Mead, Margaret (redirected from Margaret Mead)

Mead, Margaret, 1901–78, American anthropologist, b. Philadelphia, grad. Barnard, 1923, Ph.D. Columbia, 1929. In 1926 she became assistant curator, in 1942 associate curator, and from 1964 to 1969 she was curator of ethnology of the American Museum of Natural History, New York City. After 1954 she served as adjunct professor of anthropology at Columbia. A student and collaborator of Ruth Benedict, she focused her interests on problems of child rearing, personality, and culture. Her fieldwork was carried out primarily among the peoples of Oceania. She was also active with the World Federation for Mental Health. A prolific writer and avid speaker who enjoyed engaging the general public, Mead was instrumental in popularizing the anthropological concept of culture with readers in the United States. She also stressed the need for anthropologists to understand the perspective of women and children. Her works include Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), Growing Up in New Guinea (1930), The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932), Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Male and Female (1949), New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation in Manus, 1928–1953 (1956), People and Places (1959), Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964), Culture and Commitment (1970), and a biographical account of her early years, Blackberry Winter (1972). She is also the author of a book for young people, People and Places (1959). She edited Cultural Patterns and Technical Change (1953) and a volume of Ruth Benedict's writings, An Anthropologist at Work (1959, repr. 1966).

Bibliography

See studies by Mead's daughter, M. C. Bateson (1985), and by J. Howard (1985).

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Mead, Margaret

(born Dec. 16, 1901, Philadelphia, Pa., U.S.—died Nov. 15, 1978, New York, N.Y.) U.S. anthropologist. She studied under Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict at Columbia University and did fieldwork in Samoa before completing her Ph.D. (1929). The first and most famous of her 23 books, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), presents evidence in support of cultural determinism with respect to the formation of personality or temperament. Her other books include Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Male and Female (1949), and Culture and Commitment (1970). Her theories caused later 20th-century anthropologists to question both the accuracy of her observations and the soundness of her conclusions. In her later years she became a prominent voice on such wide-ranging issues as women's rights and nuclear proliferation, and her great fame owed as much to the force of her personality and her outspokenness as to the quality of her scientific work. She served in curatorial positions at the American Museum of Natural History for over 50 years.

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Mead, Margaret (1901–78) cultural anthropologist, author; born in Philadelphia. Daughter of a University of Pennsylvania economist and a feminist political activist, she graduated from Barnard College in 1923 and went on to take a Ph.D. in Franz Boas' program at Columbia University in 1929. Appointed assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1926, she retained the museum connection for more than a half-century. After expeditions to Samoa and New Guinea, she published Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) and Growing Up in New Guinea (1930). Altogether, she made 24 field trips among six South Pacific peoples. She was married and divorced three times; her third husband (1936–50) was anthropologist Gregory Bateson, with whom she collaborated in field research. Her later works included Male and Female (1949) and Growth and Culture (1951), in which she argued that personality characteristics, especially as they differ between men and women, were shaped by cultural conditioning rather than heredity. Some critics called her field work impressionistic, but her writings have proved enduring and have made anthropology accessible to a wider public. In her later years she became one of the best known individuals in America, her presence and opinions sought for every possible occasion.