Margaret Mead Research Articles

An ordinary future: Margaret Mead, the problem of disability, and a child born different By Thomas W.Pearson, Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. 222 pp.Home signs: An ethnography of life beyond and beside language By Joshua O.Reno, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024. 264 pp.

An ordinary future: Margaret Mead, the problem of disability, and a child born different By Thomas W.Pearson, Oakland: University of California Press, 2024. 222 pp.Home signs: An ethnography of life beyond and beside language By Joshua O.Reno, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2024. 264 pp.

Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the troubled birth of psychedelic science By BenjaminBreen. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024. 384 pp.

Tripping on Utopia: Margaret Mead, the Cold War, and the troubled birth of psychedelic science By BenjaminBreen. New York: Grand Central Publishing, 2024. 384 pp.

The cultural model – premise of human identity formation

The study represents an attempt to update and reconfirm some important concepts, such as: human personality, national character, national identity, cultural identity/personality, cultural model. Different points of view on the respective concepts are analyzed, with reference to the works of some notorious anthropologists and philosophers: D. Reisman, Margaret Mead, Max Weber, R. Linton, C. Noica, L. Blaga, A Mihu, V. Pâslaru et al. The author of the article claims that although the greatest importance in the formation of personality has the environment, however the individual’s personality in formation is shaped by culture, as in a society with a sufficiently stable culture, the individual integrates more and more as he gets older, reaffirms his values, attitudes, adhering to the behavior that his culture prescribes. The person who begins his life in one culture and, later, continues it in another, is forced to adhere to patterns of behavior that do not agree with his own values, attitudes. The article refers to the Bessarabian society, which during the Russian and Soviet empires were forced to impose foreign cultural models, which had a devastating impact on the natives. Made in a national and universal context, the transformation of the individual from a biological being into a cultural, intellectual-spiritual one is possible through an education based on national values, produced by the nation to which the educable belong.

Remembering “Hosts and Guests”: a tribute to Valene Smith (1926–2024)

Widely described as the ‘Margaret Mead of the anthropology of tourism,’ Dr. Valene Smith’s edited collection, ‘Hosts and Guests: The Anthropology of Tourism’ unleashed a new generation of scholars from anthropology, geography, sociology and beyond that recognized tourism as a topic worthy of academic attention. As the tribute pieces in this issue demonstrate, Dr. Smith’s reputation as a teacher, mentor, and scholar is framed through her approachable, grounded interpretation of the world and social science. This collection of short tribute pieces is written by colleagues, friends, and students of Dr. Smith who have had the pleasure of knowing her and her work. Each author offers their unique engagement with Dr. Smith and the impact of her life and legacy. Tourism Geographies is honored by their words and contribution to Dr. Smith’s remembrance.

An Ordinary Future: Margaret Mead, the Problem of Disability, and a Child Born Different by Thomas Pearson (review)

An Ordinary Future: Margaret Mead, the Problem of Disability, and a Child Born Different by Thomas Pearson (review)

Habituated to Denial

The article discusses the mechanisms of climate change denial. It starts from the observation that habituation to denial is based on a process that is exactly the opposite on the content level: the process of repeated aha-experiences, i.e., sudden insights into reality of the climate crisis. In the first part, the author summarises the developments of recent years, which came to a symbolic end at COP 28 in Dubai, when the President introduced the contradictory idea that the transition to a sustainable paradigm is only possible by simultaneously maintaing the fossil fuel paradigm. In the second part, the article summarises some of the main points of what was probably the first interdisciplinary symposium on climate change, organised in 1975 by Margaret Mead. Referring to the conference’s position paper, the author first develops the basic framework for productive interaction between the social and natural sciences as Mead envisioned it and then presents the social consequences of the fact that the relationship remained institutionally disorganised—and eventually had to organise itself.

An Ordinary Future: Margaret Mead, the Problem of Disability, and a Child Born Different By Thomas W. Pearson, Oakland: University of California Press. 2023. 221 pp.

An Ordinary Future: Margaret Mead, the Problem of Disability, and a Child Born Different By Thomas W. Pearson, Oakland: University of California Press. 2023. 221 pp.

Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan, Code: From Information Theory to French Theory

Assembling a distinctive genealogy of cybernetic thought situated in relation to Progressive Era technocracy, industrial capitalism, (de)colonial relations, and eugenic machinery, Code uncovers the vital interdependence of informatics, the humanities, and the human sciences in the 20th century. Rather than figuring cybernetics as emerging from Second World War military technologies and post-war digital computing, Code argues that liberal technocrats’ inter-war visions of social welfare delivered via ‘neutral’ communication techniques shaped the informatic interventions of both the Second World War and the Cold War. Tracing how an organizing concept of code linked the work of diverse structurally-minded thinkers, such as Norbert Wiener, Warren Weaver, Margaret Mead, Gregory Bateson, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Roman Jakobson, Jacques Lacan, Roland Barthes, and Luce Irigaray, Bernard Dionysius Geoghegan reconstructs the cybernetic apparatus that spawned new fields, including structural anthropology, family therapy, and literary semiology – and grapples with the unfolding implications of such socio-technical dynamics for 21st-century critical theory, digital media, and data analytics.

Eight Moments in the History of Qualitative Research

This article provides an overview of the history of qualitative research, from its origins in colonial ethnographies to the development of formalized methods, and the pluralism and interpretive approaches of the blurred genres period. The article also discusses the challenges and controversies faced by qualitative research in the present and future, leading to the rise of new approaches such as mixed-method research and critical conversations about diversity, moral discourse, and global society. The article also describes the three perspectives used to classify research: application, objective, and mode of inquiry. Qualitative research is a method of scientific inquiry that uses data collection and analysis, primarily focused on understanding an issue or solving a problem. The article explores the eight moments of qualitative research development as identified in 'The Sage Handbook of Qualitative Research', from the traditional phase to the fractured future. Each moment is characterized by a different paradigm, ontology, and methodology, and has been influenced by key contributors such as Bronislaw Malinowski and Margaret Mead.
 Finally, the article highlights the growing importance of qualitative research in the field of social science research, which is now considered equal to quantitative research. The mixed method approach, which links both quantitative and qualitative research, has also gained popularity. The article concludes by emphasizing the value of scientific inquiry and the importance of understanding the world around us in all its complexity and diversity.

The dialectic of (menopause) zest: Breaking the mold of organizational irrelevance

AbstractDrawing from women's testimonials in The Guardian and from contributions of feminist writers, Virginia Woolf, Julia Kristeva, and Margaret Mead, we start a conversation on the positive and energizing aspects of menopause in the workplace. We propose a social interpretation of menopause that challenges a pervasive perspective of medical decline: A theorization of “the dialectic of zest,” as inspired by the writings of Margaret Mead. By problematizing the experiences of women going through this transition in the workplace, we reveal how well‐intentioned awareness campaigns can lead to further stigmatization. We thus encourage organizations to not only favor an approach of “education for all” but also extend their social imaginaries beyond medicalized perspectives and coping views. Organizations can then embrace the potential of “zest,” a positive side of menopause that remains largely unknown. We argue that organizations, inspired by a holistic view of menopause in the workplace, can creatively support the professional progressions and ambitions of not only women but also all employees.

A. Elisabeth Reichel, Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict

A. Elisabeth Reichel, <i>Writing Anthropologists, Sounding Primitives: The Poetry and Scholarship of Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, and Ruth Benedict</i>

How Samoan Workers under Colonial Regimes Enlarged their World

The Samoan Islands have never really fallen off the world’s radar since it became the site of an ‘almost war’ between the Great Powers of the United States, Britain, and Germany in 1889. That war was averted by the intervention of a hurricane that sent to the bottom three U.S. and three German warships and cost many lives. A decade later, the Samoan Islands were carved up between Germany and the United States, with Britain withdrawing to tend to other imperial interests in the Pacific and Africa. In 1914, World War I saw Germany evicted from the western Samoan islands in favor of New Zealand and a League of Nations mandate, while the United States continued to enjoy the protective naval harbor in American Samoa to the east. Things went relatively quiet between the wars, though both parts of the Samoas were experiencing independence movements. And Margaret Mead was sowing the seeds of her most famous work of social science, Coming of Age in Samoa, researched in the American Samoa islands. Western Samoa burst back into prominence in 1962 as the Pacific’s first independent island nation, enjoying thereafter a reputation as one of the Pacific’s most stable and relatively prosperous states. Wrapped in the embrace of the U.S. Navy, American Samoa sailed serenely on.

‘A Village Stood on End’: Anthropology and the Interior of the Modernist Tower

ABSTRACT The paper considers the influence of American anthropologist Margaret Mead on the design and representation of two residential towers of the Waterloo Estate in Sydney, one of Australia's most well-known housing projects. The paper shows how the NSW Housing Commission, in employing Mead as an advisor, attempted to construct an interior perspective on the community qualities of residential towers. The Commission used Mead’s commentary to reframe the domestic environment of the towers – perceived as alienating and hostile in public debate at the time – by establishing an analogy between the residential towers and the village. Mead’s presence offered support for changing the negative public opinion on the proposed redevelopment of Waterloo, but the completed project also corresponded to some of the qualities she had envisioned as an anthropological reframing of the modernist tower. The idea that each tower could be a “village stood on end” aligned with the Commission’s plan to build additional towers. The paper situates Mead’s influence in the ‘anthropologization’ (Teyssot, 2013) of the modernist architectural discourse in the 1960s and concludes by pointing to the contemporary relevance for more shared interior space, as the residential tower is once again becoming an increasingly common feature in Australian cities.

Recursively Contextual Identity: A Variant Formulation of First- and Second-Order

The core cybernetics concept of first- and second-order has been interpreted in various ways, including as the cybernetics of cybernetics, as systems observed and observing, as epistemic and ethical modes, and as historical phases. In this paper, I describe an approach in which first-order systems are distinguished as contexts and second-order systems are distinguished by the self-reflective awareness of contextual participants. Seeking to analyze first- and second-order as a relational unity, I adopt Francisco Varela&rsquo;s notation for complementarities, specifying their dialectics in the format: first/second. I use a performative exercise to constrain and enable the development of a variant formulation and then compare this variant with textual ones by Heinz von Foerster and Gordon Pask and with visual depictions by Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead and by Ray Ison. Interpretively, first/second approaches that I examine might be distinguished in several respects, including by their relational domains and associated modes (observers of objects versus organisms in contexts), diagrammatics (1-in-2 versus 2-in-1), and challenges of a second-order stance (e.g., resisting objectification versus maintaining awareness of one&rsquo;s coupled, transcontextual, and situated relations). This enquiry emphasizes an object-context distinction while also imbricating or making a complementarity of the first/second distinction, such that both modes&mdash;observers of objects and organisms in contexts&mdash;are discussed in terms of self-reference.

Sensing performance: from Balinese character to Japanese androids

ABSTRACT This article examines recent work in machine performance in the context of an ‘Artificial Life’ research lab, linking the disciplines of visual anthropology, cybernetics, Artificial Life and Deep Learning-based artificial intelligence with the increasing interest in deploying ‘intelligent machines’ in artistic performance settings. As recent explorations of ‘machine vision’ in robotics demonstrate, cameras can be understood as instruments of capture and representation which no longer are simply recorders of images whose meanings are to be unlocked by human interpreters. Moving across a range of performative contexts, from anthropologists Gregory Bateson and Margaret Mead’s ethnographic work in Bali to experiments with an autonomous android in the Japanese lab, the article explores the camera as a cybernetically influenced sensing device that generates complex feedback loops between entities and their spatio-temporal environments. How does the camera as a sensing device enact a kind of visual performativity whereby technologically mediated subjects and selves are not recorded but, in effect, produced through interactive circuits, instruments and computational technologies? How might models of perception and observation that emerge from the social and natural sciences shape new ideas about the entangling of computational and real bodies spaces in the emerging practices of performance design?

‘of evident invisibles’: Ethnography as intermediation

Evident invisibles emerge in the ethnographic encounter which change the whence and the whither of the ethnographic gesture. Long ago, Margaret Mead critiqued anthropologists for ignoring ‘the world in between’ that makes their fieldwork possible – this article takes the argument a step further, proposing that all ethnographic encounters are fundamentally ‘amidst’. Thus, it calls for a shift from translation to intermediation as the guiding trope of ethnography. Although the practice of ethnography requires the objectification of a ‘field’, metaphysical pluralism remains the fundamental condition of ethnographic intermediation. In light of that, the article critiques (a) the practice of describing our main methodological disposition as ‘participant observation’, arguing instead for the older term ‘intensive ethnographic research’; and (b) the implicit use of the trope of ethnography-as-translation. Ethnographic examples are taken from the author’s own fieldwork in the coastal mangroves of southern Bahia (northeast Brazil) in the late 2000s.

Evil and Complicated Queers through History

Evil and Complicated Queers through History

Partnerships promote innovation in food supply chains

Partnerships promote innovation in food supply chains

Boas and Boasians, once again

The present review discusses two recent works dealing with Franz Boas: a biography by Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt and a book on Boas and several members of his school by Charles King. The information presented in Zumwalt’s biography is compared with the one found in an earlier one by Douglas Cole as well as in various books and articles on the specific aspects of Boas’s life and career. King’s book is commended for its depiction of Zora Neil Hurston’s ethnographic work but criticized for paying too much attention to Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict at the expense of several other key Boasians, such as Alexander Goldenweiser

Mina #Ecosmartphone Films 2021

MINA - Mobile Innovation Network and Association is the longest-running film festival in the Southern Hemisphere dedicated to mobile &amp; smartphone filmmaking with a focus on moving-image arts, documentary, community-engaged film productions, experimental films and emerging film production forms and formats, such as MoJo, drone videos, AR and Mobile Cinematic VR. The tenth edition of MINA is presenting a special program titled #EcoSmartphoneFilms, a showcase of contemporary mobile film production about environmental protection and ecology in all its aspects. It is an eclectic collection of short international environmentally themed films from all over the world made on smartphones, pocket cameras, laptops and Instagram. The films show the planet’s beauty as well as the various local, regional and global environmental challenges we are facing. By using a variety of creative solutions that illustrate the power of mobile film, they help to raise awareness about environmental topics from around the globe and make us aware of the role mobile media can play in this. In the spirit of Margaret Mead’s statement that we should “never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world” with this special #EcoSmartphoneFilms program we hope to inspire a deeper critical understanding of ecological issues and strengthen our commitment as both filmmakers and curators to inspire future generations to go mobile and stay sustainable. Save Me (UK) Michael CoppolaShot on iPhone 11 Pro Max SAVE ME is an experimental sci-fi drama short film about the fragmentation of the human psyche, manmade planetary destruction and the possible end of the subjective and objective world, told through the experiences of a lost girl stranded on a deserted beach, accompanied by an epic orchestral score and futuristic sound design with the use of CGI. Iumbar Project - The First One (Australia) Martin K. Koszolko Shot on iPad Pro This music video documents human intervention into environment. The footage shows the fate of trees and other plants disposed of by human inhabitants of the land. This short film raises questions about our relationship with the natural environment and highlights the beauty of the shapes and forms of trees. This beauty is evident even if the plants have been cut down and are no longer alive. The Almeda Fire (USA) David Scott LeibowitzShot on iPhone 11 Pro My Mobile movies took a swift turn from art to ENG when the Almeda fire swept through this part of the Rogue Valley. After The Flood (USA) Alexandra GuillossouShot on iPhone XR An observational piece on two seemingly dissimilar St. Louis events that took place in June 2019. Man and nature can be equally explosive and yet only one has the option of choice. Tree Time (USA) Alexandra Lerman Shot on iPhone 7 &amp; iPhone X Tree Time imagines a relationship between nature and technology unmediated by human presence. The video was shot in the Amazon rainforest with a drone enacting a disembodied point of view that floats through the densely compressed forest canopy, taking off, hovering above the ground, and occasionally returning to it. Kaminda (NL) David van DeldenShot on iPhone X &amp; iPhone 11 Pro A visual poem of a 3-year-old boy's journey of self-discovery. Kaminda revisits David’s childhood adventures narrated by a young voice in spoken words written by Juan- Carlos Goilo. From the dry northern plains to the atmospheric damp caves, Kaminda takes you through the rustic landscapes of Curaçao with stunningly captured scenes. Hear the primitive sounds of Curaçao's "Muzik di Zumbi" accompanied by scenes shot underwater, on land and in the air. Little Beings (Mexico) DiAminda Ordaz Shot on iPhone 8 I tended my senses and they were there,I stopped to contemplate and they were there, I opened my eyes and they were there,I woke up and they were there,I paid attention and they were there.So I wanted to take off my sandals,as not to hurt them with my walk.