Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist.

Mead's research in other societies

Another extremely influential book by Mead was "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies." This became a major cornerstone of the women's liberation movement, since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (sometimes spelled Chambri) tribe of Papua New Guinea (in the southern 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, male anthropologists often miss the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some high-population density areas 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.

Related Topics:
Papua New Guinea - New Guinea

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Mead stated that the Arapesh people were pacifists, although she noted that they do on occasion engage in warfare. Meanwhile, her observations about the sharing of garden plots amongst the Arapesh, the egaliterian emphasis in child-rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives hold up. These descriptions 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 indeed, as she wrote, a cultural pattern.

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When Margaret Mead described her research to her students at Columbia University, she put succinctly what her objectives and her conclusions were. A first hand account by an anthropologist who studied with Mead in the 60s and 70s provides this information:--

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1. Mead tells of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. "She explained that nobody knew the degree to which temperament is biologically determined by sex. So she hoped to see whether there were cultural or social factors that affected temperament. Were men inevitably aggressive? Were women inevitably "homebodies"? It turned out that the three cultures she lived with in New Guinea were almost a perfect laboratory--for each had the variables that we associate with masculine and feminine in an arrangement different from ours. She said this surprised her, and wasn't what she was trying to find. It was just there.

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"Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.

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"Among the Mundugumor, the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.

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"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." Reproduced by permission of the author.]

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2. Mead tells of Growing Up in New Guinea. "Margaret Mead told us how she came to the research problem on which she based her Growing Up in New Guinea. She reasoned as follows: If primitive adults think in an animistic way, as Piaget says our children do, how do primitive children think?

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"In her research on Manus Island of New Guinea, she discovered that 'primitive' children think in a very practical way and begin to think in terms of spirits etc. as they get older.

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"Note: Animistic thinking gives feelings or personality to inanimate objects. For example, a child can say "Bad sidewalk!" if she falls and hurts herself on it--seeing the sidewalk as mean for causing her pain. The term animism comes from the Latin for soul, "anima." And tribal cultures often do have animistic concepts: Pueblos see the clouds as cloud people, who can be pleased or displeased by what man does--and give rain or drought." . Reproduced by permission of the author.]

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