Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, and Visual Anthropology

Anthropology ◽  
2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ira Jacknis
Keyword(s):  
New Guinea ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Visual Anthropology ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Professional Career ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Ethnographic Methodology

The work of Margaret Mead (b. 1901–d. 1978) and Gregory Bateson (b. 1904–d. 1980) has proven to be critical in forming the subdiscipline of visual anthropology. In 1933 Mead met Bateson on the Sepik River, while both were engaged in ethnographic fieldwork in Papua New Guinea. Soon a couple (they married in 1936), they decided to travel to Bali with the explicit intention of pioneering the use of still photography and film as a basic ethnographic methodology. Before their collaboration Mead had studied with Franz Boas at Columbia University (PhD in 1929), and Bateson was a student of Alfred C. Haddon at Cambridge (MA in 1930). During their lives, neither held a tenured regular academic appointment, although both were active teachers and mentors. In their early and middle years, both worked in the field that came to be known as “culture and personality.” The couple worked together in Bali between January 1936 and March 1938. Following a comparative period of fieldwork among the Iatmul of New Guinea (April 1938–February 1939), they returned to Bali (February–March 1939), before returning to America. From their shared Balinese fieldwork they created a corpus of about 25,000 still photographs and 22,600 feet of 16 mm. film footage—and from the Iatmul of New Guinea, another 11,000 feet of film, and another 8,000 still photographs. From these materials, they produced two photographic ethnographies and seven edited films. These were perhaps the first cultural representations to use images, coupled with texts, as the primary vehicles for making ethnographic arguments and analyses. Although this transformed both visual anthropology and the discipline at large, it took many decades for their achievement to be recognized. Bateson and Mead, each in their own way, continued to advocate for the importance of visual representations in anthropology and related disciplines. After their divorce in 1950, Bateson continued his peripatetic professional career, often working collaboratively. His later work in psychiatry and the behavior of animals (otters, dolphins, and octopuses) found a place for visual documentation of non-verbal forms of communication. Except for her first fieldwork, in Samoa (1925), Mead never took her own photographs, instead collaborating with her ethnographic partners, especially two of her husbands, Reo Fortune and Gregory Bateson. More so than Bateson, in later life Mead was active in helping create the institutions of visual anthropology, through archives, conferences, publications, and teaching. Bateson and Mead’s visual anthropology has been influential throughout the scholarly world, but given the relatively large literature on the couple, this bibliography has been confined to works published in English.

Anthropological Fictions: On Character, Culture, and Sexuality in the Work of Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Virginia Woolf

Prospects ◽  
2005 ◽  
Vol 30 ◽  
pp. 363-382
Author(s):  
Kimberly Engber
Keyword(s):  
Virginia Woolf ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Subsequent Response ◽  
Vassar College ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Waves ◽  
Ruth Benedict

In January 1932, anthropologist Ruth Benedict writes a letter to her colleague Margaret Mead on fieldwork in New Guinea, bringing Mead up to date on the health of “Papa” Franz Boas. Boas, the academic mentor that Benedict and Mead shared at Columbia University, acts as only the momentary locus for their continuing exchange about life and work and the relationship between the two. After giving “her hospital report,” Benedict turns eagerly to another conversation with Mead, asking, “Did you likeThe Waves? And did you keep thinking how you'd set down everybody you knew in a similar fashion? I did. I suppose I'm disappointed that she didn't include any violent temperaments, and I want my group of persons to be more varied” (Mead,Anthropologist at Work, 318). Focusing on the depiction of characters in Virginia Woolf's 1931 novelThe Waves, Benedict presents modernist fiction as a model for ethnography. However, she completely avoids the literary termcharacterin her discussion of Woolf, a particularly odd omission since Benedict had majored in English at Vassar College and since she and Mead regularly exchanged novels and their own poetry in letters.Ruth Benedict's reading ofThe Waveshas been cited as evidence of her tendency toward a vaguely “poetic” anthropology, an argument that tends to separate the aesthetic from the sociopolitical in both Benedict and Woolf. In this essay, I consider Benedict's reading of Woolf, together with Margaret Mead's subsequent response, as evidence of a shared critical engagement with character, culture, and sexuality in the early 20th century.

Benedict, Ruth (1887–1948)

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Emma Doran
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Moral Judgments ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Publication Patterns ◽  
Margaret Mead

Known as America’s first woman anthropologist, Ruth Fulton Benedict was a cultural relativist and folklorist. She studied anthropology under Franz Boas (1858–1942) at Columbia University, received her PhD in 1923 and thereafter joined the faculty. Margaret Mead (1901–78) was her student and protégée, and the two maintained a lifelong friendship. Among Benedict’s contributions to the field of anthropology was her publication Patterns of Culture (1934), in which she directed anthropology toward a comparative analysis of culture, through which we learn about a given culture by contextualizing it with others without making moral judgments.

Margaret Mead

Anthropology ◽  
2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Shankman
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
20Th Century ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
The United States ◽  
American Samoa ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
Male And Female ◽  
The Public ◽  
Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead (1901–1978) was the best-known anthropologist of the 20th century. At the time of her death, she was also one of the three best-known women in the United States and America’s first woman of science. Born in Pennsylvania, Mead attended college at DePauw and Barnard before receiving her PhD from Columbia University, where she studied under the direction of Franz Boas. After completing her dissertation, Mead conducted fieldwork in American Samoa (1925–1926) and published her best-selling book Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928. In 1926, she became a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, her professional home for her entire career. Between 1928 and 1939, Mead conducted fieldwork in seven more cultures, including five in New Guinea—Manus, Arapesh, Tchambuli, Mundugumor, and Iatmul—as well as in Bali and on the Omaha reservation, publishing professional and popular work on almost all of these cultures. Mead pioneered fieldwork on topics such as childhood, adolescence, and gender and was a founding figure in culture and personality studies. She advanced fieldwork methods through the use of photographs, film, and psychological testing, as well as the use of teams of male and female researchers. Her books from this period, such as Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies and Growing up in New Guinea, continue to be read today. During World War II, Mead supported the war effort by working on several applied projects, including national character studies and, later, the study of culture at a distance. She would become a founding member of the Society for Applied Anthropology and spent much of her career addressing important domestic issues in America. Mead was also an interdisciplinary scholar, networking broadly across disciplinary boundaries and organizing conferences. She became the head of the American Anthropological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. As the public face of anthropology for much of the 20th century, she appeared in popular magazines like Redbook and on radio and television, as well as authoring books such as Male and Female and Culture and Commitment. Mead’s ethnographic work has been subject of criticism, especially as the result of anthropologist Derek Freeman’s critique of her Samoan research. Her reputation was tarnished as a consequence, despite flaws in that critique. Nevertheless, Mead’s pioneering research and writing laid the foundation for work by other anthropologists; her tireless efforts on anthropology’s behalf put the discipline on the map; and her ability to reach the public remains unparalleled among anthropologists.

scholarly journals Inventariando a grafia da luz nas dissertações de mestrado do Programa de Pós-Graduação em Antropologia Social - UFRGS

ILUMINURAS ◽  
2004 ◽  
Vol 5 (11) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alfredo Barros ◽  
Cornelia Eckert ◽  
Édison Gastaldo ◽  
Liliane Guterres ◽  
Adriane Rodolpho
Keyword(s):  
Columbia University ◽  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Bronislaw Malinowski ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Bronisław Malinowski ◽  
Fernand Braudel

Em 1956, o antropólogo Marvin Harris de Columbia University, publicou Town and Country in Brazil, uma bela etnografia sobre uma cidade no interior do Estado da Bahia. Harris descreve a história da decadência de Minas Velhas, que nasceu da aventura pelo ouro no século XVIII, perdendo para outras vilas vizinhas, como Vila Nova, o estatuto de centro produtivo e aglutinador em torno de uma mercado econômico e centro cultural florescente.   Em 1959 o historiador Fernand Braudel, fascinado por explicar como se tece a vida dos homens no processo das mudanças temporais e históricas, as transformações sobrevindas as tradições, as efervescências e as reticências, as recusas, as cumplicidades e abandonos, reanalisa a obra de Harris em "Dans le Brasil Bahianais: le présent explique le passé". Criticando a fraca perspectiva comparativa, Braudel, entretanto, homenageia com esta releitura a obra de fôlego do antropólogo Harris, lastimando apenas a inexistência de qualquer ilustração, sobretudo a ausência total de fotografias, que sem dúvida, pondera ele, o livro mereceria conter.   Esta breve referência nos imerge no campo que gostaríamos de abordar, o da utilização da fotografia nos textos antropológicos. Os pêsames de Braudel à Harris apenas elucida o quanto a fotografia já era importante como fonte ilustrativa do contexto descrito desde os primeiros grandes antropólogos deste século. Bronislaw Malinowski, Evans-Pritchard, Gregory Bateson, Margaret Mead e tantos outros fizeram uso da fotografia em suas experiências etnográficas e na elaboração de uma antropologia descritiva aprofundada, como sugere Samain, em relação as fotografias e as legendas usadas por Malinowski (SAMAIN, 1995:27).

“Stern Champion of the Human Race, of Man as Human”: Alexander F. Chamberlain and Reform in the Age of Imperialism and Jim Crow

2016 ◽  
Vol 51 (3) ◽  
pp. 833-864
Author(s):  
JOHN DAVID SMITH
Keyword(s):  
Native American ◽  
World War I ◽  
Cultural Psychology ◽  
Jim Crow ◽  
Cultural Anthropology ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
World War ◽  
African American Culture ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
Academic Interests

This essay examines the broad and understudied contributions of pioneer American anthropologist Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865–1914), who earned America's first PhD in anthropology at Clark University under the legendary anthropologist Franz Boas. Before his untimely death on the eve of World War I, and Boas's rise as a leading scientific spokesman of antiracism at Columbia University, Chamberlain contributed as significantly as Boas to the fields of linguistic and cultural anthropology, cross-cultural psychology, child development, comparative folklore, and Native American and African American culture, and to the cause of equality and justice for all humans. Chamberlain subscribed to an antiracist cultural evolutionism, frequently and passionately condemning ethnocentrism and insisting on the “generic humanity” of all persons, of all races. Close reading of Chamberlain's work suggests not that Boas's work mattered less, but rather that both men participated in an emerging debate on the nature and meaning of race that informed social policy and shaped academic interests during the Progressive Era.

scholarly journals Margaret Mead, Bali e o Atlas do comportamento infantil: apontamentos sobre um estudo fotográfico

2010 ◽  
Vol 16 (34) ◽  
pp. 315-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
João Martinho de Mendonça
Keyword(s):  
Gregory Bateson ◽  
Margaret Mead

Este artigo analisa a maneira como Margaret Mead concebeu e utilizou as imagens tomadas por Gregory Bateson em Bali (1936-1939) para desenvolver um estudo, quase dez anos depois, sobre o comportamento infantil balinês. Notam-se as limitações tanto da metodologia adotada por Mead quanto do bias político-ideológico que perpassou esse trabalho realizado durante a Guerra Fria. Tento discutir estas limitações tanto quanto sintetizar possibilidades de abordagem das imagens. Pranchas fotográficas foram selecionadas e reproduzidas para mostrar as diferentes perspectivas de abordagem das fotografias, nos trabalhos balineses e no Atlas do comportamento infantil, produzido pelo doutor Arnold Gesell.

Clark Wissler, 1870–1947

1948 ◽  
Vol 13 (3) ◽  
pp. 244-247 ◽  
Author(s):  
N. C. Nelson
Keyword(s):  
New York ◽  
New York City ◽  
Natural History ◽  
York City ◽  
Columbia University ◽  
American Museum ◽  
Franz Boas ◽  
American Archaeology ◽  
University Training

American Archaeology lost one of its . most enthusiastic promoters and interpreters by the death, in New York City on August 25, of Doctor Clark Wissler. As one of the last of the passing generation of anthropologists with university training to enter the profession from another discipline—in this case Psychology—-he came to the American Museum of Natural History in 1902, at the age of 32. He served at first as Assistant in the Department of Ethnology under Curators F. W. Putnam and Franz Boas; but not long after, probably on Putnam's departure, was advanced to Assistant Curator of Ethnology and by 1905 is recorded as Acting Curator of Ethnology. Succeeding Boas, on the latter's complete transfer to Columbia University in 1906, he was named Curator of the Department of Ethnology and finally, in 1907, Curator of the Department of Anthropology, a rank which he held until retired to emeritus status in 1942, at the ripe age of 72.

Margaret Mead

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Virginia Yans ◽  
Ji-Hye Shin
Keyword(s):  
Child Behavior ◽  
Cultural Influences ◽  
New Guinea ◽  
Historical Change ◽  
Child Rearing ◽  
Generation Gap ◽  
Male Participant ◽  
Western World ◽  
Margaret Mead ◽  
Parent Child

Margaret Mead (b. 1901–d. 1978), one of the 20th century’s most accomplished and controversial anthropologists, pioneered modern childhood studies. Her ethnographies and popular writings established child socialization as a centerpiece for the transmission of human culture. Mead understood human behavior as a product of complex interactions between biology and the ways in which various human cultures shaped and embellished biological inheritance beginning at birth. When Mead began her career in the 1920s, anthropology’s unique fieldwork methodology and the impending disappearance of “whole cultures” required female scientists: most small pre-literate societies in remote areas of the world would not accept male “participant observers” of women’s daily activities which, of course, included child rearing. Mead’s early 1920s and 1930s fieldwork in Samoa, New Guinea, and Bali emphasized different cultural patterns of child rearing practices and child behavior. Her controversial finding that Samoan adolescent girls moved through adolescence without turmoil initiated her fame. As a young woman cultural anthropologist specializing in child behavior, Mead both engaged and disputed established Western scientific notions of universal, “normal” developmental stages including Freud’s psychosexual stages and Piaget’s innate cognitive development models. The early Samoa and New Guinea fieldwork initiated Mead’s trademark practice of using anthropological knowledge as a social reform tool. Returning to the developed Western world with her field research, for example, she encouraged lay audiences to examine their own child rearing practices. During the 1930s and 1940s, Mead joined the “culture and personality” and “national character” schools of anthropology, two early iterations of today’s psychological anthropology. As an example, her Balinese field studies conducted with her third husband Gregory Bateson (a trained biologist and ethnographer) worked within a neo-Freudian framework emphasizing parent-child interaction and cultural influences. The Balinese field work method involving both hundreds of unstaged, but carefully photographed and filmed, parent-child interactions and accompanying detailed field notes followed her earlier use of projective testing of New Guinea children, all now recognized as innovations. In the post–World War II era Mead’s interests turned to evolutionary change but she retained her interest in youth recognizing that the children of the 1960s faced an unprecedented historical change colloquially known as the “generation gap.” Mead presciently predicted a reversal of thousands of years of generational roles: 20th-century children, she correctly foresaw, would be teaching their less experienced elders how to navigate and survive in a world of rapid social and technological change into which the young were born.

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