Comments on: To Cherish the Life of the World /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/ Notes and Queries in Anthropology Fri, 08 Dec 2017 18:00:10 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=4.9.1 By: Savage Minds: Notes and Queries in Anthropology — A Group Blog » Mead the Positivist /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-35570 Wed, 18 Oct 2006 23:02:33 +0000 /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/#comment-35570 […] Via a link left by Rex in my recent post on Margaret Mead, I discovered this article entitled “Margaret Mead vs. Tony Soprano” by Micaela di Leonardo, one of the few anthropologists who has taken trying to be a public intellectual seriously, writing regular articles for The Nation. […]

]]> By: Mead legacy « Entertaining Research /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-35522 Wed, 18 Oct 2006 18:15:27 +0000 /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/#comment-35522 […] Kerim at Savage Minds wonders if it is time to take a closer look at Mead’s legacy. […]

]]> By: oneman /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-35516 Wed, 18 Oct 2006 17:14:32 +0000 /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/#comment-35516 Mead received Dept of Defense funding throughout her career, not just in WWII (though it bears noting that nearly *everyone* received funding somehow traceable to DoD or CIA sources from WWII to the mid-’70s). THe incident at the AAAs was tangentially related to Project Camelot, but was more directly caused by the publication of documents showing several anthropologists working with the US govt on counter-insurgency issues in Thailand. Eric Wolf was the chair or the AAAs ethics committee, the role of which he attempted to expand from an advisory role to a disciplinary one. In the fracas that ensued, Mead was appointed Chair of an ad hoc committee that eventually chastised Wolf for overstepping his committee’s charter and swept the counter-insurgency accusations under the rug, more or less. This incident set the stage for a drastic weakening of the AAAs ethics statement, especially with regard to secret research. As a colleague of mine puts it, the current Statement of Ethics forbids anthropologists from engaging in secret research unless, that is, the anthropologist is disposed to do so.

]]> By: Rex /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-35510 Wed, 18 Oct 2006 16:19:42 +0000 /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/#comment-35510 My opinion of Mead is incredibly low and would be lower still if I didn’t worry that people would get me confused with Derek Freeman (who I have an even lower opinion of — with the exception of his very early work on kinship which I quite like). Michaela di Leonardo’s book _Exotics at Home_ absolutely roasts Mead and her pretension to populist politics. And while everyone has been _very_ careful not say anything that might associate them in the very least bit with Freeman, I think everyone agrees Mead’s work in PNG was lousy — especially by comparison with her husbands Bateson and Fortune.

Hmmm…. perhaps more on this could be found here:
http://www.barnard.columbia.edu/sfonline/mead/

]]> By: Erik Davis /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/comment-page-1/#comment-35497 Wed, 18 Oct 2006 14:29:22 +0000 /2006/10/18/to-cherish-the-life-of-the-world/#comment-35497 Absolutely time to review her legacy. But it’s interesting that Mead’s legacy is relevant to another discussion on this site, that of anthropologists as official or unofficial (productive or reproductive?) government agents.

Mead worked for the US government during World War II. Whatever one thinks about her involvement in that supposedly ‘good war,’ her attempts to suppress the accusations leveled against anthropologists secretly working with the CIA in Project Camelot is less easily dismissed. See an article in the Nation on this issue. Here’s a nice quote:

As a result of inquiries made into these revelations, the 1971 annual meeting of the AAA became the scene of a tumultuous showdown after a fact-finding committee chaired by Margaret Mead maneuvered to create a report finding no wrongdoing on the part of the accused anthropologists. An acrimonious debate resulted in the rejection of the Mead report by the voting members of the association. As historian Eric Wakin noted in his book Anthropology Goes to War, this “represented an organized body of younger anthropologists rejecting the values of its elders.” But the unresolved ethical issue of anthropologists spying during the First and Second World Wars provided a backdrop to the 1971 showdown. Almost two decades later, during the Gulf War, proposals by conservatives in the AAA that its members assist allied efforts against Iraq provoked only minor opposition.

The Nation article cites Eric Wakin’s excellent and little-read Anthropology Goes To War, in which, if I remember correctly, Margaret Mead is described as spitting on one of her opponents in a meeting on the Project Camelot controversy. So much for cherishing life.

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