Clifford James Geertz (August 23, 1926, San Francisco – October 30, 2006, Philadelphia) was an American anthropologist who is remembered mostly for his strong support for and influence on the practice of symbolic anthropology, and who was considered "for three decades...the single most influential cultural anthropologist in the United States."^[1] He served until his death as professor emeritus at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.

Life[link]

Clifford James Geertz was born in San Francisco, California on August 23, 1926. After service in the U.S. Navy in World War II (1943–45), Geertz received his B.A. in philosophy from Antioch College in 1950, and his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1956, where he studied social anthropology in the Department of Social Relations. He taught or held fellowships at a number of schools before joining the anthropology staff of the University of Chicago (1960–70). He then became professor of social science at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton from 1970 to 2000, then emeritus professor.

Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, NJ

Geertz received Honorary Doctorate Degrees from some fifteen colleges and universities, including Harvard University, the University of Chicago and the University of Cambridge. He was married first to the anthropologist Hildred Geertz. After their divorce he married Karen Blu, also an anthropologist. Clifford Geertz died of complications following heart surgery on October 30, 2006.^[2]

Geertzian theory[link]

At the University of Chicago, Geertz became a champion of symbolic anthropology, a framework which gives prime attention to the role of symbols in constructing public meaning. In his seminal work The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Geertz outlined culture as "a system of inherited conceptions expressed in symbolic forms by means of which men communicate, perpetuate, and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life" (1973:89).

Geertz believed that the role of anthropologists was to try to interpret the guiding symbols of each culture. He was considered quite innovative in this regard, as he was one of the earliest scholars to see that the insights provided by common language, philosophy and literary analysis could have major explanatory force in the social sciences.

His often cited essay "Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight" is the classic example of thick description, a concept adopted from the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle. Thick description is an anthropological method of explaining with as much detail as possible the reason behind human actions. For example one could say a man winked. However, this would not explain why he winked: was he flirting, did he have something in his eye, was he trying to communicate irony in what he had just said...these are the questions an anthropologist must answer.^[3]

During Geertz's long career, he worked through a variety of theoretical phases and schools of thought. In 1957, Geertz wrote that "The drive to make sense out of experience, to give it form and order, is evidently as real and pressing as the more familiar biological needs...", a statement which reflects an early leaning toward functionalism. Accordingly, in his early career Geertz considered anthropology a kind of science. This is in contrast to Geertz's later enthusiasm for an interpretive approach. In his later work, Geertz spoke particularly of the difficulties that ethnographic research has in getting at an adequate description of objective reality. Geertz attributed this to the fact that people tell ethnographers what they believe to be their own motivations, but those people's actions then often seem to contradict their statements to the researcher. Geertz believed this effect occurred partly due to the problems that people have in verbalizing aspects of their life that they usually take for granted, partly due to how ethnographers structure their research approaches and frameworks, and partly due to the inherent complexity of the social order.

Cultural Approach to Organizations[link]

Clifford Geertz spent many years studying abroad. His key findings are documented often as “The Cultural Approach to Organizations.” These ethnographic studies focused entirely on the cultural norms and symbols that are used within corporations and how their meanings differ from one culture to the next. Prime examples of these findings come from Geertz’ study of Japan’s industrial success versus the United State’s. We see that in Japanese culture, loyalty to the group is very prevalent. In addition, this is expressed in the “group” workplace as well. The United States values differ in two main ways. Singularity and uniqueness are celebrated, therefore in a group situation, such as a corporation, we do not show as much success. Geertz puts forth that a company’s culture is a web of shared meaning, therefore if you do not belong to the same culture as the company you are working for, you may have different values and behave in different ways so that you may find unhappiness in your career and in the organization. These findings show that the more loyalty employees as a whole to an organization, the more successful that organization will be.

Geertz’ primary focal point was the use of metaphors within organizations. These metaphors are meant to clarify values and beliefs that are held within the company and express them more clearly. A good example of this comes from A First Look at Communication Theory – The Company’s most prevalent metaphor considers it to be a “lattice organization,” meaning that one-on-one communication is important between workers and that no one needs permission to speak with anyone else – all doors are open. The metaphor also means that there is no strong hierarchical structure within the corporation and that all associates are considered equal through their hard work.^[4] These are important values within the company that are being expressed through a metaphor that all of the employees know and believe in.

Geertz also considered the use of rituals within organizations to be an important matter to consider. These rituals, according to Geertz, seem to be understood by all and in a state of immobility. Any move to change these rituals will most likely be met with strong resistance within the company and by older, or more traditional workers. Such rituals may come in many categories whether it is in the form of competition and reward between associates or as a form of order within the company such as scheduling or maternity leave.

Some critiques of the Cultural Approach to Organizations do exist. Some argue that ethnographers such as Clifford Geertz study the cultural values and behaviors of certain categories (such as organizations for Geertz) and refuse to make a movement or provide change when their findings show inequalities or injustice. Although this may be true, especially within big corporations, it is not the ethnographer’s position to make change, just to evoke it while informing people of what truths exist. This shows up within the organization with concepts such as gender, race, and age inequality. Although an ethnographer may report that these things do exist, it is not his or her responsibility that these issues occur, nor is it their duty to change the organizational structure.^[5]

Metatheoretical Assumptions of the Cultural Approach to Organizations[link]

Ontological Assumption - "Coming from the humanist standpoint, cultural approach clearly shows us that the individual has a right to choose whether or not they will be included in a certain group--including the work group. This right to choose comes from their own ways of knowing about the world." ^[6]

Epistemological Assumption - "This phenomenological perspective shares an epistemology of creating multiple truths. For instance, the management does not just hand down a set of rules and expect everyone to act on them. Rather, management sets down guidelines but it is up to the individuals involved in an organization to make sense of them. Each person brings his/her own ideas and beliefs to the table and therefore brings his/her own idea of reality to. There is no right or wrong, just an interpretation of the rules." ^[7]

Axiological Assumption - "The axiological assumptions about the Cultural approach are somewhere between value-conscious and value-laden. Although we have stressed the individual's influence upon an organization, the individuals are still aware of the goals and ideals of the corporation itself. An organization is more the "sum of its parts" within the guidelines of this theory." ^[8]

Philosophical influence[link]

Despite his discontent with most academic philosophy at his time, Geertz was largely influenced by two philosophers: Gilbert Ryle and Ludwig Wittgenstein. Drawing on the tradition of ordinary language philosophy, he adopted the proposition of thick description from the British philosopher Gilbert Ryle and imported the concept of family resemblances into anthropology from the post-analytic philosophy of Ludwig Wittgenstein. He also introduced Alfred Schütz's...distinctions among predecessors, consociates, contemporaries and successors, distinctions that have become commonplace in anthropology'^[9] in his wake. Geertz stressed how the links between 'consociate-contemporary-predecessor-successor...[derive from] the umwelt-mitwelt-vorwelt-vogelwelt formulation'^[10] of Schutz's phenomenology.

Fieldwork[link]

Geertz conducted extensive ethnographical research in Southeast Asia and North Africa. He also contributed to social and cultural theory and is still very influential in turning anthropology toward a concern with the frames of meaning within which various peoples live out their lives. He worked on religion, most particularly Islam, on bazaar trade, on economic development, on traditional political structures, and on village and family life. At the time of his death, Geertz was working on the general question of ethnic diversity and its implications in the modern world.

Legacy[link]

Geertz's reaearch and ideas had a strong influence on 20th century academia. His findings reverberate within modern anthropology and communication studies. Aside from his influence on anthropology, Geertz' landmark contributions to social and cultural theory were also influential for geographers, ecologists, political scientists, scholars of religion, historians, and other humanists.^[11] University of Miami Professor Daniel Pals wrote of Geertz in 1996, "His critics are few; his admirers legion."^[12]

Interlocutors[link]

• Stephen Greenblatt
• Robert Darnton
• Mark R. Woodward

Major publications[link]

• "Religion as a Cultural System". In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. pp. 1–46. ASA Monographs, 3. London: Tavistock Publications. 1966
• The Religion of Java (1960), University Of Chicago Press 1976 paperback: ISBN 0-226-28510-3
• Peddlers and Princes: Social Development and Economic Change in Two Indonesian Towns (1963), University Of Chicago Press 1968 paperback: ISBN 0-226-28514-6
• Agricultural Involution: the process of ecological change in Indonesia (1964)
• Islam Observed, Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia (1968), University Of Chicago Press 1971 paperback: ISBN 0-226-28511-1
• The Interpretation of Cultures (1973), Basic Books 2000 paperback: ISBN 0-465-09719-7
• Kinship in Bali (1975) coauthor: Hildred Geertz, University Of Chicago Press 1978 paperback: ISBN 0-226-28516-2
• Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth Century Bali (1980), Princeton University Press 2001 paperback: ISBN 0-691-00778-0
• Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology (1983), Basic Books 2000 paperback: ISBN 0-465-04162-0
• "Anti-Anti-Relativism" (1984), American Anthropologist, vol. 86, no. 2, pp. 263–278.
• Works and Lives: The Anthropologist As Author (1988), Stanford University Press 1990 paperback: ISBN 0-8047-1747-8
• After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist, Harvard University Press 1995 paperback: ISBN 0-674-00872-3
• Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics, Princeton University Press 2000 paperback: ISBN 0-691-08956-6
• "An inconstant profession: The anthropological life in interesting times" (2002), Annual Review of Anthropology, vol. 31, pp. 1–19 Viewable at hypergeertz.jku.at

Chronological list of works by Clifford Geertz[link]

• 1957 Ritual and Social Change: A Javanese Example. American Anthropologist 59(1):32-54.
• 1959 Form and Variation in Balinese Village Structure. American Anthropologist 61:991-1012.
• 1959 The Javanese Village. In Local, Ethnic, and National Loyalties in Village Indonesia. Ed. G. William Skinner. pp. 34–41. New Haven: Southeast Asian Program, Yale University.
• 1960 Religion of Java. Glencoe: Free Press.
• 1961 The Rotating Credit Association: A "Middle Rung" in Development. Economic Development and Cultural Change 10:241-263.
• 1962 Studies in Peasant Life: Community and Society. In Biennial Review of Anthropology 1961. Ed. Bernard J. Siegal. pp. 1–41. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• 1962 The Growth of Culture and the Evolution of Mind. In Theories of the Mind. Ed. J. Scher. pp. 713–740. New York: Free Press.
• 1963 Agricultural Involution: The Process of Agricultural Change in Indonesia. Berkeley: University of California Press.
• 1963 Peddlers and Princes: Social Change and Economic Modernization in Two Indonesian Towns. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• 1963 (editor) Old Societies and New States. New York: Free Press.
• 1963 The Integrative Revolution: Primordial Sentiments and Civil Politics in the New States. In Old Societies and New States. Ed. Clifford Geertz. pp. 105–157. Glencoe: Free Press.
• 1964 Ideology as a Cultural System. In Ideology and Discontent. Ed. David Apter. pp. 47–76. New York: Free Press.
• 1965 The Social History of an Indonesian Town. Cambridge: MIT Press.
• 1965 Modernization in a Muslim Society: The Indonesian Case, 201-211, in Robert O. Tilman (ed), Man, State, and Society in Contemporary South East Asia. London: Pall Mall.
• 1966 Person, Time, and Conduct in Bali: An Essay in Cultural Analysis. Southeast Asia Program, Cultural Report Series. New Haven: Yale University.
• 1966 Religion as a Cultural System. In Anthropological Approaches to the Study of Religion. Ed. Michael Banton. pp. 1–46. ASA Monographs, 3. London: Tavistock Publications.
• 1966 The Impact of the Concept of Culture on the Concept of Man. In New Views of the Nature of Man. Ed. J. Platt. pp. 93–118. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• 1967 Politics Past, Politics Preset: Some Notes on the Contribution of Anthropology to the Study of the New States. European Journal of Sociology 8(1):1-14.
• 1967 The Cerebral Savage: On the Work of Claude Levi-Strauss. Encounter 48(4):25-32.
• 1967 Tihingan: A Balinese Village. In Villages in Indonesia. Ed. R. N. Koentjaraningrat. pp. 210–243. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press.
• 1967 Under the Mosquito Net. New York Review of Books, September 14.
• 1968 Islam Observed: Religious Development in Morocco and Indonesia. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. 136 pp.
• 1968 Thinking as a Moral Act: Dimensions of Anthropological Fieldwork in the New States. Antioch Review 28(2):139-158.
• 1972 Religious Change and Social Order in Soeharto's Indonesia. Asia 27:62-84.
• 1972 The Wet and the Dry: Traditional Irrigation in Bali and Morocco. Human Ecology 1:34-39.
• 1972 Deep Play: Notes on the Balinese Cockfight. Daedalus 101(1 Winter).
• 1973 The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. New York: Basic.
• 1973 Thick Description: Toward an Interpretive Theory of Culture. In The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays. Clifford Geertz. pp 3–30. New York: Basic Books.
• 1976 From the Native's Point of View. In Meaning in Anthropology. Eds. Keith H. Basso and Henry A. Selby. pp. 221–237. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press.
• 1977 Found in Translation: On the Social History of the Moral Imagination. Georgia Review 31(4 Winter):788-810.
• 1977 Curing, Sorcery, and Magic in a Javanese Town. In Culture, Disease, and Healing: Studies in Medical Anthropology. Ed. David Landy. pp. 146–153. New York: Macmillan Publishing.
• 1979 [with Hildred Geertz and Lawrence Rosen] Meaning and Order in Moroccan Society: Three Essays in Cultural Analysis. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. See his own contribution on "Suq: The Bazaar Economy in Sefrou" (pp. 123–225).
• 1980 Negara: The Theatre State in Nineteenth-Century Bali. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• 1983 Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. New York: Basic Books.
• 1983 Centers, Kings, and Charisma: Reflections on the Symbolics of Power. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Clifford Geertz. pp. 121–146. New York: Basic Books.
• 1983 "From the Native's Point of View": On the Nature of Anthropological Knowledge. In Local Knowledge: Further Essays in Interpretive Anthropology. Clifford Geertz. pp. 55–70. New York: Basic Books.
• 1983 Notions of Primitive Thought: Dialogue with Clifford Geertz. In States of Mind. ed & comp Jonathan Miller. pp. 192–210. New York: Pantheon.
• 1984 Anti-Anti-Relativism. 1983 Distinguished Lecture. American Anthropologist 82:263-278.
• 1984 Culture and Social Change: The Indonesian Case. Man 19:511-532.
• 1986 The Uses of Diversity. In Tanner Lectures on Human Values, Vol. 7. Ed. Sterling M. McMurrin. pp. 251–275. Cambridge and Salt Lake City: Cambridge University Press and University of Utah Press.
• 1988 Works and Lives: The Anthropologist as Author. Stanford: Stanford University Press.

The four studies included in the book are:

• "The World in a Text: How to Read Tristes Tropiques" (pp. 25–48).
• "Slide Show: Evans-Pritchard's African Transparencies" (pp. 49–72).
• "I-Witnessing: Malinowski's Children" (pp. 73–101).
• "Us/not-Us: Benedict's Travels" (pp. 102–128).

• 1989 Margaret Mead, 1901-1978. Biographical Memoirs 58:329-341. National Academy of Sciences.
• 1990 History and Anthropology. New Literary History 21(2 Winter):321-335.
• 1991 The Year of Living Culturally. New Republic, October 21, 30-36.
• 1992 "Local Knowledge" and Its Limits: Some Obiter Dicta. Yale Journal of Criticism 5(2):129-135.
• 1993 "Ethnic Conflict": Three Alternative Terms. Common Knowledge 2(3 Winter):54-65.
• 1994 Life on the Edge. [Review of Tsing, In the Realm of the Diamond Queen]. New York Review of Books 41(7 April ):3-4.
• 1995 After the Fact: Two Countries, Four Decades, One Anthropologist. [The Jerusalem-Harvard Lectures]. Cambridge and London: Harvard University Press.
• 1995 Culture War. [Review essay on Sahlins, How "Natives" Think and Obeyesekere, The Apotheosis of Captain Cook]. New York Review of Books 42(19 November 30):4-6.
• 2000 Available Light: Anthropological Reflections on Philosophical Topics. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
• 2010 Life Among the Anthros and Other Essays edited by Fred Inglis (Princeton University Press; 272 pages)

Honors[link]

• Association for Asian Studies (AAS), 1987 Award for Distinguished Contributions to Asian Studies^[13]

See also[link]

• Clifford Geertz's theory of religion

Notes[link]

References[link]

• Geertz, Clifford, Shweder, R. A., & Good, B. (2005). Clifford Geertz by his colleagues. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
• Geertz, C. (1963). Old societies and new States; the quest for modernity in Asia and Africa. [New York]: Free Press of Glencoe.
• Griffin, Em. (2012). A First Look At Communication. New York: McGraw-Hill.

External links[link]

• Interview of Clifford Geertz(video)
• Big Ideas: Clifford Geertz
• Clifford Geertz: A Life of Learning (Charles Homer Haskins Lecture for 1999)
• Obituary at Institute for Advanced Study
• HyperGeertz WorldCatalogue extended bibliography
• A short biography of Geertz from Richard Wilk's website
• Hyper Geertz World Catalogue HTM
• Clifford Geertz, Cultural Anthropologist, Is Dead at 80 by Andrew L. Yarrow published on November 1, 2006 in the New York Times
• New Academic and Deep Book about the Work of Clifford Geertz: Nature, symbol and culture in Clifford Geertz, by Enrique Anrubia: printed in Spain, 2008
• Geertz author page and archive from The New York Review of Books
• Interview of Clifford Geertz by Alan Macfarlane 5th May 2004 (film). Linked to Frazer Lecture 2004 (sound only)

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Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead, 1948
Born	(1901-12-16)December 16, 1901 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, US
Died	November 15, 1978(1978-11-15) (aged 76) New York City
Education	Barnard College (1923) M.A., Columbia University (1924) Ph.D., Columbia University (1929)
Occupation	Anthropologist
Spouse	Luther Cressman (1923–1928) Reo Fortune (1928–1935) Gregory Bateson (1936–1950)
Children	Mary Catherine Bateson (b. 1939)

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the 1960s and 1970s.^[1] She earned her bachelor degree at Barnard College in New York City, and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia University.

She was both a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and Western culture and a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the 1960s sexual revolution. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life.

An Anglican Christian, she played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American Episcopal Book of Common Prayer.^[2]:347-348

Birth, early family life, and education[link]

Mead, the first of five children, was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but raised in Doylestown. Her father, Edward Sherwood Mead, was a professor of finance at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, and her mother, Emily (Fogg) Mead,^[3] was a sociologist who studied Italian immigrants.^[4] Her sister Katharine (1906–1907) died at the age of nine months. This was a traumatic event for Mead, who had named this baby, and thoughts of her lost sister permeated her daydreams for many years.^[2] Her family moved frequently, so her early education alternated between home-schooling and traditional schools.^[4] Born into a family of varying religious outlooks, she searched for a form of religion that gave an expression of the faith that she had been formally acquainted with, Christianity.^[5] In doing so, she found the rituals of the Episcopal Church to fit the expression of religion she was seeking.^[5] Margaret studied one year, 1919, at DePauw University, then transferred to Barnard College where she earned her bachelor's degree in 1923.

She studied with professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict at Columbia University before earning her Master's in 1924.^[6] Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in Polynesia.^[7] In 1926, she joined the American Museum of Natural History, New York City, as assistant curator.^[8] She received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in 1929.^[9]

Both of Mead's surviving sisters were married to well-known men. Elizabeth Mead (1909–1983), an artist and teacher, married cartoonist William Steig, and Priscilla Mead (1911–1959) married author Leo Rosten. Mead also had a brother, Richard, who became a professor.

Mead's observation skills came from her grandmother and her mother. When Mead was a child they would observe and record her actions in a notebook. Mead realized the importance of observing and recording important findings.

Personal life[link]

Mead was married three times. Her first husband (1923–1928) was Luther Cressman, a theology student at the time who eventually became an anthropologist. Mead dismissively characterized their union as "my student marriage" in Blackberry Winter, a sobriquet with which Cressman took vigorous issue. Her second husband was New Zealander Reo Fortune, a Cambridge graduate (1928–1935). As an anthropologist, his Sorcerers of Dobu remains the locus classicus of eastern Papuan anthropology, but he is best known instead for his Fortunate number theory.

Her third and longest-lasting marriage (1936–1950) was to Englishman Gregory Bateson, also a Cambridge graduate, with whom she had a daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson, who would also become an anthropologist. Her pediatrician was Benjamin Spock early in his career. Spock's subsequent writings on child rearing incorporated some of Mead's own practices and beliefs acquired from her ethnological field observations which she shared with him; in particular, breastfeeding on the baby's demand rather than a schedule.^[10] She readily acknowledged that Gregory Bateson was the husband she loved the most. She was devastated when he left her, and she remained his loving friend ever after, keeping his photograph by her bedside wherever she traveled, including beside her hospital deathbed.^[2]

Mead also had an exceptionally close relationship with Ruth Benedict, one of her instructors. In her memoir about her parents, With a Daughter's Eye, Mary Catherine Bateson implies that the relationship between Benedict and Mead was partly sexual.^[11] While Margaret Mead never openly identified herself as lesbian or bisexual, the details of her relationship with Benedict have led others to so identify her. In her writings she proposed that it is to be expected that an individual's sexual orientation may evolve throughout life.^[11]

She spent her last years in a close personal and professional collaboration with anthropologist Rhoda Metraux, with whom she lived from 1955 until her death in 1978. Letters between the two published in 2006 with the permission of Mead's daughter^[12] clearly express a romantic relationship.

Career and later life[link]

During World War II, Mead served as executive secretary of the National Research Council's Committee on Food Habits. She served as curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1946 to 1969. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1948.^[13] She taught at The New School and Columbia University, where she was an adjunct professor from 1954 to 1978. She was a professor of anthropology and chair of the Division of Social Sciences at Fordham University's Lincoln Center campus from 1968 to 1970, founding their anthropology department. Following Ruth Benedict's example, Mead focused her research on problems of child rearing, personality, and culture.^[14] She served as president of the American Anthropological Association in 1960. She held various positions in the American Association for the Advancement of Science, notably president in 1975 and chair of the executive committee of the board of directors in 1976.^[15]

Mead was featured on two record albums published by Folkways Records. The first, released in 1959, An Interview With Margaret Mead, explored the topics of morals and anthropology. In 1971, she was included in a compilation of talks by prominent women, But the Women Rose, Vol.2: Voices of Women in American History.^[16]

She is credited with the pluralization of the term "semiotics." ^[17]

In later life, Mead was a mentor to many young anthropologists and sociologists, including Jean Houston.^[2]

Mead died of pancreatic cancer on November 15, 1978.

Work[link]

[edit] Coming of Age in Samoa

Samoan girl, c. 1896

In the foreword to Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead's advisor, Franz Boas, wrote of its significance:

Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.^[18]

Mead's findings suggested that the community ignores both boys and girls until they are about 15 or 16. Before then, children have no social standing within the community. Mead also found that marriage is regarded as a social and economic arrangement where wealth, rank, and job skills of the husband and wife are taken into consideration.

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman, published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he challenged Mead's major findings about sexuality in Samoan society. Freeman's book was controversial in its turn: later in 1983 the American Anthropological Association declared it to be "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading."^[19]

In 1999 Freeman published another book, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research, including previously unavailable material. Most anthropologists have since been highly critical of Freeman's arguments.

A frequent criticism of Freeman is that he regularly misrepresented Mead's research and views.^[20][21] In a 2009 evaluation of the debate, anthropologist Paul Shankman concluded that:

There is now a large body of criticism of Freeman's work from a number of perspectives in which Mead, Samoa, and anthropology appear in a very different light than they do in Freeman's work. Indeed, the immense significance that Freeman gave his critique looks like "much ado about nothing" to many of his critics.^[20]

In 1996 Martin Orans examined Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress, and credits her for leaving all of her recorded data available to the general public. Orans concludes that Freeman's basic criticisms, that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu (who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead) were false for several reasons: first, Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking; second, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that correspond's to Fa'apua'a Fa'auma'a's account to Freeman, and third, that Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'aupa'a Fa'amu. He therefore concludes, contrary to Freeman, that Mead was never the victim of a hoax. As Orans points out Mead's data support several different conclusions, and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture. Evaluating Mead's work in Samoa from a positivist stance, Martin Orans' assessment of the controversy was that Mead did not formulate her research agenda in scientific terms, and that "her work may properly be damned with the harshest scientific criticism of all, that it is 'not even wrong'".^[22]

[edit] Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

Another influential book by Mead was Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. This became a major cornerstone of the feminist movement, since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (now spelled Chambri) Lake region of the Sepik basin of Papua New Guinea (in the western Pacific) without causing any special problems. The lack of male dominance may have been the result of the Australian administration's outlawing of warfare. According to contemporary research, males are dominant throughout Melanesia (although some believe that female witches have special powers). Others have argued that there is still much cultural variation throughout Melanesia, and especially in the large island of New Guinea. Moreover, anthropologists often overlook the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some areas of high population density were not, for example, present in the same way in Oksapmin, West Sepik Province, a more sparsely populated area. Cultural patterns there were different from, say, Mt. Hagen. They were closer to those described by Mead.

Mead stated that the Arapesh people, also in the Sepik, were pacifists, although she noted that they do on occasion engage in warfare. Her observations about the sharing of garden plots amongst the Arapesh, the egalitarian emphasis in child rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives are very different from the "big man" displays of dominance that were documented in more stratified New Guinea cultures — e.g., by Andrew Strathern. They are a different cultural pattern.

In brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles:

• "Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
• "Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
• "And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men 'primped' and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones — the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America."^{[citation needed]}

Other research areas[link]

Mead has been credited with persuading the American Jewish Committee to sponsor a project to study European Jewish villages, shtetls, in which a team of researchers would conduct mass interviews with Jewish immigrants living in New York City. The resulting book, widely cited for decades, allegedly created the Jewish mother stereotype, a mother intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering, and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes.^[23]

She also cofounded the Parapsychological Association, a group advocating for the advancement of parapsychology and psychical research.

Criticism[link]

Derek Freeman, an anthropologist who spent many years among the Samoans, was critical of Mead's findings that culture is responsible for the disturbances of adolescence, and that Samoans had a significantly different experience. He wrote:

"It is with the scientific adequacy of Mead's picture of Samoan society that I shall be concerned with from now on, for to the extent that this picture is defective, Samoa ceases to be a negative instance and Mead's central conclusion that culture, or nurture, is all-important in the determination of adolescent and other aspects of human behavior is revealed as ungrounded and invalid."

Martin Orans, another anthropologist who worked in Samoa, wrote:

"Occasionally a message carried by the media finds an audience so eager to receive it that it is willing to suspend all critical judgment and adopt the message as its own. So it was with Margaret Mead's celebrated 'Coming of Age in Samoa'."

Mead worked for the RAND Corporation, a U.S. Air Force military funded private research organization, from 1948 to 1950 to study Russian culture and attitudes toward authority.^[24]

Legacy[link]

On January 19, 1979, President Jimmy Carter announced that he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead. UN Ambassador Andrew Young presented the award to Mead's daughter at a special program honoring Mead's contributions, sponsored by the American Museum of Natural History, where she spent many years of her career. The citation read:^[25]

"Margaret Mead was both a student of civilization and an exemplar of it. To a public of millions, she brought the central insight of cultural anthropology: that varying cultural patterns express an underlying human unity. She mastered her discipline, but she also transcended it. Intrepid, independent, plain spoken, fearless, she remains a model for the young and a teacher from whom all may learn."

The 2006 music video for "If Everyone Cared" by Nickelback ends with her quote: "Never doubt that a small group of committed people can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has."

In addition, there are several schools named after Margaret Mead in the United States: a junior high school in Elk Grove Village, Illinois,^[26] an elementary school in Sammamish, Washington^[27] and another in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn, New York.^[28]

See also[link]

Systems science portal

• Elsie Clews Parsons
• Tim Asch
• Visual anthropology
• Zora Neale Hurston

Publications by Mead[link]

As a sole author

• Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) ISBN 0-688-05033-
• Growing Up In New Guinea (1930)
• The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932)
• Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935)
• And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America (1942)
• Male and Female (1949) ISBN 0-688-14676-7
• New Lives for Old: Cultural Transformation in Manus, 1928-1953 (1956)
• People and Places (1959; a book for young readers)
• Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964)
• Culture and Commitment (1970)
• Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years (1972; autobiography) ISBN 0-317-60065-6

As editor or coauthor

• Cultural Patterns and Technical Change, editor (1953)
• Primitive Heritage: An Anthropological Anthology, edited with Nicholas Calas (1953)
• An Anthropologist at Work, editor (1959, reprinted 1966; a volume of Ruth Benedict's writings)
• The Study of Culture At A Distance, edited with Rhoda Metraux, 1953
• Themes in French Culture, with Rhoda Metraux, 1954
• The Wagon and the Star: A Study of American Community Initiative co-authored with Muriel Whitbeck Brown, 1966
• A Rap on Race, with James Baldwin, 1971
• A Way of Seeing, with Rhoda Metraux, 1975

References[link]

Bibliography[link]

• Acciaioli, Gregory, ed. (1983). "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy (special edition)". Canberra Anthropology 6 (1): 1–97. ISSN 0314-9099. http://www.informaworld.com/smpp/title~db=all~content=g919276691. 
• Appell, George (1984). "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry". Eastern Anthropology 37: 183–214. http://gnappell.org/articles/freeman.htm. 
• Bateson, Mary Catherine. (1984) With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-03962-6
• Brady, Ivan. (1991). "The Samoa Reader: Last Word or Lost Horizon?" (PDF). Current Anthropology 32 (4): 263–282. JSTOR 2743829. http://www.oswego.edu/~brady/library%20items/samoa.pdf. 
• Caffey, Margaret M., and Patricia A. Francis, eds. (2006). To Cherish the Life of the World: Selected Letters of Margaret Mead. New York: Basic Books.
• Caton, Hiram, ed. (1990) The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock, University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2
• Feinberg, Richard (1988). "Margaret Mead and Samoa: Coming of Age in Fact and Fiction". American Anthropologist 90: 656–663. DOI:10.1525/aa.1988.90.3.02a00080. 
• Foerstel, Leonora, and Angela Gilliam, eds. (1992). Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific. Philadelphia: Temple University Press.
• Freeman, Derek. (1983) Margaret Mead and Samoa, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2
• Freeman, Derek. (1999) The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research[1], Boulder, CO: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7
• Goldfrank, Esther Schiff (1983). "Another View. Margaret and Me". Ethnohistory 30 (1): 1–14. DOI:10.2307/481499. JSTOR 481499. 
• Holmes, Lowell D. (1987). Quest for the Real Samoa: the Mead/Freeman Controversy and Beyond. South Hadley, MA: Bergin and Garvey.
• Howard, Jane. (1984). Margaret Mead: A Life, New York: Simon and Schuster.
• Keeley, Lawrence (1996). War Before Civilization: the Myth of the Peaceful Savage (Oxford University Press) ISBN 0-19-511912-6
• Lapsley, Hilary. (1999). Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
• Leacock, Eleanor (1988). "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us". Central Issues in Anthropology 8 (1): 3–20. DOI:10.1525/cia.1988.8.1.3. 
• Levy, Robert (1984). "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Problem of Seeing Things as They Are". Ethos 12: 85–92. DOI:10.1525/eth.1984.12.1.02a00060. 
• Lutkehaus, Nancy C. (2008). "Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon." Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 978-0-691-00941-4
• Mageo, Jeannette (1988). "Malosi: A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression". Pacific Studies 11 (2): 25–65. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/PacificStudies,860. 
• Marshall, Mac. (1993). "The Wizard from Oz Meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and Ethnographic Authority". American Ethnologist 20 (3): 604–617. DOI:10.1525/ae.1993.20.3.02a00080. 

• Mead, Margaret (1972). Blackberry Winter: My Earlier Years. New York: William Morrow. ISBN 0-688-00051-7. 
• Mead, Margaret. 1977. The Future as Frame for the Present. Audio recording of a lecture delivered July 11, 1977.
• Metraux, Rhoda (1980). "Margaret Mead. A Biographical Sketch". American Anthropologist 82 (2): 262–269. DOI:10.1525/aa.1980.82.2.02a00010. JSTOR 675870. 
• Nardi, Bonnie; Mead, Margaret; Freeman, Derek (1984). "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa". Feminist Studies 10 (2): 323–337. DOI:10.2307/3177870. JSTOR 3177870. 
• Moore, Jerry D. (2004). Visions of Culture: An Introduction to Anthropological Theories and Theorists. Rowman Altamira. p. 105. ISBN 0-7591-0411-5. 
• Patience, Allan, and Josephy Smith (1987). "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of a Biobehavioral Myth". American Anthropologist 88: 157–162. DOI:10.1525/aa.1986.88.1.02a00160. 
• Paxman, David B. (1988). "Freeman, Mead, and the Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Polynesian Society". Pacific Studies 11 (3): 1–19. http://contentdm.lib.byu.edu/u?/PacificStudies,879. 
• Pinker, Steven A. (1997). "How the Mind Works" ISBN 978-0-393-04535-2
• Sandall, Roger. (2001) The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays. ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
• Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1984). "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry". Human Organization 43 (1): 85–93. http://sfaa.metapress.com/openurl.asp?genre=article&issn=0018-7259&volume=43&issue=1&spage=85. 
• Shankman, Paul (1996). "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy". American Anthropologist 98 (3): 555–567. DOI:10.1525/aa.1996.98.3.02a00090. 
• Shankman, Paul (2009). The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-23454-6. 
• Shore, Brad. (1982) Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery. New York: Columbia University Press.
• Stassinos, Elizabeth (1998). "Response to Visweswaren, 'Race and the culture of anthropology'". American Anthropologist 100 (4): 981–983. DOI:10.1525/aa.1998.100.4.981. 
• Stassinos, Elizabeth (2009). "An Early Case of Personality: Ruth Benedict's Autobiographical Fragment and the Case of the Biblical "Boaz"". Histories of Anthropology Annual 5: 28–51. DOI:10.1353/haa.0.0063. ISSN 1557-637X. 
• Virginia, Mary E. (2003). Benedict, Ruth (1887–1948). DISCovering U.S. History online edition, Detroit: Gale.
• Young, R.E., and S. Juan. (1985). "Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: The Ideological Virginity of Anthropologists". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology 21 (1): 64–81. DOI:10.1177/144078338502100104. 

External links[link]

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Margaret Mead

Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Margaret Mead

• Creative Intelligence: Female ("The Silent Revolution: Creative Man In Contemporary Society" Talk at UC Berkeley, 1962 (online audio file)
• The Institute for Intercultural Studies - ethnographic institute founded by Mead, with resources relating to Mead's work
  • Margaret Mead biography at IIS
• Library of Congress, Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture
• American Museum of Natural History, Margaret Mead Film & Video Festival
• Works by or about Margaret Mead in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
• "Margaret Mead, 1901-1978: A Public Face of Anthropology": brief biography, Voice of America