Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 4
Margaret Mead’s Remarkable Career
In this unit (to accompany SAPIENS podcast S6E2), students will learn about Margaret Mead’s career, including how her accomplishments and feminist perspective impacted future anthropologists and how her findings influenced 20th-century America. Students will read about significant milestones in her career and learn how her academic journey led toward her research outcomes with the Samoans and other anthropological achievements.
Learning Objectives
- Recall the significant milestones in Margaret Mead’s career as an anthropologist.
- Summarize how Mead’s findings have affected anthropology, Samoans, and the American public.
Sapiens articles
The Anthropologists Who Undid Sex, Race, and Gender
In Gods of the Upper Air, a biographer reveals how anthropologist Franz Boas and his students helped transform how human differences and similarities are perceived.
Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures
For those anxious about the state of the world, Mead’s celebrated work shows how anthropology can help guide alternative futures.
Keywords
View All in Activism
![A person in sunglasses and a white N-95 face mask stands in a street holding a sign that reads: “Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere.” Behind them, other demonstrators congregate.]()
![A black-and-white photograph depicts three people ascending the steps of a brick building. At the foot of the stairs, a small crowd mills about.]()
![White orchid flowers catch the light streaming in from the right-hand side of a photo, with the rest of the image in darkness.]()
![A man wearing a white, red, black, and yellow feathered headband and a patterned shirt stands in front of a truck filled with leafy green plants while a small group of people looks at a pile of greenery on the ground near the truck.]()
![In front of a black sign with white letters that reads "Defend Life & Human Rights," people hold hand-made signs.]()
![Beneath a blue sky with a few wispy white clouds, the glassy, rippling deep-blue surface of the ocean stretches to the horizon.]()
Fighting for Justice for the Dead—and the Living
A group of forensic anthropologists argues their field must reject the myth of pure objectivity and challenge systemic inequities through advocacy and activism.
David Graeber’s Lasting Influence on Anthropology and Activism
When activist and anthropologist Graeber died unexpectedly in 2020, scholars gathered to mourn him. Contributors to a resulting volume, As If Already Free, reflect on his legacy.
Passing Notes
The speaker of a poem refuses linguistic erasure, passing secret notes with untranslated lines in Korean—keeping the language alive during Japanese occupation.
Cultivating Dragon Fruit’s Political Power in Ecuador
In the Ecuadorian Amazon, an anthropologist explores how the Shuar people are betting on dragon fruit cultivation to reclaim economic autonomy and political sovereignty.
Translation Notes
A translator’s notes are refashioned into a poem calling for justice for Indigenous peoples in the Philippines displaced by a megadam.
Home-Carrying—A Repatriation Trip to Vanuatu 100 Years in the Making
An anthropologist and poet reflects on a journey of return that tells a larger story about human connection, acts of Indigenous solidarity, and the potential for repair within anthropology.
View All in Gender
![A statue of a woman clasping her hands in a prayer-like gesture, her head surrounded by a halo of illuminated stars, stands in front of a large stained-glass window featuring blue and purple shapes with accents of red and green.]()
![Underneath a large orange tent, a man wearing a backward baseball hat, red handkerchief, and white shirt and apron uses both hands to fry flatbread on multiple burners. Behind him, a small group wearing dark clothes and black baseball hats congregates.]()
![A yellow-leafed tree stands among others that have lost their leaves. In front, a field of brown grasses stretches. A blue sky with fluffy white clouds is above.]()
![Green, purple, red, yellow, and white flowers arranged in the shape of a uterus lie on a sunlit sidewalk.]()
![A line of cattle travel across a dry desert landscape, kicking up dust.]()
![An old bucket coated in multicolored limestone sits in front of a limestone-covered wall out of which protrudes a faucet dripping water that falls into the bucket.]()
Why Are People Worshipping the Virgin Mary as a Goddess?
Amid a goddess worship revival, some feminists are revering the mother of Jesus as a deity, defying Christian doctrines and confronting the use of Mary as a handmaiden of patriarchy.
Tracing Roti’s Pasts, Presents, and Futures
The Roti Collective, a community-based research project, explores the layered histories that brought a flatbread from the Indian subcontinent around the world.
Pequi Winds
A poet-anthropologist reflects on the resistance of rural women in the Brazilian Cerrado whose wisdom and knowledge help cultivate life amid the devastation of large-scale plantations.
My Errant Uterus
In a time of heightened threats to reproductive rights, a women’s health scholar and mother of two comes face to face with her uterus.
An Imagined Monograph for Nongqawuse
A 19th-century prophetess reportedly bore a serious message from the ancestors to her Xhosa people amid British colonial assault. The written archives judged her—but much still remains unknown and unacknowledged.
Her Dirge
A poet-historian reflects on women’s labor carrying memories and the past.
View All in Media
![A shadow of a person in a baseball cap holding a smartphone is cast against a gray wall.]()
![A landscape of tall grasses is silhouetted beneath a reddish night sky studded with innumerable stars that form a rippling trail in the sky.]()
![An ancient circular stone structure lies exposed under the ground surface. In the distance, light-red and tan mesas and flat desert expanses lie under a piercing blue sky with scattered fluffy white clouds.]()
![A woman’s legs and a man’s leg are shown against the backdrop of a stage where red, white, and blue colors are prominent. The man wears a black cowboy boot and black pants. The woman wears a cream-colored skirt and dark-blue high heels.]()
![A stone figure with the body of a seated lion and the head of a person wearing a headdress sits in the foreground with a large stone pyramid towering in the distance.]()
![In a pitch-black environment, a person with black smudges on their face wears a fur pelt and holds a lit torch.]()
When Calls for Vengeance Go Online
An anthropologist reckons with how digital media has changed youth gang culture dynamics—and what can be done to combat the spread of deadly rumors.
Launching Starship in South Texas
An anthropologist witnesses the first integrated flight attempt of the world’s largest rocket—and the wide range of responses it elicited from people.
Digging Into an Ancient Apocalypse Controversy From a Hopi Perspective
When producers for a popular Netflix series sought a permit to film on public lands in the U.S. Southwest, many Native leaders objected. A Hopi tribal official, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, shares his views.
The Shortcomings of Height in Politics
Why is height a focal point for some politicians? An anthropologist explores the significance of height—explaining how cultural perceptions influence and distort political dynamics in the U.S.
Why I Talked to Pseudoarchaeologist Graham Hancock on Joe Rogan
An archaeologist explains his motivations and strategies for appearing on the Joe Rogan Experience podcast with a purveyor of misinformation about the ancient past.
How Accurate Is the Stone Age Thriller Out of Darkness?
An archaeologist with expertise in human origins assesses the accuracy of a 2022 film about Homo sapiens who encounter Neanderthals.
Glossary
Feminism
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The belief in and advocacy of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes expressed especially through organized activity on behalf of women’s rights and interests.
Intersectionality
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The complex, cumulative way in which the effects of multiple forms of discrimination (such as racism, sexism, and classism) combine, overlap, or intersect, especially in the experiences of marginalized individuals or groups.
Social Constructionism
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The idea that knowledge and “reality” are actively created by, and are the products of, social and symbolic relationships within the given temporal and spatial boundaries of a cultural context.
Professor Talking Points
- Examine key moments in Mead’s career, including her work after Samoa, and consider how these moments shaped her legacy. Provide students with a brief timeline of her career and the significant accomplishments she made in the field of anthropology.
- Explain a feminist perspective in anthropology. Keeping this definition at the forefront of students’ minds, look at Mead’s accomplishments from a feminist perspective, analyzing what steps she took that led to positive changes and what could be seen as setbacks.
- Describe to students the world that Mead experienced and the expectations for women in the 1920s, particularly the social constraints and the behavior and attitudes about sexuality. Consider the misconceptions the West often has about other cultures and how colonial attitudes dominated Western society. Lead students in examining the differences in women’s experiences today compared with those in Mead’s time.
- Discuss with students how Mead’s own experience coincided with the social constructionism of her time and the misconceptions she helped perpetuate about Samoan women.
- Examining Mead’s work suggests that people, including notable academics, are a complex composite of multiple sociocultural, political, and familial influences that shape our interpretation of the world. Ask students to consider what they think might prove controversial in the future when historians look at what today’s academics are writing about. Lead students in discussing their own beliefs on what could be controversial in the future.
Academic Articles
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Jarvie, Ian. 2016. “Mead and the Trajectory of Anthropology in the United States.” Philosophy of the Social Sciences 47 (4–5): 359–369.
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Shankman, Paul. 2018. “The Public Anthropology of Margaret Mead: Redbook, Women’s Issues, and the 1960s.” Current Anthropology 59 (1): 55–73.
Student Discussion Questions
- What is an example of, or an opposing position to, social constructionism in Mead’s early career?
- What examples of intersectionality are present in Mead’s career concerning her accomplishments with the Samoan people?
- How can we see the impact of Mead’s work in the ongoing feminist struggle?
- What is one positive and one negative effect of Mead’s work in American Samoa?
- How did Mead’s work in anthropology influence future academics in that field?
Activities
- Construct a timeline of Mead’s career, including a section in each period that compares society’s expectations for women at that time with expectations today.
- Create a LinkedIn profile for Mead, including three to five jobs, a biography based on your knowledge of her, and career goals, and then post at least four times from her perspective.
- Write an argumentative essay of five paragraphs that argues for or against the narrative that Mead’s career positively impacted feminism/intersectionality.
- Create a meme or a political cartoon that shows the social constructionism that Mead faced in her career.
Additional Resources
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Article: Barnard Center for Research on Women’s “Margaret Mead’s Legacy: Continuing Conversations”
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Article: The Legacy Project’s “Margaret Mead: Nominee 1901–1978”
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Article: Sam Dresser’s “The Meaning of Margaret Mead”
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Video: Manufacturing Intellect’s Margaret Mead Interview on Cultural Anthropology (1959)
Unit By
Casie Gray, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
-
Unit 5
Samoan Voices
