Carolyn and I have appreciated the work of pioneering cultural anthropologist Margaret Mead, who profoundly influenced the social sciences by studying the behavioral patterns of different cultures, particularly in the South Pacific. Mead’s groundbreaking work challenged Western perceptions of human development and sexuality, emphasizing cultural variability.

Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1901. Her father was a professor of finance, her mother was a sociologist, and she had four younger siblings. As a child, Mead’s family moved around frequently, and her grandmother largely educated her.

In 1912, when Mead was eleven, she was enrolled at the Buckingham Friends School in Lahaska, Pennsylvania. In 1919, Mead studied for a year at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana, and then she transferred to Barnard College in New York City. Mead graduated from Barnard in 1923, and then she received her master’s degree in psychology from Columbia University a year later.

In 1925, Mead set out for the Polynesian island of Tau in the South Pacific Ocean. This was where she did her first ethnographic fieldwork, studying the life of Samoan girls and women. Mead’s observations were summarized in the now-classic book Coming of Age in Samoa, published in 1928, and describe how Samoan children were raised and educated and how sexual relations occurred in the culture. Mead also studied personality development on the island, as well as dance, interpersonal conflict, and how Samoan women matured into old age.

Coming of Age in Samoa contrasts development in Samoa with that in the United States, and the book was received with wide acclaim for its revolutionary approach to understanding adolescence in different cultures. It became a bestselling work and has been highly influential in the field of anthropology. However, it wasn’t without controversy. Some conservative groups and individuals were uneasy with the book’s conclusions, which contradicted traditional views on adolescence and morality.

In 1926, Mead was back in New York City, where she became an assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History, and in 1929 she received her Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University.

In 1929, Mead visited the island of Manus, which is now part of Papua New Guinea, where she did more cultural studies. In 1930, Mead published her book Growing Up in New Guinea, which is about her encounters with the indigenous people of the Manus— before they had been changed by missionaries and other Western influences— and she compares their views on family, marriage, sex, child-rearing, and religious beliefs to those of westerners. As with her pioneering studies in Samoa, Mead’s studies in New Guinea also challenged prevailing Western views on adolescence, gender roles, and cultural norms.

In 1932, Mead met anthropologist Gregory Bateson while conducting anthropological fieldwork on the shores of the Sepik River in New Guinea, and they married in 1936. That same year, the couple traveled to Bali, Indonesia, where they helped to pioneer Visual Anthropology, a subfield of anthropology that uses visual media— such as film, photography, and digital imagery— to study and communicate cultural practices and social phenomena. Mead and Bateson were some of the earliest anthropologists to emphasize the importance of photography as a tool for ethnographic research, and they used visual media extensively during their fieldwork to capture cultural practices and everyday life. They believed that visual records provided invaluable data and insights that complemented written ethnographies.

In 1935, Mead published Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. This is a study of the intimate lives of three New Guinea tribes from infancy to adulthood. Focusing on the “gentle, mountain-dwelling Arapesh, the fierce, cannibalistic Mundugumor, and the graceful headhunters of Tchambuli,” Mead advanced the theory that many so-called masculine and feminine characteristics are not based on biological sex differences but reflect the cultural conditioning of different societies. For example, the Tchambuli tribe exhibited a unique gender role reversal, compared to the West, in which women dominated economic and social activities while men engaged in artistic and emotionally expressive pursuits.

Mead continued to study the cultures of the Pacific islands. In 1949, she published Male and Female, an anthropological examination of seven Pacific island tribes. Mead analyzed the dynamics of these cultures, to explore the evolving meaning of “male” and “female” in contemporary American society, and the book also offers hope, by providing examples of how to resolve conflict between the sexes. When it was published The New York Times declared, Dr. Mead’s book has come to grips with the cold war between the sexes and has shown the basis of a lasting sexual peace.”

From 1946 to 1969, Mead was curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, where she had been an assistant curator twenty years earlier. From 1954 to 1978, Mead taught anthropology at Columbia University and The New School for Social Research in New York City. In 1960, Mead served as president of the American Anthropological Association in the 1960s and 1970s, and she held various positions in the New York Academy of Sciences and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Mead also had an interest in altered states of consciousness. She shared professional circles with, and interacted with, our friends neuroscientist John C. Lilly and psychologist Timothy Leary. Mead and Bateson contributed to conversations about the nature of human consciousness by emphasizing cultural relativity, interconnectedness, and systems thinking. In later life, Mead mentored many young anthropologists and sociologists, including psychologist Jean Houston, whom I did a profile about several months ago. In 1976, Mead was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame. Mead died in 1978 at the age of 76.

In 1979, U.S. President Jimmy Carter announced he was awarding the Presidential Medal of Freedom posthumously to Mead. In 1984, Mead and Bateson’s daughter, anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson, published a book, With a Daughter’s Eye, about her experience growing up with two of the world’s legendary anthropologists. In 1998, the U.S. Post Office issued a 32-cent stamp with Mead’s face.

The Margaret Mead Award is presented annually in Mead’s honor by the Society for Applied Anthropology and the American Anthropological Association, for significant works that communicate anthropology to the general public. There are schools named after Mead: a junior high school in Elk Grove Village, Illinois, an elementary school in Sammamish, Washington, and another in Brooklyn, New York.

Some of the quotes that Margaret Mead is known for include:

Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed, citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.

Children must be taught how to think, not what to think.

I was wise enough never to grow up, while fooling people into believing I had.

Laughter is man’s most distinctive emotional expression.

As the traveler who has once been from home is wiser than he who has never left his own doorstep, so a knowledge of one other culture should sharpen our ability to scrutinize more steadily, to appreciate more lovingly, our own.

Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else.

… the ways to get insights are: to study infants; to study animals; to study primitive people; to be psychoanalyzed; to have a religious conversion and get over it; to have a psychotic episode and get over it; or to have a love affair with an old Russian…

An ideal culture is one that makes a place for every human gift.

by David Jay Brown