This week I've decided to start a new series in this blog: Famous Anthropologists! This will be a series of posts each dedicated to a famous figure in history regarding anthropology, and to kick it off we'll be starting with..drum roll, please...Margaret Mead!
Born on December 16, 1901, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S., as one of six children, Margaret was mostly homeschooled. Her progressive parents, who were both involved in academics, encouraged her to be open-minded about the world and probably influenced her to pursue the field of anthropology. Regarding her family life, she married three times and had one daughter.
She began her education at DePauw University in 1919, transferred to Barnard College a year after for her undergraduate degree and graduated in 1923, and then proceeded to Columbia University for graduate school. There, she was heavily inspired by her supervisor Franz Boas and her dear friend Ruth Benedict, both anthropologists (who I will discuss in a later post!), and also earned her M.A. (Master of Arts) degree and Ph.D. Interestingly, Franz Boaz's major contribution to anthropology explained how cultural evolution or human development is not a linear process, and how not all cultures are working towards a Western industrialized society (which Social Darwinism has placed as the most evolved in the minds of most people throughout history). On the other hand, each culture is different and works toward what works for them, and this does not make them any less evolved than Western industrialized societies. This specifically probably led Mead to become a pioneer in the cultural anthropology field as she set out on her various trips to the South Seas where she lived alongside the Samoan people to learn almost everything about their culture and way of life. It was there that in 1925 she gathered her material for her first of not one, not five, but twenty-three books! It was called Coming of Age in Samoa which she wrote in 1928, and it turned out to be her most renowned book to this day.
Looking more into Coming of Age in Samoa, this book was based on the analysis of the youth in Samoa, mostly focusing on adolescent girls and the general concept of sexual development in Samoa. During her time in Samoa, Mead fully immersed herself in the Samoan culture, learning the language and participating in cultural traditions, and practically became part of an actual Samoan community. This book probably also gained a lot of traction because of its theme of sexual development, which is viewed as a taboo subject in most parts of the world, including the United States where Mead originated from. In Samoa though, sexuality is a regular part of everyday culture. From her observations of this, Mead argued that the societal outlook on sexual attitudes in Samoa, which did not have strict expectations on sex, dating, and marriage, gave rise to lower levels of stress in both girls and women. Not only did Mead's work change the way people think about human cultures, but it was also very likely to be conducive to the sexual revolution in the United States during the 1960s.
Since World War 2 prohibited her from traveling to other parts of the world to expand her research further, Mead later began to work on gender roles in the United States. She was also a worker and curator at the famous Natural History Museum in New York for a large portion of her life, but it wasn't until later, in her 60s-70s, that her great work in this field began to gain more attention from anthropologists and others. In 1975 at the age of 72, she was elected president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Additionally, even after her passing in 1978, she was awarded the Presidential Medal of Honor, which is the United States's highest civilian honor, in 1979 for her work and its major impact on the world.
So, this is all I have on Margaret Mead for you all! Feel free to comment any other anthropology figures that you'd like me to write about in this new series! Until next time! :)
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