Life and achievements
Early life
Margaret Mead was born into an academic family in Philadelphia in 1901 but was raised in Doylestown, Pennsylvania.
Her father was Edward Sherwood Mead, a professor, and her mother, Emily Mead, focused on Italian immigrants.
This intellectual atmosphere and constant moving from one place to another because of her parents' work contributed to Mead's interest in cultures and societies.
Most of her childhood education was homeschooled until she joined Buckingham Friends School and then DePauw University in 1919.
Later in the year, Mead moved to Barnard College, in which she embraced anthropology under the tutelage of Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict.
Mead's early academic experiences were the most important in her evolution into an anthropologist.
At Barnard, she learned cultural anthropology and started to ponder that people's actions are not determined by genes but by culture.
Her interaction with Boas and Benedict shaped her research perspectives, especially her emphasis on ethnography and culture.
Mead got her bachelor's degree in 1923 and immediately continued her education at Columbia University, where she received her M.A. in 1924.
Her first fieldwork was the study of adolescence in a primitive society, which she undertook in Samoa in 1925.
Mead's analysis, based on the impact of Samoan culture on youth, shaped her famous book, Coming of Age in Samoa.
The conclusions made in the book were contrary to the Eurocentric view of human evolution and served as the basis for Mead's further research.
Legacy
It is impossible to doubt Margaret Mead's importance in the world of anthropology of the twentieth century.
Her work on cultural determinism broke away from traditionalist views of biological influences on human behavior.
She was a significant contributor to making anthropology known to the public.
Thanks to Mead's talent for explaining anthropological ideas to everyone, she became a public figure whose impact was not limited to her profession.
Mead's work transformed anthropology and influenced debates on gender, sexual, and child-rearing practices in the West.
Her retransformed anthropology made her realize that societies had complex and flexible gender systems, which facilitated the change of gender roles in the United States.
Her contributions to child development, especially culture and socialization in childhood, impacted education and parenting for the whole of the twentieth century.
Other social issues that Mead highlighted include the following: she was an activist in environmental conservation, women's rights, and nuclear disarming and applied anthropological knowledge in policymaking.
Her presidency in the American Association for the Advancement of Science and her work in the American Museum of Natural History also contributed to the visibility of anthropology as a science with practical applications.
Milestone moments
Dec 25, 1925
Fieldwork in Samoa
Margaret Mead began her first anthropological field trip to Samoa.
This study aimed to explore adolescence in a culture different from the Western world.
She later used these in her classic work, Coming of Age in Samoa.
According to Mead, culture determines what adolescents go through in their developmental stage.
Therefore, this study provided a one-stop shop to challenge some Western theories on human development.
Feb 14, 1928
Publication of Coming of Age in Samoa
Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa, which is a bestselling book.
The book changed the course of anthropology by coming up with cultural relativism.
It claimed that Samoan adolescence was less stressful because of the cultural practices that were in place.
Mead's conclusions could have been more popular and initiated the discussions on culture instead of biology.
Nov 27, 1949
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies
In 1935, Mead published Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, another book that would profoundly impact the readership.
In this book, she describes gender roles in three different societies in Papua New Guinea.
She concluded that gender roles were not an innate part of human beings but rather a social construction.
This work was instrumental in developing the mid-twentieth century's feminist perspective.
May 15, 1975
President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science
Mead also assumed the presidency of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).
This role made her one of the most respected public intellectuals in science.
She used her influence to address environmental conservation and nuclear power issues.
She reduced the gap between scientific discovery and policymaking during her presidency.