Margaret Mead wrote this comprehensive sketch of the culture of the United States – the first since de Tocqueville – in 1942 at the beginnning of the Second World War, when Americans were confronted by foreign powers from both Europe and Asia in a particularly challenging manner. Mead’s work became an instant classic. It was required reading for anthropology students for nearly two decades, and was widely translated. It was revised and expanded in 1965 for a second generation of readers. Among the more controversial conclusions of her analysis are the denial of class as a motivating force in American culture, and her contention that culture is the primary determinant for individual character formation. Her process remains lucid, vivid, and arresting. As a classic study of a complex western society, it remains a monument to anthropological analysis.
Table of Content
America According to Margaret Mead
Hervé Varenne
Preface – 1965
Preface from England – 1943
Introduction – 1965
Chapter 1. Introduction – 1942
Chapter 2. Clearing the Air
Chapter 3. We Are All Third Generation
Chapter 4. The Class Handicap
Chapter 5. The European in Our Midst
Chapter 6. Parents, Children and Achievement
Chapter 7. Brothers and Sisters and Success
Chapter 8. Are Today’s Youth Different?
Chapter 9. The Chip on the Shoulder
Chapter 10. Fighting the War American Style
Chapter 11. Are Democracy and Social Science Compatible Each with Each?
Chapter 12. If We Are to Go On
Chapter 13. Building the World New
Chapter 14. These Things We Can Do
Chapter 15. The Years Between: 1943–1965
Bibliographical Note – 1942
Bibliograpghy – 1942
Bibliographical Note – 1965
Bibliography – 1965
About the author
Margaret Mead served as Curator of Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1925 to 1969. She began her career with a study of youth and adolescence in Samoan society, published as Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). She published prolifically, becoming a seminal figure in anthropology, and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1979.
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