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Margaret Mead (1901–1978)

Autor(a) de Coming of Age in Samoa

85+ Works 4,748 Membros 42 Críticas 1 Favorited

About the Author

Margaret Mead, an American anthropologist, was for most of her life the most illustrious curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She was famed not only as an anthropologist but also as a public figure, a popularizer of the social sciences, and an analyst of American society. mostrar mais While at Columbia University, she was a student of Franz Boas, whose teaching assistant, Ruth Benedict, became one of Mead's closest colleagues and friends; after Benedict's death, Mead became her first biographer and the custodian of her field notes and papers. Mead's early research in Samoa led to her best selling book, "Coming of Age in Samoa" (1928); it also led, after her death, to a well-publicized attack on her work by the Australian anthropologist Derek Freeman. Her importance was not damaged by his book; in fact, there is probably a greater awareness today of the important role that she played in twentieth-century intellectual history as an advocate of tolerance, education, civil liberties, world peace, and the worldwide ecumenical movement within Christianity. She was an active and devout Episcopalian throughout her life. On January 6, 1979, she was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor. (Bowker Author Biography) Margaret Mead was born on December 16, 1901 in Philadelphia. Her family moved a great deal during her childhood and encouraged her to pursue an education. She graduated from Barnard College in 1923 and earned a Ph.D. in Anthropology from Columbia University in 1929. The 1928 publication of her first book, "Coming of Age in Samoa," was based on her study of the sexual patterns of Samoan adolescent girls. It became a best-seller and changed American anthropology; it also established Mead as one of the leaders in American anthropology, a position she retained for 50 years. Mead was active in education most of her life and taught and lectured at many prominent schools, including Columbia University, Vassar College, Fordham University, and New York University. She was appointed assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History in 1926, becoming successively associate curator in 1942, curator in 1964 and emeritus curator in 1969. In all, Mead wrote 23 widely read books. Some other titles include "Growing Up in New Guinea," "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies," and "Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America." Margaret Mead died of cancer in New York City in 1978. (Bowker Author Biography) mostrar menos

Séries

Obras por Margaret Mead

Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) 1,354 exemplares
Male and Female (1949) 507 exemplares
Growing up in New Guinea (1930) 320 exemplares
A Rap on Race (1971) 193 exemplares
Letters From the Field, 1925-1975 (1977) 136 exemplares
Cultural Patterns and Technical Change (1953) — Editor — 99 exemplares
New Lives for Old (1956) 84 exemplares
Family (1965) 81 exemplares
People and Places (1959) 77 exemplares
An Anthropologist at Work: Writings of Ruth Benedict (1959) — Editor; Introdução — 48 exemplares
Continuities in cultural evolution (1964) — Autor — 34 exemplares
Ruth Benedict (1947) 26 exemplares
Science and the Concept of Race (1968) — Editor — 24 exemplares
Anthropology: A Human Science (1964) 20 exemplares
Aspects of the Present (1980) 17 exemplares
Russian Culture (2001) 9 exemplares
Interview With Santa Claus (1978) 8 exemplares
The Maoris and Their Arts. (1945) 7 exemplares
The American Character. (1944) 4 exemplares
La fe en el siglo XX 3 exemplares
To Grandmother With Love (1992) 2 exemplares
Study of Visual Culture (2011) 2 exemplares
DISCUSSIONE SULLA RAZZA (2022) 1 exemplar
Le racisme en question. (1972) 1 exemplar
Mann Und Weib 1 exemplar

Associated Works

Patterns of Culture (1934) — Prefácio, algumas edições1,101 exemplares
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals (1872) — Prefácio, algumas edições748 exemplares
Written by Herself, Volume I: Autobiographies of American Women (1992) — Contribuidor — 426 exemplares
The Norton Book of Women's Lives (1993) — Contribuidor — 409 exemplares
Life Is with People: The Culture of the Shtetl (1952) — Introdução, algumas edições307 exemplares
Anthropological Theory: An Introductory History (1996) — Contribuidor — 205 exemplares
Ants, Indians, and little dinosaurs (1975) — Contribuidor — 191 exemplares
Maiden Voyages: Writings of Women Travelers (1993) — Contribuidor — 191 exemplares
Modern American Memoirs (1995) — Contribuidor — 189 exemplares
The Australian Aborigines (1938) — Prefácio, algumas edições88 exemplares
The Futurists (1972) — Contribuidor — 69 exemplares
The Tender Gift: Breastfeeding (1973) — Prefácio — 16 exemplares
Traditional Balinese culture; essays (1970) — Foreword and contributor — 5 exemplares
Introducing anthropology — Contribuidor — 4 exemplares
The Best from Cosmopolitan — Contribuidor — 4 exemplares
Growing up in New Zealand (1978) — Prefácio — 3 exemplares

Etiquetado

Conhecimento Comum

Nome canónico
Mead, Margaret
Data de nascimento
1901-12-16
Data de falecimento
1978-11-15
Localização do túmulo
Trinity Episcopal Church, Buckingham, Pennsylvania, USA
Sexo
female
Nacionalidade
USA
Local de nascimento
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA
Local de falecimento
New York, New York, USA
Causa da morte
pancreatic cancer
Educação
DePauw University
Barnard College (BA ∙ 1923)
Columbia University (MA ∙ 1924) (Ph.D. in 1929)
Ocupações
anthropologist
writer
curator (American Museum of Natural History, New York)
lecturer ( Vassar College 1939-41), (Columbia University 1947-51)
adjunct professor (Columbia University 1954- 78)
professor (anthropology and a chairman of the Division of Social Sciences at Fordham University1969 -71
Relações
Bateson, Gregory (third husband)
Mead, Edward Sherwood (Father)
Mead, Emily (Fogg) (Mother)
Bateson, Mary Catherine (daughter)
Houston, Jean (associate)
Heyman, Ken (colleague)
Organizações
American Academy of Arts and Letters (Literature ∙ 1955)
American Association for the Advancement of Science (1936 President)
Prémios e menções honrosas
Presidential Medal of Freedom (1979)
Kalinga Prize for the Popularization of Science (1970)

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Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia into a Quaker family. The family tradition was strong in the social sciences. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of economics at the University of Pennsylvania, and mother, Emily (Fogg) Mead, a sociologist. In her early childhood, before she knew what the words meant, Mead learned to say, "My father majored in economics and minored in sociology and my mother majored in sociology and minored in economics." In 1919 she entered DePauw University but transferred after a year to Barnard College, where she took a course in anthropology with Professor Franz Boas (1858-1942) and his assistant, Dr. Ruth Benedict.
According to Margaret Caffey's biography about Ruth Benedict, Mead became eventually Benedict's intimate friend. Her first marriage with Luther S. Cressman, a minister and archaeologist, ended in 1928. In the same year she married Dr. Reo F. Fortune, a New Zealand anthropologist, with whom she published GROWING UP IN NEW GUINEA (1930). It compared observations of Pacific Island life with contemporary American educational system. Without accepting promiscuity Mead suggested that in modern society sex attitudes might be more relaxed.
Mead received her Ph.D. in 1929 from Columbia University. She carried out a number of field studies in the Pacific. Edward Mead once had said to her, "It's a pity you aren't a boy; you'd have gone far." Her first field trip Mead made in 1925-26 to the island of Tau, in Samoa. There she studied the development of girls in that society, and published the results in Coming of Age in Samoa. In the study she investigated adolescence lovemaking, and demonstrated that the transition of Samoan young girls into adult women went apparently without emotional crises. The result was contrasted with that of American girls. Mead suggested, that Americans could learn things from the Samoans about rising children. In 1983 an Australian researcher, Derek Freeman, claimed in his book Margaret Mead and Samoa (1983), that she had ignored biological factors in favor of a theory of cultural determination of sex roles. Jane Howard in her biography of Margaret Mead (1984) tells that she characterized the men of the Arapesh people of New Guinea as gentle and unaggressive while her co-worker Reo F. Fortune recorded that many old men "claimed one or more war homicides to his credit."
On her other expeditions Mead made field studies in the Admiralty Islands, New Guinea, and Bali. From 1926 Mead held a position at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. She remained a member of the staff for the rest of her career, retiring as a curator emeritus of ethnology in 1969. Mead was a visiting lecturer at Vassar College (1939-41), a lecturer at Columbia University (1947-51), and from 1954 to 1978 she was an adjunct professor of anthropology at Columbia. From 1969 to 1971 Mead was a professor of anthropology and a chairman of the Division of Social Sciences at Fordham University. She also held a number of visiting professorships. At the age of 72, she was elected to the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
In 1936 Mead went with her third husband, the English anthropologist Gregory Bateson, to Bali to do field work. After about fifteen years, they divorced, but the period was probably the richest in her life. "American women are good mothers," she once said, "but they make poor wives; Americans are very poor at being attentive to anybody else." In their Bali years they took and annotated 25,000 photographs. Catherine Bateson, their daughter and only child, born in 1939, become the target of her parent's enthusiastic observations - her birth was filmed and her childhood was scrupulously recorded. BALINESE CHARACTER appeared in 1942 and GROWTH AND CULTURE, written with the collaboration of Frances Cooke Macgregor, in 1951.
During World War II Mead served as an executive secretary of the committee on food habits of the National Research Council. She wrote pamphlets for the Office of War Information. After the war Mead published Male and Female: A Study of the Sexes in a Changing World, which made use of her observations of people in the South Pacific and the East Indies. "We know of no culture that has said, articulately, that there is no difference between men and women except in the way they contribute to the creation of the next generation." (from Male and Female, 1948) Partly Mead wanted to prove that although there are certain differences between sexes - connected with impregnation, giving birth and nursing - they shouldn't be considered restrictions. In the last chapter Mead defended women's right to develop their talents. She also tentatively presented the supposition that men have a subtle superiority in natural sciences, mathematics, and instrumental music compared to women, who are more skillful in humanities in which they can use intuition. THEMES IN FRENCH CULTURE (1954) was an attempt to apply anthropological mythology to the study of Western society. It was written with Rhoda Budendey Métraux, a younger colleague with whom Mead shared a house in Greenwich Village for many years.

Membros

Críticas

Three essays developed from the "Man and Nature" lectures at the American Museum of Natural History. According to Kirkus Reviews, "In the first two essays she classifies cultures in terms of models for behavior. In "postfigurative" societies the three generation family is typical, and grandparents set the tone of the life style. "Cofigurative" societies are those in which there is some recognition and approval of change, and models can be drawn from contemporaries. We are now moving toward a "prefigurative" society—the NOW generation if you will—and Mead feels that this may be our only hope."… (mais)
 
Assinalado
PendleHillLibrary | Mar 8, 2024 |
[I have deleted my review because of repeated ad hominem attacks. I thought that readers might reasonably disagree - even strenuously - with the reviews of others but without attacking the reviewer. It had not occurred to me that anyone - anyone - would become so personally incensed by a review as to attack the reviewer, make false accusations against & insinuations of evil motives towards a reviewer.]
 
Assinalado
RickGeissal | 17 outras críticas | Aug 16, 2023 |
Mead's classic effort to prove life stages cultural rather than biological
 
Assinalado
ritaer | 17 outras críticas | Aug 10, 2021 |

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Estatísticas

Obras
85
Also by
18
Membros
4,748
Popularidade
#5,292
Avaliação
½ 3.7
Críticas
42
ISBN
225
Línguas
14
Marcado como favorito
1

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