What did Margaret Mead research?

What did Margaret Mead research?

Margaret Mead. As an anthropologist, Mead was best known for her studies of the nonliterate peoples of Oceania, especially with regard to various aspects of psychology and culture—the cultural conditioning of sexual behaviour, natural character, and culture change.

What did Margaret Mead advocate for?

While she was a feminist, Mead was also critical of the movement when it was anti-male. Mead was an outspoken advocate for the right to die, access to birth control, and the repeal of anti-abortion laws. Her work continues to influence feminism, sociology, and even religion.

What was Margaret Mead criticized for?

Feminist pioneer Betty Friedan criticized Mead for “reinforcing traditional stereotypes of women and limiting women’s choices,” he writes.

What was the purpose of Mead’s research?

She sought to discover to what extent temperamental differences between the sexes were culturally determined rather than innate. Mead found a different pattern of male and female behavior in each of the cultures she studied, all different from gender role expectations in the United States at that time.

What is the Mead vs Freeman controversy mainly about?

In 1983, Dr. Freeman charged that Dr. Mead’s influential 1928 account, ”Coming of Age in Samoa,” was mistaken and misleading in its depiction of uncomplicated sexual freedom there and that it had been shaped to support academic theory rather than to report the realities of Pacific island society.

Where did Margaret Mead do her research?

Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist and writer. Mead did her undergraduate work at Barnard College, where she met Franz Boas, who she went on to do her anthropology Ph. D. at Columbia University.

What compelled Margaret Mead to become an anthropologist?

Mead began as an English major but decided to study psychology instead. After taking classes in anthropology with Franz Boas (1858–1942), often considered the “father of modern American anthropology,” and his teaching assistant, Ruth Benedict (1887–1948), she decided to become an anthropologist.

What did Margaret Mead’s study show about problems typically associated with adolescence?

Based on her study of 68 girls in three villages in the western part of Ta’u island, Mead reported that adolescence was not a stressful time, compared with the expectation of adolescent “storm and stress” in Western societies. She attributed this difference to cultural factors.

Why is Margaret Mead’s work in Samoa important to the field of anthropology?

First published in 1928, the book launched Mead as a pioneering researcher and as the most famous anthropologist in the world. Samoans themselves tend to be critical of what Mead wrote of their culture, especially her claim that adolescent promiscuity was socially acceptable in Samoa in the 1920s.

Who Criticised Margaret Mead?

John Derek Freeman
John Derek Freeman (15 August 1916 – 6 July 2001) was a New Zealand anthropologist known for his criticism of Margaret Mead’s work on Samoan society, as described in her 1928 ethnography Coming of Age in Samoa. His attack “ignited controversy of a scale, visibility, and ferocity never before seen in anthropology.”

What did Derek Freeman study?

John Derek Freeman was born in Wellington, New Zealand, in 1916. The favoured child of a domineering, fiercely Presbyterian mother, he was talented and ambitious. After graduating from teacher training in 1934, he studied psychology and philosophy at Victoria University College, though he didn’t complete his degree.

What did G Stanley Hall say about adolescence?

Hall described adolescence as a time of “storm and stress” and, unlike later researchers, ascribed this life stage as lasting from ages 14-24 (rather than today’s generally accepted range of 13-19).

What did Margaret Mead discover about adolescence in American Samoa?

In 1925, Margaret Mead journeyed to the South Pacific territory of American Samoa. She sought to discover whether adolescence was a universally traumatic and stressful time due to biological factors or whether the experience of adolescence depended on one’s cultural upbringing.

What is the contribution of Mary Mead in the field of psychology?

Mead’s research looked mainly at girls and the sexual life of an adolescent within the society. Her research looked at the influence of culture on psychosexual development, proposed by Austrian psychologist Sigmund Freud. Her research compared the problems and lives of adolescents in primitive cultures with those raised in primitive culture.

Who is Margaret Mead and what did she do?

Margaret Mead. American anthropologist whose work emphasized the relationship between culture and personality formation. Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia to a family of educators. In her youth, her main influences were her mother and maternal grandmother, both of whom had raised families and also pursued careers.

What did Mead use film for in anthropology?

They pioneered the use of film as a resource for anthropological research, shooting some 22,000 feet of film as well as thousands of still photographs. Besides the Balinese, groups studied by Mead included the Manus people of the Admiralty Islands, and the Arapesh, Mundugumor, Tchambuli, and Iatmul of New Guinea.