Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead

Portrait of Margaret Mead digital media, Artist Katherine Krizek

Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals

Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist and writer. She changed the way we study different human cultures. Her work revolves around understanding primitive societies and cultures that are vastly different from modern western civilization. Mead maintained that social convention, not biology, determines how people behave. She was a great publicizer of new ideas and devoted the greater part of her professional life to writing and lecturing.

Her pioneering anthropological work on sexuality, culture and childrearing continues to be influential today. Margaret Mead was inducted into the National Women’s Hall of Fame in 1976 and was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1979, a year after her death.

1901-1978, USA

Selected resources

  • Caffrey and Francis, “ To Cherish the Life of the World: The Selected Letters of Margaret Mead”, 2006
  • Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation, 1928
  • Mead, Sex and Temperament: In Three Primitive Societies, 1935