Margaret
Mead was the world's most famous and one of the most controversial anthropologists
during her lifetime. Anthropology - the study of human cultures - was a new science
when Margaret Mead first began field work among Polynesian cultures, and her conclusions
often challenged traditional ways of thinking and showed that Western culture
had much to learn from 'primitive' cultures. Her work studying natives in Samoa
convinced her that adolescence need not be a time of stress, conflict and confusion
- it was cultural attitudes that made it so in the West. Her work studying primitive
societies in Papua New Guinea helped fuel the women's liberation movement. Margaret
Mead discovered that in some societies women are dominant, and observations of
other 'role reversals' and discoveries of non-aggressive cultures led her to conclude
that culture plays a large part in determining gender roles.
Margaret
Mead founded the Institute for Intercultural Studies and promoted the idea that
the great diversity of human cultures proved that we can choose a better future
for our world. She believed that warfare, racism and environmental exploitation
were all learned patterns reinforced by our current culture, and that by helping
to create new institutions and cultural values we could change the world. When
Margaret Mead learned about John McConnell's idea to create Earth Day on the Spring
Equinox in 1970, she became convinced that this was the perfect idea to transcend
cultural boundaries and unite humanity around the shared goal of creating a more
peaceful, just and sustainable world, and served as the International Chair of
Earth Day.
