Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978)

1. Birth and early family life:Mead was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania (USA) in a family of intellectuals. Mead's father, Edward Sherwood Mead, is an economics professor at the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School; Mead's mother, Emily (Fogg) Mead is a sociologist.

2. Education :Mead studied philosophy and obtained a BA from Barnard College in New York in 1923. Later, she earned a Master's degree (1924) and a PhD (1929) from Columbia University, by Professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict. The anthropology, for her, is a new way to bring about an understanding of human behavior in the future.

3. Life

3.1. Career

3.1.1. Mead studied philosophy and obtained a BA from Barnard College in New York in 1923. She later earned a Master's degree (1924) and a Ph.D. (1929) from Columbia University. the teaching of Professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict. The anthropology, for her, is a new way to bring about an understanding of human behavior in the future.

3.1.2. In 1925, she made her first field trip to Ta'u Island in the Polynesia Islands (South Pacific), to learn about Samoa, focusing on teenage girls. From research, she wrote the book Coming of Age in Samoa, becoming the best-selling and translated in many languages ​​around the world.

3.1.3. In 1926, she worked as assistant secretary at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1929, she went to Manus Island in New Guinea to study young people and how they shaped society. The book Growing Up in New Guinea is published. Mead became the first anthropologist to use a multicultural perspective to view human development (human history).

3.1.4. In 1938, she went to study in Papua, New Guinea. She found new ways of demonstrating the connection between parenting and adult culture, and the way in which the symbols were intertwined.

3.1.5. When World War II broke out, research was cut in the South Pacific, Mead and Ruth Benedict became volunteer anthropologists in the Institute for Intercultural Studies. By 1953, Mead returned to Manus Island and wrote the New Lives for Old study, exploring the dramatic changes made in dealing with the wider world, which showed a new basis for Her insistence on the possibility of selection in possible future.

3.1.6. Between 1968 and 1970, she became professor of anthropology at Fordham University in central Lincoln, establishing anthropology. She focuses on issues of child rearing, personification and culture.

3.1.7. In addition to his anthropological contributions, she contributed to the study of gender and sexuality in the works of: Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), Male and Female (1949), People and Place 1959)

3.1.8. In 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced that he had given Mead the Presidential Medal of Freedom and sent it to her daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson. Margaret Mead is considered the symbol of America.

3.2. Research Works

3.2.1. Individual research works

3.2.1.1. Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) ISBN 0-688-05033-

3.2.1.2. Growing Up In New Guinea (1930)

3.2.1.3. Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)

3.2.1.4. And Keep Your Dry Powder: An Anthropologist Looks At America (1942)

3.2.1.5. New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation in Manus, 1928-1953 (1956)

3.2.1.6. People and Places (1959; a book for young readers)

3.2.1.7. Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964)

3.2.1.8. Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years (1972; autobiography) ISBN 0-317-60065-6

3.2.1.9. Male and Female (1949) ISBN 0-688-14676-7

3.2.1.10. Culture and Commitment (1970)

3.2.1.11. The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932)

3.2.2. Joint Research Projects

3.2.2.1. Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, editor (1953)

3.2.2.2. Primitive Heritage: An Anthropological Anthology, edited with Nicholas Calas (1953)

3.2.2.3. An Anthropologist at Work, editor (1959, reprinted 1966; volume of Ruth Benedict's writings)

3.2.2.4. The Study of Culture at A Distance, edited with Rhoda Metraux, 1953

3.2.2.5. Themes in French Culture, with Rhoda Metraux, 1954

3.2.2.6. The Wagon and the Star: A Study of the American Community Initiative co-authored with Muriel Whitbeck Brown, 1966

3.2.2.7. A Rap on Race, with James Baldwin, 1971

3.2.2.8. A Way of Seeing, with Rhoda Metraux, 1975

3.3. Personal life

3.3.1. Before departing for Samoa, Mead had a short affair with the linguist Edward Sapir, a close friend of her instructor Ruth Benedict. But Sapir's conservative ideas about marriage and the woman's role were anathema to Mead, and as Mead left to do field work in Samoa the two separated permanently. Mead received news of Sapir's remarriage while living in Samoa, where, on a beach, she later burned their correspondence.

3.3.2. Mead was married three times

3.3.2.1. Her first husband (1923–28) was American Luther Cressman, a theology student at the time who eventually became an anthropologist. Mead dismissively characterized their union as "my student marriage" in Blackberry Winter, a sobriquet with which Cressman took vigorous issue.

3.3.2.2. Her second husband (1928–1935) was New Zealander Reo Fortune, a Cambridge graduate and fellow anthropologist.

3.3.2.3. Mead's third and longest-lasting marriage (1936–50) was to the British anthropologist Gregory Bateson, with whom she had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who would also become an anthropologist.

3.3.3. 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 implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual. Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual's sexual orientation may evolve throughout life.

3.3.4. She spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux, 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.

3.3.5. She spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux, 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.

4. Controversy

4.1. After her death Mead's Samoan research was criticized by anthropologist Derek Freeman, who published a book that argued against many of Mead's conclusions. 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's critique was met with a considerable backlash and harsh criticism from the anthropology community, whereas it was received enthusiastically by communities of scientists who believed that sexual mores were more or less universal across cultures. Some anthropologists who studied Samoan culture argued in favor of Freeman's findings and contradicted those of Mead, whereas 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. While Mead was careful to shield the identity of all her subjects for confidentiality Freeman was able to find and interview 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. On the whole, anthropologists have rejected the notion that Mead's conclusions rested on the validity of a single interview with a single person, finding 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. Some anthropologists have however maintained that even though Freeman's critique was invalid, Mead's study was not sufficiently scientifically rigorous to support the conclusions she drew.

4.2. Mead's reputation and significance as an anthropologist have not been diminished by Freeman's criticisms. In her book Galileo's Middle Finger, 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.

5. Legacy

5.1. On January 19, 1979, 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 Mead's contributions, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, where she spent many years of her career.

5.2. "Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn."

5.3. In 1979, the Supersisters trading card set was produced and distributed; one of the cards featured Mead's name and picture

5.4. The 2006 music video for "If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback, ends with her quote: "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has." This quote is also in the 15th episode of the 4th season of The West Wing.

5.5. The 2014 novel Euphoria by Lily King, is a fictionalized account of Mead's love/marital relationships with fellow anthropologists Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson in pre-WWII New Guinea. Euphoria won the Kirkus Prize, and was selected as 'One of the 10 Best Books of the Year' by the New York Times Book Review.

5.6. In addition, there are several schools named after Mead in the United States: a junior high school in Elk Grove Village, Illinois,an elementary school in Sammamish, Washington and another in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York.

5.7. The USPS issued a stamp of face value 32¢ on 28 May 1998, as part of the Celebrate the Century stamp sheet series.

5.8. In the 1982 movie Summer Lovers, Valérie Quennessen's anthropologist character attributes the following to Margaret Mead: Jealousy doesn't show how much you love someone, but how insecure you are.