Anthropology and Margaret Mead

Additional information 6.1

Anthropology and Margaret Mead

In broad terms, anthropology is the study of the humanity. Psychology concerns itself with internal processes and how they interact with outside events; anthropology is a much broader subject and asks questions about culture, art, social organizations, differences between sub-groups and other large questions about the human condition. It has been defined in recent years by the debate ranging from either end of the philosophical spectrum – the positivists versus the social constructionists.

· Positivism hails from scientific discipline and asserts a modernist stance over data. A positivist position constructs theory from hard, scientifically defensible data. Singular narrative threads are pursued and then adopted – defended and improved to explain the human condition. ‘Reality’ is discovered; it is not created by humans.

· Social constructionism hails from a philosophical position and asserts a post-modernist stance over data. Reality is malleable – open to interpretation. Human events are questioned and de-constructed from a myriad of positions. Multiple narrative threads are encouraged to exist to explain the human condition and rarely is one adopted as a dominant ‘truth’. Truth itself is a malleable term. ‘Reality’ is created, not discovered by humans.

Archaeology, biological anthropology, and linguistic anthropology (the study of language) are said to be largely positivist – that is, they depend on scientific techniques and assumptions to advance arguments.

Cultural and social anthropology often ask questions about the construction of knowledge itself and are said to have remained largely post-modernist/constructionist.

Margaret Mead (1901–78)

Mead was an American anthropologist who grew up in Pennsylvania. She married three times and is reported to have had an extremely close relationship with another female anthropologist of the time, Ruth Benedict. Mead never identified herself as lesbian or bi-sexual but some of her writings suggest she believed an individual’s sexuality should be allowed to evolve throughout their life.

Mead’s influential books

Mead’s first major work was Coming of Age in Samoa, which studied youth in Samoa. Mead discussed this in the context of American youth. She found Samoan women of this time had a more casual approach to sexual relations and often delayed marriage. She also reported on the practice of incest. This caused controversy in the USA when it was published because she argued the transition from childhood to adulthood in Samoa was smoother and there was an absence of emotional or psychological distress. Her work highlighted how social norms and expectations differ across cultures. It has been argued that Mead was able to gain access to private information from her subjects because she was a woman and they divulged more than if she had been a man. However, this book still provokes controversy as some anthropologists have argued she did not probe deeply enough with her interview techniques and some of her original subjects publicly refuted her claims after Mead died in 1978.

Another highly influential work by Mead is Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. This was championed by feminist movements as Mead demonstrated that many gender roles assumed to be universal were actually socially constructed in some tribal societies, and gender roles in some societies were the reverse of those in Western culture. She claimed females were the more dominant gender in the Tchambuli (now spelled Chambri) Lake region of Papua New Guinea and this did not lead to any specific problems. However, her broad generalizations have been questioned by some anthropologists. Mead did note that men were universally more aggressive and this has been supported by other researchers in this area.

The Jewish mother stereotype

Mead is often cited as one contributing source of the Jewish mother stereotype. This stereotype is often used by Jewish comedians and actors to portray a loving but over-protective and often over-bearing mother who interferes in her children’s lives long after they have reached adulthood. Mead published her work after studying European Jewish villages or shtetls with Jewish immigrants in New York City.

Parapsychology

Mead helped co-found the American Parapsychological Association in 1957. Parapsychology studies psychic events using scientific techniques. While it is mostly ignored by mainstream scientists, parapsychology is credited with raising questions other scientific disciplines are prevented from asking due to the unreliability inherent in investigating them.

Further research

Research parapsychology and consider the following questions.

· Why does it challenge traditional science?

· Why does mainstream science and psychology fail to embrace parapsychology?