Cultural Anthropology

Margaret Mead Outline
1.
Margaret Mead was arguably the most renowned anthropologist of all time.
Mead was the first female anthropologist to become president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
She became a curator of ethnology at American Museum of Natural History, where she published the bestseller, Coming of Age in Samoa.
2.
Mead’s focus in Samoa was sexual upbringing, and she also ended up researching personality and child-rearing.
Coming of Age in Samoa was work that for the first time suggested that the individual experience of developmental stages could be shaped by cultural demands and expectations
She believed that adolescent sexual development more or less problematic in different cultures.
3.
In 1925, Mead traveled to the South Pacific to carry out research for her doctoral dissertation, which eventually resulted in the book “Coming of Age in Samoa”.
4.
Mead interacted with 68 girls between the ages of 9 and 20.
Many contemporaries believed that the "storm and stress" of adolescence was biologically determined.
She believed that the Samoan girls were largely relieved of their responsibilities of taking care of the babies after they were born.
As a woman, Margaret Mead had an advantage over male anthropologists in gaining access to women and children.
Among Mead's many roles while working in the field was tending to medical needs of the people she was studying. Reducing people's suffering also