Inquiry into the Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia, An.
A Lovely Copy Of Margaret Mead’s First Book-Length Publication,
Scarce In Any Condition
Mead, Margaret. An Inquiry Into the Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia. New York: Columbia University Press, 1928.
8vo.; brown cloth, stamped in gilt; fine.
First edition of Mead’s uncommon first book-length work, her doctoral thesis in anthropology brought out by Columbia University Press, the publishing arm of Columbia University, whose anthropology program Mead attended; the press run, as one might gather from the subject matter, was quite small.
Margaret Mead (1901-78), ethnologist and anthropologist, was born in Philadelphia to academic parents. She attended DePauw University and then Barnard College, where she met Ruth Benedict, her lifelong friend and anthropological mentor. Mead completed her graduate studies with Franz Boas and was one of the first women in the country ever awarded a Ph.D. in anthropology.
Mead dedicated her life to demonstrating that culture molds personalities and that many supposedly innate human traits, such as gender roles and identity, are the result of cultural conditioning. Throughout An Inquiry Mead displays the acute interest in and sensitivity to the anthropological workings of gender systems that would distinguish her mature work. She would establish her international reputation with her next book, the classic Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), which was based on her initial fieldwork conducted in Samoa in the late 1920s. HAWH notes:
Perhaps more than any other single anthropologist, Margaret Mead contributed to a popular understanding of anthropology and the concept of culture, and made both household terms by the 60s. Though her books were academic in nature, she wrote them with the American public firmly in mind...Her scientific approach to discerning the origins of women’s roles caused her to revise, by the 1960s, the conservative interpretation of those origins she had voiced in [previous decades]. (p. 363)
Mead wrote several books on her own and also contributed to several anthologies. Her Ph.D. dissertation, An Inquiry into the Question of Cultural Stability in Polynesia (1928), inaugurated her illustrious publishing career. After Growing up in New Guinea, she wrote, among other books, The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe (1932); Kinship in the Admiralty Islands; Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935), even tackling seemingly surprising topics in books titled, Food Habits Research: Problems of the 1960s (1964); A Rap on Race, with James Baldwin (1971); and An Interview with Santa Claus, with Rhoda Metraux (1978). She is the recipient of numerous awards, including a gold medal award from the Society of Women Geographers (1942), one of the outstanding women of the year awards from the Associated Press (1949), was inducted into the Women’s Hall of Fame (1965), and posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom (1979). She also was given several honorary degrees, including from Rutgers University, Elmira College, Western College for Women, University of Leeds, Kalamazoo College, Skidmore College, Temple University and Columbia University.
Margaret Mead: Contemporary Authors Online, Gale, 2007. Reproduced in Biography Resource Center. Farmington Hills, Mich.: Thomson Gale. 2007. http://galenet.galegroup.com/servlet/BioRC
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