Editing Margaret Mead (section)

== Anthropological Career ==

Mead's fieldwork in Samoa (1925-1926), undertaken as doctoral research, produced "Coming of Age in Samoa" (1928), which argued that Samoan adolescence, free from the stress that characterized American teenage years, demonstrated that adolescent turmoil was cultural rather than biological. The book's accessibility—Mead wrote for general audiences rather than exclusively for specialists—brought anthropological thinking to readers who had never encountered the discipline. Her argument's implications for American society, suggesting that different cultural arrangements could produce different experiences, made the work controversial as well as popular.<ref name="caffrey"/>

Her subsequent fieldwork in New Guinea and Bali, often conducted with her third husband Gregory Bateson, expanded her ethnographic range while developing methods including extensive photography and film documentation. Her books, including "Growing Up in New Guinea" (1930) and "Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies" (1935), continued exploring how culture shaped experience that Western observers might assume was natural. Her willingness to draw implications for American society from Pacific Island research maintained the public relevance that made her work controversial among some colleagues.<ref name="howard"/>

Her later career, based at the American Museum of Natural History, combined continued research with public engagement that made her among America's most recognized intellectuals. Her columns, her lectures, and her media appearances brought anthropological perspectives to debates about child-rearing, sexuality, and cultural change. Her criticism from Derek Freeman, who challenged her Samoa research after her death, generated debate about anthropological method that her work's prominence made significant.<ref name="caffrey"/>