Margaret Mead was one of the pioneers of American cultural anthropology and feminism in the second half of the 20th century. She studied, among other things, how social norms about sexuality, childhood and adolescence differed across cultures; this served to question the biological perspectives that dominated understanding of human development.

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

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, and is therefore also considered to be one of the precursors of the North American feminist movement .

She was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and was the oldest of four children. Although her parents were also social scientists, who had greatly inspired her professional career, Mead defined as her most decisive influence her paternal grandmother , whom she recognized as a very empowered woman.

In 1923, Margaret Mead graduated from Barnard College, a school for women affiliated with Columbia University. She had taken most of her courses in psychology, a career that interested her and motivated her to study child development.

He later trained with Franz Boas, professor of anthropology at Columbia, and was finally convinced to study and practice this discipline. He received his doctorate in anthropology in 1929 from Columbia University.

Margaret Mead’s Academic and Private Life

One of Margaret Mead’s convictions was that cultural conditions are more determinative than genetic characteristics in human behavior; which she quickly translated into the analysis of gender roles and human development.

From this he compared several cultures that were considered “primitive”, with the North American culture. Given the cultural conditions of the time in the American West, his thinking was very innovative, although at the same time he got negative responses.

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

In spite of 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 teaching at Columbia University, New York University, Emory University, Yale University, and the University of Cincinnati. Finally, he 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 anthropological work and legacy.

Human Development and Gender Roles in New Guinea

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

From there, Mead observed that gender roles were very different in different societies, concluding that these roles are much more dependent on culture than on biology.

He made visible, for example, that women were the dominant ones in some tribes in Papua New Guinea , without causing any social problems. There were tribes where women and men were more pacifist 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 the West. Men were closer to the plane of the sensible, and women directed public activities.

The opposite was found in societies such as Mundugumor , where he saw that men and women had developed more explosive and conflictive temperaments, so that children were also educated more harshly.

In buying the studies among these societies, Mead concluded that culture shapes human behavior. Hence one of his 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 on gender roles was very radical for her time and helped to break down many taboos around sexuality in mid-20th century 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 , the upbringing based on dissymmetrical gender models, and finally, promoted the transformation of moral values related to sexuality.

Main works

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

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

Other important works include Growing Up in New Guinea: A Comparative Study of Primitive Education ; and the film Trance and Dance in Bali, Learning to Dance in Bali, and Karba’s First Years . Margaret Mead also participated in other film productions that addressed the issue of different care and nurturing 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 at http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Margaret_Mead.
  • Streeter, L. (2016). Margaret Mead. Cultural Equality. Retrieved May 16, 2018. Available at http://www.culturalequity.org/alanlomax/ce_alanlomax_profile_margaret_mead.php.