Margaret Mead and Paradigm Shifts Within Anthropology During the 1920s

Abstract

The debate between Derek Freeman and the silenced ghost of Margaret Mead remains unintelligible to many readers because of the absence of historicist context for the early work of Mead. Despite Freeman's apparent attention to historical documents, he makes virtually no effort to situate Mead within Boasian anthropology or the interwar years more generally. This paper provides such contexts in terms of the Boasian paradigm of the time and how Mead was understood by her contemporaries. This context dispels the black and white indictment of a disciplinary heroine with feet of clay, and provides the baseline for a more balanced assessment.