Margaret Mead: 'To Cherish the Life of the World'

"Maggie was a short little lady with immense courage-a first of a kind-took nothing for granted and wrote copiously of her field experience. She could be disarmingly friendly one minute and put you in your place the next" (Andrew Whiteford, Ph.D., 1999). The name Margaret Mead is synonymous with the field of anthropology, the woman behind the name being known worldwide for her life's work. While many people know little to nothing about the subject of anthropology, a vast number know the Margaret Mead's name and work. She was a pioneer in many respects of the world, notably in being one of the first to employ photography in anthropological research, 'taking over 30,000 photographs of the Balinese' when conducting studies in Bali (Celebration of Women Anthropologists). One example of her dedication and painstaking effort to provide information to the public is found in her vast number of publications. With forty-four books and over 1,000 articles to her name, it is obvious that Mead is serious about her line of work (Celebration). Another astounding fact about Mead is the number of prominent positions she held: President of the Society for Applied Anthropology, the World Federation of Mental Health, and the American Anthropological Association, the first female anthropologist to be President of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, while also holding various places with the American Museum of Natural History and several other organizations. In 1979, after her death, the Presidential Medal of Freedom was added to her catalog of awards and achievements.
The four websites used to research Margaret Mead are the American Museum of Natural History (www.amnh.org), at which Margaret held various positions, including assistant curator, associated curator, and curator of ethnology. This site was found by searching at google.com for 'Margaret Mead,' and possesses a relatively thorough account of her life and her anthropological background. One thing in particular that one notices about the information on this website is that the very brief mention of the research she conducted leaves one with many questions as to what she actually did in the field. Her first anthropological study was done on the people of Samoa, but this articles fails to mention anything about this expedition other than the book that she wrote as a result of it- Coming of Age in Samoa. It is more a mere mentioning of the general areas in which she studied, with a severe lack of detail as to the people she worked with and what she did with her research. I was interested to read that she had been a 'deeply committed activist,' and 'often testified on social issues before the United States Congress,' this being information that I did not see on any of the other three websites. As for the site's appearance, one thing that made this site stand out from others was that it has several links of actual video footage of Margaret Mead, which was interesting, but two photographs were the only graphics or visuals posted. While the information presented is credible (being that is it the American Museum of Natural History), easy-to-read, and easy to find, overall it is lacking in many respects, and one is better off using other sources if Margaret Mead is the subject of his or her research.
Another site that I used is the University of Minnesota at Mankato's directory of anthropology biographies. This link is seen on literally every anthropology site one can find, which greatly strengthens its credibility. This site in particular is the easiest to navigate and find useful information on, not only for the anthropologist that I chose but any other anthropologist one may wish to research. The nicest feature was the set of links at the top of the page, one for each letter of the alphabet, corresponding to the last names of hundreds of anthropologists. This site also had a lot more detail in regard to Margaret's youth, schooling (particularly in regard to her beginnings in anthropology), the cultures that she studied, and her three marriages. Several facts that I found interesting that the first site failed to mention: she was the first baby to be born at the West Park Hospital after it opened in 1901, being born in a hospital was unusual for this time as most babies were born in the home, her family moved around 'a great deal' (www.mnsu.com), and that Margaret had numerous miscarriages when she and her third husband tried to conceive a child. This site also linked information about several influential people in Mead's life, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and her final husband Gregory Bateson. Another thing the site did effectively was to include the titles of numerous of Mead's books at the bottom, something that the others failed to do. The one complaint I have however, is that there is very little information about the later years of Mead's life (which was the same with the first site), with merely the abrupt ending 'Margaret died in 1978 having lived a very enriched life' ( www.mnsu.edu). Much like the first web site, there is a severe lack of graphics, but since this site was put together by a university, it is not as surprising as if it were a professional's work.
The next two sites contain much less information than the first two about Mead specifically, though they have numerous references at the bottom that prove useful. The first site is presented by the National Women's Hall of Fame, and the other by FactMonster.com, an online encyclopedia found through a link on an anthropology association's site. The Women's Hall of Fame site is the first that mentions Mead having difficulty in convincing her father to allow her to go to college, which is of significance as it is at the first university where she studies with Franz Boas and becomes intrigued by the field of anthropology. This site also revealed the Mead was one of few anthropologists who studied half a dozen tribes rather than spending a lifetime on one primitive tribe. The majority of the information is about her work, which was helpful seeing as the other sites tended to overlook this area, but the lack of visuals followed the trend set by the previous two sites. There is one picture of Mead's later years, though nothing of her in the field, of the people she studied, or of her youth. This one photograph is still more than Factmonster.com's site provided, with absolutely no visuals that are related to the topic. Both sites have a clean and simple layout, Factmonster.com using more color than the other three, also including an easy-to-use table of links for navigating to other topics. In summary, Factmonster.com possesses less weight than the other sites, being that it is merely an encyclopedic definition, but it did has useful dates that one could research elsewhere. In my opinion the Women's Hall of Fame site did a better job of presenting interesting facts and details that one may not have found elsewhere, while the Minnesota University's site did the best job overall of presenting Margaret's biography. It is the most detailed and has the longest list of references and information about Margaret's books, which would definitely prove useful if one were conducting research about Margaret and her work.
Conducting research on the internet for this topic proved to be more of a challenge than one would imagine, the main deterrent being that few Anthropology sites take the time to gather research and information about specific anthropologists themselves, and instead just link to an outside source. There are thousands of sites about Margaret Mead and her life, but many of them are simply encyclopedia blurbs with little to no depth about her career in anthropology, most frequently all one can learn is when and where she was born, studied, graduated, and worked. Oftentimes, the trustworthy Anthropology associations and organizations have nothing more than a link to a site such as wikipedia.org or factmonster.com, rather than having information presented on their websites, and this information is not exactly what one in an anthropology class would be looking for. Each of the four that were used for this paper were eventually found either directly from Google.com or by searching through anthropology websites that were found via Google.com. The requirement that sources be limited to 'web sites that are directly relevant to anthropology' proved to be the most difficult to fulfill, seeing as even when anthropology web sites had information, or at least had a link to a site that did contain information, it was often sites unrelated to anthropology that provided more in-depth information about Margaret Mead's life and her life's work.


Bibliography

American Museum of Natural History. 'Margaret Mead' 14 Oct. 2005
argaret_Mead/mead.html>

Celebration of Women Anthropologists. 'Margaret Mead' 13 Oct 2005


University of Minnesota at Mankato's directory of anthropological biographies.
'Margaret Mead' 13 Oct 2005


"Margaret Mead." The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia © 1994, 2000-2005, on Fact

Monster. © 2000'2005 Pearson Education, publishing as Fact Monster. 14 Oct. 2005