Margaret Mead: biography of this anthropologist and researcher

Margaret Mead was one of the pioneers of American cultural anthropology and feminism in the second half of the 20th century. Among other things, she studied how social norms about sexuality, childhood and adolescence differ between different cultures; which served to question the biological perspectives that dominated the understanding of human development.

In this article we will see the biography of Margaret Mead, some of her contributions to North American anthropological thought, as well as her works with the her that she was recognized as one of the most representative exponents of the social sciences contemporary.

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Margaret Mead: biography of a pioneer in anthropology and gender

Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was a cultural anthropologist who maintained an important gender perspective in her studies, which is why she also considers herself as one of the forerunners of the American feminist movement.

She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was the oldest of 4 siblings. Although her parents were also social scientists, who had greatly inspired her career, Mead

she defined her paternal grandmother as her most decisive influence, whom she recognized as a very empowered woman.

In 1923, Margaret Mead graduated from Barnard College, which was a women's school affiliated with Columbia University. She had taken most of her subjects in Psychology, a career that interested her a lot and that motivated her to study child development.

She subsequently trained with Franz Boas, professor of anthropology at Columbia, and finally became convinced to study and practice this discipline. She obtained a doctorate degree in anthropology in 1929 from Columbia University.

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The academic world and the private life of Margaret Mead

One of Margaret Mead's convictions was that cultural conditions are more determining than genetic characteristics in human behavior; which she quickly transferred to the analysis of gender roles and human development.

From this she compared various cultures that were considered "primitive" with the North American culture. Given the cultural conditions of the time in the American West, her thinking was very innovative, although at the same time it received negative responses.

Generally speaking, Mead had a very liberal perspective on sexuality, which was visible not only in her academic papers, but in her relational experiences. In other words, her academic and private perspective was very close to cultural relativism and moral relativism. on sexuality, which also placed it at the center of many moralistic criticisms and controversies in the world academic.

Despite this, her academic rigor soon made her a prestigious woman. She joined the American Museum of Natural History in New York as a curator, in addition to having taught at the She Columbia University, New York University, Emory University, Yale University, and the University of Cincinnati. She eventually founded the department of anthropology at Fordham University.

She also became president of the American Anthropological Association, among other well-known institutes of applied anthropology. Among other things, she promoted the creation of a national archive of ethnographic films that would serve to preserve the important work and anthropological legacy.

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Human development and gender roles in Nueva Guinea

During her work, Mead refuted the idea of ​​"primitive" societies, where the inhabitants were considered as children, or as if they were genetically determined to develop psychological states "less advanced ”. She argued that human development depends on the social environment.

From there, Mead observed that gender roles were very different between the different societies, with which she concluded that these roles depend much more on culture than on biology.

She made visible, for example, that women were dominant in some tribes of Papua New Guinea, without causing any social problems. There were tribes where women and men were more pacifists and lived in more cooperative societies than the American one, for example in Arapesh.

In other tribes, such as Tchambuli, men and women had different roles, but very different from those of the West. Men were closer to the plane of the sensible, and women directed public activities.

The opposite she found in societies such as Mundugumor, where she saw that men and women had developed more explosive and conflictive temperaments, with which children were also educated in a harsher way.

Buying the studies among these societies, Mead concluded that culture shapes human behavior. Hence one of her most famous phrases: "human nature is malleable."

Gender perspective

For Mead, masculinity and femininity reflect cultural conditions, and gender differences are not entirely determined by biology. Her perspective of her gender roles was very radical for her time and helped break down many taboos around mid-20th century sexuality in American society.

Although she did not call herself a "feminist," her theoretical developments not only impacted academia, but she was quickly recognized as an activist and pioneer of the feminist movement.

He defended the freedom of sexual practices, criticized traditional family structures, parenting based on dissymmetric gender models, and finally, promoted the transformation of moral values ​​related to sexuality.

Main works

Some of her main works are Coming of Age in Samoa, a 1928 book that resulted from her doctoral thesis where studied mainly adolescent girls from the Polynesian islands in relation to norms about sexuality that circulated there. In addition, he made some comparisons of the transition to adulthood with American culture and the emotional effects on young people.

With this work, Mead positioned himself as one of the great influences of the anthropology of her time. Later he continued to study the relationship between childhood, adolescence, and American families, emphasizing the value of comparative and interdisciplinary work.

Other of his important works are Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primitive Education (Growing up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study on Early Education); and the film Trance and Dance in Bali, Learning to Dance in Bali, and Karba’s First Years. Likewise, Margaret Mead participated in other film productions that addressed the issue of different care and parenting practices in different cultures.

Bibliographic references:

• Bowman-Kruhm, M. (2003). Margaret Mead, a biography. Greenwood Press: London.
• New World Encyclopedia. (2014). Margaret Mead. New World Encyclopedia. Retrieved May 16, 2018. Available in http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Margaret_Mead.
• Streeter, L. (2016). Margaret Mead. Cultural Equality. Retrieved May 16, 2018. Available in http://www.culturalequity.org/alanlomax/ce_alanlomax_profile_margaret_mead.php.