How did Margaret Mead's work shape our understanding of Anthropology and the world in general?

Question

How did Margaret Mead's work shape our understanding of Anthropology and the world in general?

Answer 1

Mead was a student of Franz Boas and is among his most highly recognized students.  One of my professors Dr. Jace Weaver studied under her.  She was a female pioneer in a male dominated field.  She advanced the idea of cultural relativity in regards to sexuality in Samoan culture.  The pervasiveness of casual s*x with various partners was the norm in Samoa but this trend shocked the conservative American psyche.  Mead insisted on judging a culture based on its own rules rather than those of the ethologist's society.  She also demonstrated th usefulness of an insider perspective, living with and like the group being studied so as to more full appreciate the everyday life and activities and the ways in which issues/probmes arise and are dealt with.

Answer 2

Without getting into the whole Mead-Freeman debate, I think it's safe to say that Mead (along with others like Boas and Bennedict) contributed a sense of public advocacy to anthropology. She was one of the earliest and most effective individuals to popularize anthropological ideas. While some people don't think that's very important, I think it's great when a discipline with as much to contribute as anthropology allows and enables its knowledge to receive a public hearing.  Her role as a popularizer of anthropology is one of the most fascinating elements of Mead.

Answer 3

It didn't. She was a grand lady, though. When the morons of The Anthropological Society of America were about to censure E. O. Wilson for " Sociobiology ", only one person spoke in his defense. That person was Margret Mead She said it was a sad bit of business when the Society was even considering censuring a theory. By a small margin, Wilson was not censured. A grand gesture, even though Wilson was a scientist and not subject to the idiots of the Anthropological society.

Margret Mead's work on the Samoans was quite incoherent, though.

Answer 4

It showed Walt Disney that lies and distortions can be profitable.

Answer 5

it didn't it was shown to be wrong and possibly fraudulent