anthropol ...
(1981) studied the Chambri (called Tchambuli by Mead) in 1974–1975 and found no evidence of such gender roles. Gewertz states that as far back in history as there is evidence (1850s), Chambri men dominated the women, controlled their produce, and made all important political decisions. In later years, there has been a diligent search for societies in which women dominate men or for signs of such past societies, but none has been found (Bamberger 1974).
Jessie Bernard Jessie Shirley Bernard (born Jessie Sarah Ravitch, 1903 – 1996) was an American sociologist and noted feminist scholar. She was a persistent forerunner of feminist thought in American sociology and her life's work is characterized as extraord ...
criticised Mead's interpretations of her findings and argued that Mead's descriptions were subjective. Bernard argues that Mead claimed the Mundugumor women were temperamentally identical to men, but her reports indicate that there were in fact sex differences; Mundugumor women hazed each other less than men hazed each other and made efforts to make themselves physically desirable to others, married women had fewer affairs than married men, women were not taught to use weapons, women were used less as hostages and Mundugumor men engaged in physical fights more often than women. In contrast, the Arapesh were also described as equal in temperament, but Bernard states that Mead's own writings indicate that men physically fought over women, yet women did not fight over men. The Arapesh also seemed to have some conception of sex differences in temperament, as they would sometimes describe a woman as acting like a particularly quarrelsome man. Bernard also questioned if the behaviour of men and women in those societies differed as much from Western behaviour as Mead claimed. Bernard argued that some of her descriptions could be equally descriptive of a Western context. Despite its feminist roots, Mead's work on women and men was also criticized by Betty Friedan on the basis that it contributes to infantilizing women.


Other research areas

In 1926, there was much debate about race and intelligence. Mead felt the methodologies involved in the experimental psychology research supporting arguments of racial superiority in intelligence were substantially flawed. In "The Methodology of Racial Testing: Its Significance for Sociology," Mead proposes that there are three problems with testing for racial differences in intelligence. First, there are concerns with the ability to validly equate one's test score with what Mead refers to as ''racial admixture'' or how much ''Negro or Indian blood'' an individual possesses. She also considers whether that information is relevant when interpreting IQ scores. Mead remarks that a genealogical method could be considered valid if it could be "subjected to extensive verification." In addition, the experiment would need a steady control group to establish whether racial admixture was actually affecting intelligence scores. Next, Mead argues that it is difficult to measure the effect that social status has on the results of a person's intelligence test. She meant that environment (family structure, socioeconomic status, and exposure to language, etc.) has too much influence on an individual to attribute inferior scores solely to a physical characteristic such as race. Then, Mead adds that language barriers sometimes create the biggest problem of all. Similarly, Stephen J. Gould finds three main problems with intelligence testing in his 1981 book '' The Mismeasure of Man'' that relate to Mead's view of the problem of determining whether there are racial differences in intelligence. In 1929, Mead and Fortune visited Manus, now the northernmost province of Papua New Guinea, and traveled there by boat from
Rabaul Rabaul () is a township in the East New Britain province of Papua New Guinea, on the island of New Britain. It lies about 600 kilometres to the east of the island of New Guinea. Rabaul was the provincial capital and most important settlement in ...
. She amply describes her stay there in her autobiography, and it is mentioned in her 1984 biography by Jane Howard. On Manus, she studied the Manus people of the south coast village of Peri. "Over the next five decades Mead would come back oftener to Peri than to any other field site of her career.' Mead has been credited with persuading the
American Jewish Committee The American Jewish Committee (AJC) is a Jewish advocacy group established on November 11, 1906. It is one of the oldest Jewish advocacy organizations and, according to ''The New York Times'', is "widely regarded as the dean of American Jewish org ...
to sponsor a project to study European Jewish villages, '' shtetls'', in which a team of researchers would conduct mass interviews with Jewish immigrants living in New York City. The resulting book, widely cited for decades, allegedly created the
Jewish mother stereotype Stereotypes of Jews are generalized representations of Jews, often caricatured and of a prejudiced and antisemitic nature. Common objects, phrases and traditions which are used to emphasize or ridicule Jewishness include bagels, the complaini ...
, a mother intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes. Mead worked for the RAND Corporation, a US Air Force military-funded private research organization, from 1948 to 1950 to study Russian culture and attitudes toward authority. As an
Anglican Anglicanism is a Western Christian tradition that has developed from the practices, liturgy, and identity of the Church of England following the English Reformation, in the context of the Protestant Reformation in Europe. It is one of th ...
Christian, Mead played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American
Episcopal Episcopal may refer to: *Of or relating to a bishop, an overseer in the Christian church *Episcopate, the see of a bishop – a diocese *Episcopal Church (disambiguation), any church with "Episcopal" in its name ** Episcopal Church (United State ...
Book of Common Prayer.Howard 1984.


Legacy

In 1976, Mead was inducted into the
National Women's Hall of Fame The National Women's Hall of Fame (NWHF) is an American institution incorporated in 1969 by a group of men and women in Seneca Falls, New York, although it did not induct its first enshrinees until 1973. As of 2021, it had 303 inductees. Induc ...
. On January 19, 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead. UN Ambassador Andrew Young presented the award to Mead's daughter at a special program honoring her contributions that was sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, where she spent many years of her career. The citation read: The
U.S. Postal Service The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...
issued a stamp of face value 32¢ on May 28, 1998, as part of the
Celebrate the Century Celebrate the Century is the name of a series of postage stamps made by the United States Postal Service featuring images recalling various important events in the 20th century in the United States.
stamp sheet series. The
Margaret Mead Award Margaret Mead Award is an award in the field of anthropology presented (solely) by the Society for Applied Anthropology from 1979 to 1983 and jointly with the American Anthropological Association afterwards. This award was named after anthropologi ...
is awarded in her honor jointly by the Society for Applied Anthropology and the
American Anthropological Association The American Anthropological Association (AAA) is an organization of scholars and practitioners in the field of anthropology. With 10,000 members, the association, based in Arlington, Virginia, includes archaeologists, cultural anthropologists, ...
, for significant works in communicating anthropology to the general public. In addition, there are several schools named after Mead in the United States: a
junior high school A middle school (also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school) is an educational stage which exists in some countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school ...
in
Elk Grove Village, Illinois Elk Grove Village is a village in Cook and DuPage counties in the U.S. state of Illinois. Per the 2020 census, the population was 32,812. Located northwest of Chicago along the Golden Corridor, the Village of Elk Grove Village was incorporat ...
, an elementary school in Sammamish, Washington and another in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York. In 1979, the
Supersisters ''Supersisters'' was a set of 72 trading cards produced and distributed in the United States in 1979 by Supersisters, Inc. They featured famous women from politics, media and entertainment, culture, sports, and other areas of achievement. The ca ...
trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Mead's name and picture. The 2014 novel ''Euphoria'' by
Lily King Lily King (born 1963) is an American novelist. Early life King grew up in Massachusetts. She earned a B.A. in English literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and an M.A. in creative writing from Syracuse University. ...
is a fictionalized account of Mead's love/marital relationships with fellow anthropologists Reo Fortune and
Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...
in New Guinea before World War II. In the 1967 musical ''
Hair Hair is a protein filament that grows from follicles found in the dermis. Hair is one of the defining characteristics of mammals. The human body, apart from areas of glabrous skin, is covered in follicles which produce thick terminal and f ...
'', her name is given to a tranvestite "tourist" disturbing the show with the song "My Conviction."


Publications

Note: See also ''Margaret Mead: The Complete Bibliography 1925–1975'', Joan Gordan, ed., The Hague: Mouton.


As a sole author

*'' Coming of Age in Samoa'' (1928) *''
Growing Up in New Guinea ''Growing Up in New Guinea'' is a 1930 publication by Margaret Mead. The book is about her encounters with the indigenous people of the Manus Province of Papua New Guinea before they had been changed by missionaries and other western influences. ...
'' (1930) *''The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe'' (1932) *''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies'' (1935) *''And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America'' (1942) *''
Male and Female ''Male and Female'' is a 1919 American silent adventure/drama film directed by Cecil B. DeMille and starring Gloria Swanson and Thomas Meighan. Its main themes are gender relations and social class. The film is based on the 1902 J. M. Barrie ...
'' (1949) *''New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation in Manus, 1928–1953'' (1956) *''People and Places'' (1959; a book for young readers) *''Continuities in Cultural Evolution'' (1964) *''Culture and Commitment'' (1970) *''The Mountain Arapesh: Stream of Events in Alitoa'' (1971) *''Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years'' (1972; autobiography)


As editor or coauthor

*''Balinese Character: A Photographic Analysis'', with Gregory Bateson, 1942, New York Academy of Sciences. * ''
Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority ''Soviet Attitudes Toward Authority: An Interdisciplinary Approach to Problems of Soviet Character'' is a 1951 nonfiction book written by the anthropologist Margaret Mead and eight other specialists. It is published by the RAND Corporation ...
'' (1951) *''Cultural Patterns and Technical Change'', editor (1953) *''Primitive Heritage: An Anthropological Anthology'', edited with Nicholas Calas (1953) *''An Anthropologist at Work'', editor (1959, reprinted 1966; a volume of Ruth Benedict's writings) *''The Study of Culture at a Distance'', edited with Rhoda Metraux, 1953 *''Themes in French Culture'', with Rhoda Metraux, 1954 *''The Wagon and the Star: A Study of American Community Initiative'' co-authored with Muriel Whitbeck Brown, 1966 *''
A Rap on Race ''A Rap on Race'' is a 1971 non-fiction book co-authored by the writer and social critic James Baldwin and the anthropologist Margaret Mead. It consists of transcripts of conversations held between the pair in August 1970. Summary Baldwin and ...
'', with
James Baldwin James Arthur Baldwin (August 2, 1924 – December 1, 1987) was an American writer. He garnered acclaim across various media, including essays, novels, plays, and poems. His first novel, '' Go Tell It on the Mountain'', was published in 1953; de ...
, 1971 *''A Way of Seeing'', with Rhoda Metraux, 1975


See also

* Tim Asch *
Gregory Bateson Gregory Bateson (9 May 1904 – 4 July 1980) was an English anthropologist, social scientist, linguist, visual anthropologist, semiotician, and cyberneticist whose work intersected that of many other fields. His writings include '' Steps to an ...
* Ray Birdwhistell * Macy Conferences *
Elsie Clews Parsons Elsie Worthington Clews Parsons (November 27, 1875 – December 19, 1941) was an American anthropologist, sociologist, folklorist, and feminist who studied Native American tribes—such as the Tewa and Hopi—in Arizona, New Mexico, and Mexi ...
* Visual anthropology *
Zora Neale Hurston Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. She portrayed racial struggles in the early-1900s American South and published research on Hoodoo (spirituality), hoodoo. The most ...
* 75½ Bedford St


References


Sources

* * * Bateson, Mary Catherine. (1984) ''With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson'', New York: William Morrow. * *Caffey, Margaret M., and Patricia A. Francis, eds. (2006). ''To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead''. New York: Basic Books. * Caton, Hiram, ed. (1990) ''The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock'', University Press of America. * *Foerstel, Leonora, and Angela Gilliam, eds. (1992). ''Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press. * Freeman, Derek. (1983) ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'', Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. *Freeman, Derek. (1999) ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research

!--significant material from Acknowledgments and Introduction available free, subscription required for full text-->, Boulder, CO: Westview Press. * *Holmes, Lowell D. (1987). ''Quest for the Real Samoa: the Mead/Freeman Controversy and Beyond''. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey. * Jane Howard (journalist), Howard, Jane. (1984). ''Margaret Mead: A Life'', New York: Simon and Schuster. *Keeley, Lawrence (1996). ''War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage'' (Oxford University Press). *Lapsley, Hilary. (1999). ''Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women''. University of Massachusetts Press. * * *Lutkehaus, Nancy C. (2008). ''Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon''. Princeton: Princeton University Press. * * Mandler, Peter (2013). ''Return from the Natives: How Margaret Mead Won the Second World War and Lost the Cold War.'' New Haven, CT: Yale University Press. * * *Mead, Margaret. 1977
The Future as Frame for the Present
Audio recording of a lecture delivered July 11, 1977. * * * * * *Pinker, Steven A. (1997). ''How the Mind Works''. *Sandall, Roger. (2001) ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays''. * * * *Shore, Brad. (1982) ''Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery''. New York: Columbia University Press. * * *Virginia, Mary E. (2003). Benedict, Ruth (1887–1948). ''DISCovering U.S. History'' online edition, Detroit: Gale. *


External links


Margaret Mead
a
Monoskop
* Online video: . Documentary about the
Mead-Freeman controversy ''Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation'' is a 1928 book by American Anthropology, anthropologist Margaret Mead based upon her research and study of youth – primarily adolescent girls – on ...
, including an interview with one of Mead's original informants.
Creative Intelligence: Female – "The Silent Revolution: Creative Man In Contemporary Society"
Talk at UC Berkeley, 1962 (online audio file)

€“ ethnographic institute founded by Mead, with resources relating to Mead's work.
Library of Congress, Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of CultureAmerican Museum of Natural History, Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival"Margaret Mead, 1901–1978: A Public Face of Anthropology"
brief biography, Voice of America.
Clifford Geertz, "Margaret Mead", Biographical Memoirs of the National Academy of Sciences (1989)
at the Library of Congress has first edition paperbacks of Mead's works. {{DEFAULTSORT:Mead, Margaret 1901 births 1978 deaths American anthropology writers American women anthropologists American curators American women curators American systems scientists Psychological anthropologists Visual anthropologists Women systems scientists Women science writers Fellows of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences Presidential Medal of Freedom recipients Barnard College alumni Cyberneticists Women cyberneticists Deaths from cancer in New York (state) Deaths from pancreatic cancer DePauw University alumni Kalinga Prize recipients People associated with the American Museum of Natural History Presidents of the American Anthropological Association Columbia University faculty University of Rhode Island faculty Writers from Philadelphia Youth empowerment people 20th-century American non-fiction writers 20th-century American scientists 20th-century American women scientists 20th-century American women writers Social Science Research Council American women non-fiction writers Members of the Society of Woman Geographers 20th-century American anthropologists 20th-century American Episcopalians American women academics Bateson family Articles containing video clips Presidents of the International Society for the Systems Sciences Members of the American Philosophical Society Oceanianism