Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist who featured frequently as an author and speaker in the mass media during the 1960s and the 1970s.[1]

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Margaret Mead
Mead in 1948
Born	(1901-12-16)December 16, 1901 Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Died	November 15, 1978(1978-11-15) (aged 76) New York City, U.S.
Resting place	Trinity Episcopal Church Cemetery, Buckingham, Pennsylvania
Education	DePauw University Barnard College (BA) Columbia University (MA, PhD)
Occupation	Anthropologist
Spouses	Luther Cressman ​ ​ (m. 1923; div. 1928)​ Reo Fortune ​ ​ (m. 1928; div. 1935)​ Gregory Bateson ​ ​ (m. 1936; div. 1950)​
Children	Mary Catherine Bateson
Relatives	Jeremy Steig (nephew)
Awards	Kalinga Prize (1970) Presidential Medal of Freedom (1979, posthumous)

Part of a series on the
Anthropology of kinship
Basic concepts Family Lineage Affinity Consanguinity Marriage Incest taboo Endogamy Exogamy Moiety Monogamy Polygyny Polygamy Concubinage Polyandry Bride price Bride service Dowry Parallel / cross cousins Cousin marriage Levirate Sororate Posthumous marriage Joking relationship Clan Cohabitation Fictive / Milk / Nurture kinship Descent Cognatic / Bilateral Matrilateral Lineal Collateral House society Avunculate Linealities Ambilineality Unilineality Matrilineality Patrilineality Household forms and residence Extended Matrifocal Matrilocal Neolocal Nuclear Patrilocal
Terminology Kinship terminology Classificatory terminologies By group Iroquois Crow Omaha Eskimo (Inuit) Hawaiian Sudanese Dravidian (debated)
Case studies Australian Aboriginal Burmese Chinese Philippine Polyandry in Tibet / in India Feminist Chambri Mosuo Sexuality Coming of Age in Samoa
Major theorists Diane Bell Tom Boellstorff Jack Goody Gilbert Herdt Don Kulick Roger Lancaster Louise Lamphere Eleanor Leacock Claude Lévi-Strauss Bronisław Malinowski Margaret Mead Henrietta Moore Lewis H. Morgan Stephen O. Murray Michelle Rosaldo Gayle Rubin David M. Schneider Marilyn Strathern
Related articles Alliance theory Matrilineal / matrilocal societies Feminist anthropology Sex and Repression in Savage Society Social Bonding and Nurture Kinship "The Traffic in Women"
Social anthropology Cultural anthropology
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She earned her bachelor's degree at Barnard College of Columbia University and her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees from Columbia. Mead served as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1975.[2]

Mead was a communicator of anthropology in modern American and Western culture and was often controversial as an academic.[3] Her reports detailing the attitudes towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures influenced the 1960s sexual revolution.[4] She was a proponent of broadening sexual conventions within the context of Western cultural traditions.