Final Draft for NHD

Do you want to make an impact on us citizens? Do you want to become an anthropologist? The American anthropologist, Margaret Meade developed the field of culture and personality research and was a leading influence in introducing the concept of culture into education, medicine, and public policy. In 1923, she entered the anthropology Department of Columbia University. Perhaps the most profound and far-reaching impact that Margaret Meade had was as a counselor to American society - usually on family related issues.
Margaret Meade was a counselor to American society, which she became a major impact in history. In the past, Meade wanted to make Americans understand cultural anthropology as well as to understood archaeology. Mead's interest in psychiatry had turned her attention to the problem of the cultural context of schizophrenia, and with this in mind she went to Bali, a society where trance and other forms of dissociation are culturally sanctioned. Through the work of Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead, the relevance of anthropology to the problems of public policy was recognized to a degree, though somewhat belatedly. When World War II brought the United States into contact with allies, enemies, and people emerging from colonialism, the need to understand many lifestyles became apparent. Mead conducted a nationwide study of American food habits prior to the introduction of rationing. Later she was sent to England to try to explain to the British the habits of the American soldiers who were suddenly thrust among them. After the war she worked as director of Research in research cultures, a cross-cultural, trans-disciplinary project applying the insights and some of the methods of anthropology to the study of complex modern cultures. In return, she contributed significantly to the development of psychoanalytic theory by emphasizing the importance of culture in personality development. She served on many national and international committees for mental health and was instrumental in introducing the study of culture into training programs for physicians and social workers. Ever since Margaret Mead taught a class of young workingwomen in 1926, she became deeply involved in education, both in the universities and in interpreting the lessons of anthropology to the general public. Margaret Mead was a dominant force in developing the field of culture and personality and the related field of national character research.
However, Margaret Meade relates to NHD because her theoretical position is based on the assumption that an individual matures within a cultural context which includes an ideological system, the expectations of others, and techniques of socialization which condition not only outward responses but also inner psychic structure. We should be able to care about Margaret Meade because the impact she made for us citizens had encourage people to follow in her footsteps such as people becoming a anthropologist. Margaret Meade isn’t famous, but she should be. She should be famous because the impact she had on us citizens which she had helped people and their relationships with each other. She also should become famous because she was a leading influence in introducing the concept of culture into education, medicine, and public policy. The legacy Meade has on us today is her words. Several examples are "A city is a place where there is no need to wait for next week to get the answer to a question, to taste the food of any country, to find new voices to listen to and familiar ones to listen to again. Life in the twentieth century is like a parachute jump; you have to get it right the first time." The way we can feel her words is because of the way she describes and compares them to reality. She describes it in a way where you will always see what she means.


Bibliography
- Coming of Age in Samoa (1928) ISBN 0-688-05033-6
-Growing Up in New Guinea (1930) ISBN 0-688-17811-1
- Male and Female (1949) ISBN 0-688-14676-7
-People and Places (1959; a book for young readers)
-Continuities in Cultural Evolution (1964)
- Culture and Commitment (1970)

Reference
-Gregory Acciaioli, ed. 1983 "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy" Canberra Anthropology (special issue) 6(1): 1-97.
- George Appell, 1984 "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry" Eastern Anthropology 37: 183-214.
- Richard Feinberg 1988 "Margaret Mead and Samoa: Coming of Age in Fact and Fiction" American Anthropologist 90: 656-663
-Leonora Foerstel and Angela Gilliam (eds) (1992). Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
-Hilary Lapsley (1999) Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
-Lowell D. Holmes (1987) Quest for the Real Samoa: the Mead/Freeman Controversy and Beyond. South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey
-Howard, Jane (1984) Margaret Mead: A Life. New York: Simon and Schuster.
-Eleanor Leacock 1988 "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us" in Central Issues in Anthropology 8(1): 3-20.