Discuss in which way Margaret Mead contributed to the cross-cultural research of gender roles and how is her work related to our class readings.
A: Margret Mead was the first female American anthropologist, who was a feature writer and speaker in mass media throughout the 1960’s and 1970’s. She was well known for making the insights of anthropology popular to modern America, as well as for being a well-respected academic anthropologist. She studied with professor Franz Boas and Dr. Ruth Benedict at Columbia University, before earning her Masters in 1924.
In 1925 she went to do fieldwork in Samoa. Her book “Coming Of Age In Samoa” was based upon her research and study of the youth (primarily adolescent girls) on the island of Ta’u in the Samoan Islands. “Coming of Age in Samoa” has since become a key text in the 1920’s American Nature vs. Nurture debate, as well as issues relating to family, adolescence, gender, social norms, and attitudes. Her reports about the attitudes towards sex in the South Pacific and Southeast Asian societies educated the 1960s sexual revolution that western parental practices and general concepts of what is “normal” in relation to Culture-Nature debate. Mead's findings suggested that the community ignores boys and girls until they are 15 or 16. But before then, children would have no social standing in the community. She also found that marriage is considered a social and economic arrangement. Wealth, rank, and job skills of the husband and wife are all taken into consideration. Another influential book by Mead was “Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies”.
This book became a major cornerstone of the feminist movement because it claimed that females are dominant in the Chambri lake region of...
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...r book about the Nuer refugees, it was also stated that they found that they would fin comfort in their religious beliefs, specifically the church.
The third and biggest pattern I found was the food is a powerful cultural symbol. In my interviews, my participant claimed that the food in America wasn’t nearly as good as the food in Egypt, while many of my classmate’s interviewees claimed the same thing. Whether it was in the phllipeans, India, or Egypt, they all stated that food in their homeland was better than food in America. There are many different aspects as to why that may be but what can be concluded is that people don’t let go of there food customs, and that people of all cultures can assimilate over food. In certain societies such as Muslim culture, food is eating with certain rituals, such as Muslims who believe in the painless halal killing of animals.
Frontiers: A Journal of Women Studies, Vol. 5, No. 3 (Autumn, 1980), pp. 17-20. JSTOR. 2
Academic Search Premier. Web. 21 Oct. 2013. Rebel Without a Cause. Dir.
Margaret Mead is one of the most influential anthropologists to modern society due to her anthropological research and her outspoken demeanor on any topic. Mead’s research was groundbreaking in an era where places like Samoa were still seen as the paradise away from the civilized world. Her efforts to transform the unknown societies of the Samoans into visual imagery for the Western world were successful and resulted in the book, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization, originally published in 1928. This book made the exotic and misunderstood cultures of the Samoans tangible for the general population. Mead’s special effort to debunk the myth of unavoidable childish adolescence was paramount in her work in Samoa, specifically adolescent females. Margaret Mead established in her work, Coming of Age in Samoa, that adolescence does not need to be the unwieldy and uncomfortable period in life that Western culture portrayed as “stormily” (Mead 5).
Mary Wollstonecraft was a British feminist writer and intellectual person from the eighteenth century (“Who Is Mary Wollstonecraft?”). Raised by a violent and physically abusive father after her mother's death, Mary eventually left home to pursue a better life (“Who Is Mary Wollstonecraft?”). Though not receiving much education herself, Mary established a school for girls with her sister Eliza and friend Fanny, but it was shut down a year later because of financial issues (“On National Education”). Then taking up a job as a governess, she realized that an existence revolving around domestic labor did not suit her (Tomaselli). She next took up a position as a translator and publisher, and ultimately became an author with books such
emphasis on life, to compare in what ways the power of women in the U.S. and in the
Although each subject is from completely different backgrounds, whether they be geographical or religious, they each share likeness in many different aspects of their lives. Showing the similarities as well as the differences in their eating habits can create a cultural map tracing each individuals food choices back to one source. In this case, the source may be the continent of Africa where many of these foods are eaten today. In West Africa, the yam is a very popular vegetable. This just goes to show how food can be the missing link of different cultures throughout the world.
In Lavanya Ramanathan’s Washington Post article published in 2015 titled “Why everyone should stop calling immigrant food ‘ethnic’”, she discusses about people’s preconceptions on the type of food that should be labelled ethnic. Ashlie Stevens also touched on a similar topic in her Guardian article published in 2015 titled “Stop thinking and just eat: when ‘food adventuring’ trivializes culture”. She talks about how people assume that just by eating food from a certain culture, they are able relate to the culture as a whole. Both authors acknowledge the importance of appreciating authentic cuisines, but takes different approaches to convince the audience. Both authors establish credibility by using a wide range of substantiated evidences. While,
The lack of an energetic and robust political movement, the lack of an identity "woman" with which to align, and the perception of restrictive and detrimental positions associated with feminism have contributed to bring about a state of post-feminism, a state in which there is nothing to join and no clear "woman" to be, but in which many of the concerns of actual women about equality, free expression, power, respect, and sexual subjectivity are still present and compelling. Reinelt, J. (2003). This is also reflected in studies of anthropology as well. The focus of contemporary scholars in third wave feminist anthropology is the differences existing among women rather than between males and females (McGee, Warms 1996: 392). Dominguez, J., Franks, M., & Boschma, J. H., III.
Mary Pipher goes on to say that the problem faced by girls is a ‘problem without a name’ and that the girls of today deserve a different kind of society in which all their gifts can be developed and appreciated. (Pipher,M). It’s clear that cultures and individual personalities intersect through the period of adolescence. Adolescence is a time in a young girl’s life that shapes them into the woman they become. I think it begins earlier than teen years because even the clothing that is being sold for younger girls says sexuality. Bras for girls just beginning in every store are now padded with matching bikini underwear, Barbie dolls are glamour up in such away that these girls believ...
10) Smith, Bonnie G., ed. Oxford Encyclopedia of Women in World History. Vol. 4. N.p.: Xford UP, 2008. Print. 2710 Pages.
perspective on the concept, arguing that gender is a cultural performance. Her careful reading of
McCann, C. R. & Kim S. (2013), Feminist Theory Reader: Local and Global Perspectives (3rd ed.) (pp 161-173).
The abundance of food and quality of food differs depending on a person’s financial capability. Between the countries, their weekly spending is extremely different, but so is the food they purchase. Families from developed countries like Germany, the United States, and Italy have access to more options, but also deal with inflation, but the fact that some of these countries do not have organizations like the FDA to approve or disapprove their food allows it to cost less at a risk. The food differences between these families are very vast, and the more they spent the unhealthier the food was. The families from Germany and the United States had an excess of fast food, junk food, and soda, and they spent the most on groceries. It was very interesting to watch the amount of unnecessary food drop as the amount spent on food dropped like the families from Chad, Bhutan, and Ecuador. The families with lower grocery bills appear to eat healthier, because they purchased natural grains and rice, but also more vegetables and fruits; some of these families did not purchase any meat that I noticed. Very interesting was the fact about the amount of money spent to the connection of how many people the food nourishes. The first three
Since the beginning of time men have played the dominant role in nearly every culture around the world. If the men were not dominant, then the women and men in the culture were equal. Never has a culture been found where women have dominated. In “Society and Sex Roles” by Ernestine Friedl, Friedl supports the previous statement and suggests that “although the degree of masculine authority may vary from one group to the next, males always have more power” (261). Friedl discusses a variety of diverse conditions that determine different degrees of male dominance focusing mainly on the distribution of resources. In The Forest People by Colin Turnbull, Turnbull describes the culture of the BaMbuti while incorporating the evident sex roles among these “people of the forest”. I believe that the sex roles of the BaMbuti depicted by Turnbull definitely follow the pattern that is the basis of Freidl’s arguments about the conditions that determine variations of male dominance. Through examples of different accounts of sex roles of the BaMbuti and by direct quotations made by Turnbull as well as members of the BaMbuti tribe, I intend on describing exactly how the sex roles of the BaMbuti follow the patterns discussed by Freidl. I also aim to depict how although women are a vital part of the BaMbuti culture and attain equality in many areas of the culture, men still obtain a certain degree of dominance.
I was born in one of the countries in Asia, and our staple food is rice. Rice is always at the center of the table, and the rest of the viand surrounds it. Here in the United States, my household still eat rice every day, accompanied by cooked vegetables and meat. My food choices are influenced by culture and family. Vegetables and fruits of my choice are abundant at the International Market and other Asian grocery stores. Vegetables are also available for a cheaper price at the farmers market. I myself buy these foods to ensure its freshness, prepare and cook them for my entire family. Inspired by Asian and American cuisine, our food is prepared with variety of cooking styles; such as dry like barbecues, baked and fried, with sauce