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 stream of clear water pours into an orange bucket. Behind it, two slightly out-of-focus women and a child look on.]()
![A white cartoon speech bubble on a red background is wrapped in barbed wire.]()
![A person wearing a rust-colored hooded coat and a black face mask stands in front of a large facility while holding a red sign that reads: “It’s Been a Long Time Coming but I Know a Change Is Coming!”]()
![A close-up view features an art exhibit composed of multiple photographs arranged side by side. The photos show people riding a horse, receiving medical care, and speaking at a women’s event.]()
![A large metal sign with the letters S.O.S. carved through it stands in a shallow lake in front of a blue sky with pink clouds.]()
![Amid a political rally where red, black, and green colors are prominent, a smiling woman wearing glasses, a khaki shirt, and a black headscarf holds aloft a sketch of a person’s face that says, “Khan Is Hope.”]()
How Water Insecurity Impacts Women’s Health
Anthropologists and local activists in Indonesia and Peru uncover links between water scarcity and gendered violence, and work together to lessen the harms of gender inequality.
Speaking Truth to Israel Requires More Than Academic Freedom
Educators and students critical of Israel’s war on Gaza face censorship, harassment, and dismissal. An anthropologist who researches coexistence between Israelis and Palestinians argues such critics need more than free speech protections.
Inside Amazon’s Union-Busting Tactics
An anthropologist reports on the impediments to labor organizing—and why it’s still worth trying.
Fighting for Reproductive Rights in Retirement
An anthropologist conducts research in an Arizona retirement community, where older women share hard-won insights about how limitations on sexual and reproductive freedom impacted their lives.
Can Art Save the “Post-Apocalyptic” Salton Sea?
In this Mad Max–like California landscape, artists and activists are inventing renewable alternatives to the capitalist system that’s developing but also destroying the region.
The Rise of Aunties in Pakistani Politics
Middle-class, conservative women in Pakistan have found a political voice as supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party—putting them at odds with the secular women’s movement their own daughters support.
View All in Gender
![A stream of clear water pours into an orange bucket. Behind it, two slightly out-of-focus women and a child look on.]()
![A close-up view features an art exhibit composed of multiple photographs arranged side by side. The photos show people riding a horse, receiving medical care, and speaking at a women’s event.]()
![A historic black-and-white photograph shows a small group of workers on the floor of a pin manufacturing plant tending to rows of machines.]()
![Amid a political rally where red, black, and green colors are prominent, a smiling woman wearing glasses, a khaki shirt, and a black headscarf holds aloft a sketch of a person’s face that says, “Khan Is Hope.”]()
![Clear water streams down moss-covered rocks amid thick, luxurious vegetation with broad tropical leaves and bright red and yellow flowers.]()
![A blurred, black-and-white image features a person from the shoulders up looking to their left against a pitch-black background.]()
How Water Insecurity Impacts Women’s Health
Anthropologists and local activists in Indonesia and Peru uncover links between water scarcity and gendered violence, and work together to lessen the harms of gender inequality.
Fighting for Reproductive Rights in Retirement
An anthropologist conducts research in an Arizona retirement community, where older women share hard-won insights about how limitations on sexual and reproductive freedom impacted their lives.
How Allocating Work Aided Our Evolutionary Success
Societies divide labor by gender and age. A biological anthropologist considers when and why this behavior arose.
The Rise of Aunties in Pakistani Politics
Middle-class, conservative women in Pakistan have found a political voice as supporters of the Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party—putting them at odds with the secular women’s movement their own daughters support.
Coastal Eden
A poet interrogates the garden of Eden origin story by reimagining it against the backdrop of East Africa’s coastal environment.
Nameless Woman
Archives often render marginalized people’s histories invisible. In response to such erasure, a poet writes a letter to explore the experience of historically enslaved African and Creole women in Tanzania and Mauritius—and the ways in which they may have navigated their lives.
View All in Media
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![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.]()
![Three people stand in a line holding lit candles. The person in the center holds a piece of paper with a red triangle colored in with marker on the left side, and three horizontal stripes—black, white, and green—on the right. In the white area, text written in red marker reads, “MSJC family in solidarity.”]()
![A header image on a cellphone of several people wearing military uniforms and holding hands is above a yellow logo and white text that reads, “Israel Defense Forces.” White text underneath reads, “Official IDF Twitter account. We tweet real-time information and updates in 7 languages—choose yours.”]()
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.
The Responsibility of Witnesses to Genocide
Palestinian narratives of their own dispossession are routinely dismissed—making witnessing Israel’s ongoing onslaught on Palestine that reignited in 2023 an urgent task. But witnessing is not enough.
The Viral Atrocities Posted by Israeli Soldiers
Tracing 75 years of Israeli war photography, an anthropologist explains how images that reframe disproportionate violence as proof of victory have intensified in the war on Gaza that erupted in 2023.
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
