ANTHROPOLOGY:
School of Thought - Functionalism
Famous Practitioner - Margaret Mead
Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia on December 16, 1901. She did her first field work study in 1925 on adolescent girls. Then in 1929, she went to New Guinea where she studied the play and imaginations of younger children, and how they were shaped by adult society. Margaret Mead died in 1978, by this time she was one of the most famous Anthropologists ever. Her major accomplishments include twenty eight honorary PhD's, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, she was also the president of many major scientific associations, including the American Anthropological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. Margaret Mead was probably most famous for the controversy surrounding her work, in 1983, Derek Freeman published "Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological". In this book, Derek Freeman challenged all of Mead's major findings. His information was based on four years of field experience in Samoa and interviews with the people who Mead studied.
I feel that Margaret Mead was a woman who made great contributions to the world of Anthropology; she has many great accomplishments which are a tribute to her fine work. She has greatly influenced how we think about behavior, especially with young children.
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