MARGRET MEAD

BIOGRAPHY

 Margret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist

 She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania United states in December 16, 1901
 She died in New yoke in the year 1978 due to pancreatic cancer
 Margret Mead married three times and her longest relationship was with a woman.
 Her first husband was Luther Cressman (1923-1928) followed by Reo Fortune (1928-
1935), lastly Gregory Bateson (1936-19550).
 Her sexuality has been viewed controversial evidenced by some saying she was lesbian
while some say bi-sexual because she once had an affair with her instructor Ruth
Benedict.
Religion

 She was a Christian who was baptised into the Episcopal church at the age of 11 even if
her parents were believed in atheism .
 Religion played an important role in her life.
 She was active in organisations such as the world council of church and the protestant
episcopal church in the USA.
 WORKS

 She was the first anthropologist to study child rearing practices and learning theory within
social groups
 Based on her observations, she proposed children learn through imprinting
 Imprinting is whereby children learn through watching adult behaviour
 This is evidence by her quote “ children must be taught how to think, not what to think”
 She wrote and appeared in Redbook magazine and was a popular interview subject on a
wealth of topics.
 Margret Mead worked for the American museum of Natural History as an assistant
curator of technology in 1927.
 She also conducted a fieldwork methods through the use of photographs, films,
psychological testing as well as male and female researchers.
 In one of her field research “coming to Samoa” she used ethnography as her method of
research.
 She helped inspire anthropological feminism, sexual revolution and other countercultural
trends without controversy.
Notable works of Mead (Books she wrote)
 “coming of age in Samoa”
 “A rap on race”
 “Sex and temperament in three primitive societies”
 Balinese character. A photographic analysis
Her famous quotes

 “Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression”

 “We wont have a society if we destroy the environment”
 “Always remember that you are absolutely unique just like everyone”
How she contributed to the rise of
anthropology

 Her later works included male and female (1949), and growth and culture (1951) in which
Mead argued that personality characteristics differ between men and women which are
shaped by cultural conditions rather than heredity.
 Critics have argued that her field of work was impressionistic but her writings have
proved injuring and have made anthropology acceptable to her wide public hence Margret
Mead played a pivotal role in the rise of anthropology
 In her last days she spoke and wrote two popular audience on different aspect such as
generation gap, aging, the nuclear family, education, the environment, race, poverty,
women rights and sexual behaviour of which she used mass media to convey her
messages such as radeo and television program.
 During the 1960s and 1970s she became more interested in ecologically issues and in the
field Ekistics which is the study of human settlements. Ekistics was the brain child of her
friend named Constantinos A Doxidis a greek architect and city planer.
 Moreso one of her last concerns was congressional passage of child nutrition legislation.
 She also contributed to anthropology by seeking for a doctor who would permit her to
implement her own ideas about child birth and child religion.
 These ideas were triggered by her experiences with practicise in different cultures .
 The doctor that Mead could breast feed her baby on demand, a practice which was not
widely accepted in American medical community at that time.
 Mead always had a passion in exploring new forms of communication.
 She conducted a lecture using telephone with her voice piped over a loud speaker to a
lecture hall so the audience could hear her and ask questions and she described this a
“genuinely” new invention and called it for its use in improving the public understanding
of science hence developing anthropology.
 As an anthropologist she stresses that, “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful,
committed citizens can change the world, indeed”
 However this was critiqued by Nelson Mandela who said education is the most powerful
weapon you can use to change the world.