1923, elle entre à l’Université Columbia.
En 1923, elle épouse son premier mari, Luther Cressman, qui est alors étudiant en théologie.
En 1925, elle rencontre en Europe l’anthropologue néo-zélandais Reo Fortune et l’épouse. Elle s’installe avec lui aux îles Samoa en Polynésie à la suggestion de Franz Boas.
En 1926, elle rejoint l’American Museum of Natural History de New York.
De 1928 à 1929, elle vit dans les îles de l’Amirauté. En 1929, elle obtient son doctorat à l’université Columbia.
En 1931, elle commence l’étude de trois sociétés en Nouvelle-Guinée, d’un point de vue comparatiste. Elle la complète en 1933.
En 1933, elle rencontre son futur mari, l’anthropologue Gregory Bateson chez les Chambulis.
Dans les années 1930, elle travaille avec Harry Stack Sullivan.
En 1935, elle épouse Gregory Bateson et de 1936 à 1938 elle séjourne avec lui à Bali pour effectuer un travail de terrain. Ils réalisent ensemble un film, Transe and dance in Bali.
En 1938, elle retourne en Nouvelle-Guinée et s’installe chez les Iatmuls en compagnie de Bateson.
En 1939, naît leur fille Mary Catherine Bateson. Cette même année, elle consulte Milton Erickson à propos des processus de transe.
De 1942 à 1946, elle participe aux célèbres rencontres interdisciplinaires connues sous le nom de conférences Macy.
En 1949, elle a déclaré à l’appartement de Clemens Heller de la rue Vaneau en Paris : « Un petit groupe de citoyens engagés et réfléchis est capable de changer le monde. D’ailleurs rien d’autre n’y est jamais parvenu .»1
Elle décède, suite à un cancer, le 15 novembre 1978.
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Margaret Mead was born December 16, 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mead did her undergraduate work at Barnard College, where she met Franz Boas, who she went on to do her anthropology Ph.D. with at Columbia. She became a curator of ethnology at American Museum of Natural History, where she published the bestseller, Coming of Age in Samoa.
A small group of thoughtful people could change the world. Indeed, it’s the only thing that ever has.
Margaret Mead was appointed assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1926. After expeditions to Samoa and New Guinea, she published Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)—which became a best seller— and Growing Up in New Guinea (1930). All together, she made 24 field trips among six South Pacific peoples.
Her later works included Male and Female (1949) and Growth and Culture (1951), in which Margaret Mead argued that personality characteristics, especially as they differ between men and women, were shaped by cultural conditioning rather than heredity. Some critics called her fieldwork impressionistic, but her writings have proved enduring and have made anthropology accessible to a wider public.
Over the years Margaret Mead became an in-demand lecturer, often tackling controversial social issues. She also wrote a column for Redbook magazine and was a popular interview subject on a wealth of topics. She continued to work for the American Museum of Natural History until 1969 and an adjunct professor at Columbia University for a time. In 1972, Mead published her autobiography, Blackberry Winter.
Married and divorced three times, Margaret Mead first wed Luther Cressman in 1923. The couple divorced in 1928. She then married Reo Fortune, but that union ended in 1935. The next year, Mead took her third husband, anthropologist Gregory Bateson. The couple sometimes collaborated in field research and had a child together, a daughter named Mary Catherine Bateson. The couple divorced in 1950.
Margaret Mead died on November 15, 1978, in New York City.