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Social Theorist

Margaret Mead

Anthropology

American cultural anthropologist whose extended fieldwork in the South Pacific, especially her 1928 study of adolescence in Samoa, made her the best known anthropologist of her generation and a leading public voice for cultural relativism in debates about nature versus nurture; her conclusions about Samoan adolescence were later disputed by Derek Freeman, a dispute scholarship has never fully settled. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

Facts
Birth DateSourced to the subject's own account
1901-12-16 1
Birth YearSourced to the subject's own account
1901 1
Death DateSourced to the subject's own account
1978-11-15 1
Death YearSourced to the subject's own account
1978 1
BirthplaceSourced to the subject's own account
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. 1
Death PlaceSourced to the subject's own account
New York City, U.S. 1
Nationality / CultureSourced to the subject's own account
American 1
Defining ContributionSourced to the subject's own account
Pioneered sustained participant-observation fieldwork among Pacific Island societies and used it to argue that adolescence and gender roles are shaped by culture rather than fixed by biology, carrying that argument into American public debate far beyond academic anthropology. 1
Notable WorkSourced to the subject's own account
Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) 2
Margaret Mead
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Connections

Associated With

Source Wikipedia: Margaret Mead

Informed By

Franz Boas, Social Theorists

Mead was Boas most famous student at Columbia, and her Samoa fieldwork was designed under his direct guidance.

Practices Studied

Mead is the study's author and fieldworker, not merely a later commentator on it.

Source Wikipedia: Coming of Age in Samoa
In the Other Atlases

Nationality

Also in Geography Atlas: the nationality of this subject.

Source Wikipedia: Margaret MeadLead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia articletier 3
Quote, Lead paragraph of the cited Wikipedia article
Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the mid-twentieth century.
Sources
1. Wikipedia: Margaret Mead
Wikipedia
  • Introduction, description
    Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 - November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist.
  • Methods section, participant observation
    As an ethnographer, Mead's primary research method was participant observation through living in communities for extended periods of time.
  • Associated With: Columbia University, Article text
    She taught at The New School and Columbia University, where she was an adjunct professor from 1954 to 1978 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.
View the Source
2. Wikipedia: Coming of Age in Samoa
WikipediaEducational problems: American and Samoan contrasts, notable work
Quote, Educational problems: American and Samoan contrasts, notable work
Mead concluded that the passage from childhood to adulthood (adolescence) in Samoa was a smooth transition and not marked by the emotional or psychological distress, anxiety, or confusion seen in the United States.
View the Source
Wikidata: Margaret Mead
Wikidata Q180099, class allow-list match, case-insensitive label variant (w-bbfill-smallsix2-0926/resolve_ci.ps1)View the Source
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