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PEOPLE IN AMERICA - Margaret Mead¹ Influenced How Social Scientists Understood Native CulturesBy Jerilyn Watson and produced by Paul Thompson

Broadcast: Sunday, September 03, 2006

ANNOUNCER:


Margaret Mead

Welcome to People in America from VOA Special English. Today, Sarah Long and Rich Kleinfeldt tell about one of the most influential² social scientists of the last century -- the anthropologist³, Margaret Mead.

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VOICE ONE:

People around the world mourned when Margaret Mead died in nineteen seventy-eight. The president of the United States at the time, Jimmy Carter, honored the social scientist with America's highest award for civilians⁴. Another honor came from a village in New Guinea. The people there planted a coconut⁵ tree in her memory. Margaret Mead would have liked that. As a young woman, she had studied the life and traditions of the village.

Miz Mead received such honors because she added greatly to public knowledge of cultures and traditions in developing areas. Many people consider her the most famous social-science researcher of the Twentieth Century. Yet some experts say her research was not scientific. They say she depended too much on observation and local stories. They say she did not spend enough time on comparative studies. They believe her fame resulted as much from her colorful personality as from her research.

VOICE TWO:

Margaret Mead was often the object of heated dispute. She shared her strong opinions about social issues. She denounced⁶ the spread of nuclear bombs. She spoke⁷ against racial injustice⁸. She strongly supported women's rights. Throughout her life she enjoyed taking a risk. Miz Mead began her studies of cultures in an unusual way for a woman of her time. She chose to perform her research in the developing world.

She went to an island village in the Pacific Ocean. She went alone. The year was nineteen twenty-five. At that time, young American women did not travel far away from home by themselves. They did not ask personal questions of strangers. They did not observe births and deaths unless they were involved in medical work. Margaret Mead did all those things.

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VOICE ONE:

Margaret Mead was born in December, nineteen-oh-one, in the city of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Her parents were educators. Few women attended college in those days. However, Miz Mead began her studies in nineteen nineteen at De Pauw University in the middle western town of Greencastle, Indiana. She soon decided⁹ that living in a small town did not improve one's mind. So she moved to New York City to study at Barnard College. There she studied English and psychology¹⁰. She graduated in nineteen twenty-three.

VOICE TWO:

Margaret next decided to study anthropology¹¹ at Columbia University in New York. She wanted to examine the activities and traditions of different societies. She sought to add to knowledge of human civilization. At the same time, she got married. Her husband, Luther Cressman, planned to be a clergyman. Together, they began the life of graduate students.

VOICE ONE:

Miz Mead studied with two famous anthropologists: Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. Mister Boas believed that the environment people grow up in -- not family genes¹² -- was the cause of most cultural differences among people. This belief also influenced his young student. Mister Boas was not pleased when Margaret Mead asked to do research in Samoa. He was concerned for her safety. Still, he let her go. Franz Boas told her to learn about the ways in which the young women of Samoa were raised.

VOICE TWO:

Margaret's husband went to Europe to continue his studies. She went -- alone -- to Samoa, in the Pacific Ocean. She worked among the people of Tau Island. The people spoke a difficult language. Their language had never been written. Luckily, she learned languages easily.

VOICE ONE:

Miz Mead investigated the life of Samoan girls. She was not much older than the girls she questioned. She said their life was free of the anger and rebellion¹³ found among young people in other societies. She also said Samoan girls had sexual¹⁴ relations with anyone they wanted. She said their society did not urge them to love just one man. And she said their society did not condemn¹⁵ sex before marriage.

Margaret Mead said she reached these beliefs after nine months of observation on Samoa. They helped make her book about Samoa one of the best-selling books of the time. Miz Mead was just twenty-five years old when this happened.

VOICE TWO:

Several social scientists later disputed her findings. In a recent book, Derek Freeman says Miz Mead made her observations from just a few talks with two friendly young women. He says they wanted to tell interesting stories to a foreign visitor. However, he says their stories were not necessarily true. Mister Freeman says Samoan society valued a young woman who had not had sexual relations. He says Tau Island men refused to marry women who had had sex.

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VOICE ONE:

After nine months among the Samoans, Miz Mead returned to the United States. She met a psychology student from New Zealand, Reo Fortune, on the long trip home. Her marriage to Luther Cressman ended. She married Mister Fortune in nineteen twenty-seven. Miz Mead and her second husband went to New Guinea to work together. It would be the first of seven trips that she would make to the area in the next forty-seven years.

The two observed the people of Manus Island, one of the Admiralty Islands, near mainland New Guinea. They thought the people were pleasant. After a while, though, she and her husband had no more tobacco to trade. Then the people of Manus Island stopped giving them fish.

VOICE TWO:

Later the two studied the Mundugumor people of New Guinea. Miz Mead reported that both the men and women were expected to be aggressive. Only a few years before, tribe¹⁶ members had given up head-hunting. Traditionally they had cut off the heads of their enemies. Mundugumor parents also seemed to be cruel to their children. They carried their babies in stiff¹⁷ baskets. They did not answer the needs of the babies when they cried. Instead, they hit the baskets with sticks until the babies stopped crying.

VOICE ONE:

Not long after the New Guinea trip ended, Margaret Mead's marriage to Reo Fortune also ended. In nineteen thirty-six, she married for the third time. Her new husband was Gregory Bateson, a British biologist. Mister Bateson and Miz Mead decided to work together on the island of Bali, near Java in Indonesia. The people of Bali proudly shared their rich culture and traditions with the visitors. Miz Mead observed and recorded their activities. Mister Bateson took photographs. The Batesons had a daughter. They seemed like a fine team. Yet their marriage ended in the late nineteen forties.

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VOICE TWO:

As time went on, Margaret Mead's fame continued to grow. Her books sold very well. She also wrote for popular magazines. She appeared on radio and television programs. She spoke before many groups. Americans loved to hear about her work in faraway places. Miz Mead continued to go to those places and report about the people who lived there.

VOICE ONE:

After her trips, Margaret Mead always returned to the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. She worked there more than fifty years. She examined the research of others. She guided and advised a number of anthropology students. Miz Mead worked in an office filled with ceremonial baskets and other objects from her studies and travels. People said she ruled the museum like a queen. They said Margaret Mead knew what she wanted from the work of others and knew how to get it.

VOICE TWO:

Other scientists paid her a high honor when she was seventy-two years old. They elected her president of the American Association for the Advancement¹⁸ of Science. A few years later, she developed cancer. But she continued to travel, speak and study almost to the end of her life. One friend said: Margaret Mead was not going to let a little thing like death stop her. Margaret Mead died more than twenty years ago. Yet people continue to discuss and debate her studies of people and cultures around the world.

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ANNOUNCER:

This program was written by Jerilyn Watson and produced by Paul Thompson. The announcers were Sarah Long and Rich Kleinfeldt. I'm Faith Lapidus. Listen again next week for People in America, from VOA Special English.

1 mead   

n.蜂蜜酒

参考例句：

• He gave me a cup of mead.他给我倒了杯蜂蜜酒。
• He drank some mead at supper.晚饭时他喝了一些蜂蜜酒。

2 influential   

adj.有影响的，有权势的

参考例句：

• He always tries to get in with the most influential people.他总是试图巴结最有影响的人物。
• He is a very influential man in the government.他在政府中是个很有影响的人物。

3 anthropologist   

n.人类学家，人类学者

参考例句：

• The lecturer is an anthropologist.这位讲师是人类学家。
• The anthropologist unearthed the skull of an ancient human at the site.人类学家在这个遗址挖掘出那块古人类的颅骨。

4 civilians   

平民，百姓( civilian的名词复数 )； 老百姓

参考例句：

• the bloody massacre of innocent civilians 对无辜平民的血腥屠杀
• At least 300 civilians are unaccounted for after the bombing raids. 遭轰炸袭击之后，至少有300名平民下落不明。

5 coconut   

n.椰子

参考例句：

• The husk of this coconut is particularly strong.椰子的外壳很明显非常坚固。
• The falling coconut gave him a terrific bang on the head.那只掉下的椰子砰地击中他的脑袋。

6 denounced   

公开指责( denounce的过去式和过去分词 )； 揭发； 告发； 通知废止

参考例句：

• She publicly denounced the government's handling of the crisis. 她公开谴责政府处理这场危机的方式。
• He was denounced as a foreign spy. 有人告发他是外国间谍。

7 spoke   

n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说

参考例句：

• They sourced the spoke nuts from our company.他们的轮辐螺帽是从我们公司获得的。
• The spokes of a wheel are the bars that connect the outer ring to the centre.辐条是轮子上连接外圈与中心的条棒。

8 injustice   

n.非正义，不公正，不公平，侵犯（别人的）权利

参考例句：

• They complained of injustice in the way they had been treated.他们抱怨受到不公平的对待。
• All his life he has been struggling against injustice.他一生都在与不公正现象作斗争。

9 decided   

adj.决定了的，坚决的；明显的，明确的

参考例句：

• This gave them a decided advantage over their opponents.这使他们比对手具有明显的优势。
• There is a decided difference between British and Chinese way of greeting.英国人和中国人打招呼的方式有很明显的区别。

10 psychology   

n.心理，心理学，心理状态

参考例句：

• She has a background in child psychology.她受过儿童心理学的教育。
• He studied philosophy and psychology at Cambridge.他在剑桥大学学习哲学和心理学。

11 anthropology   

n.人类学

参考例句：

• I believe he has started reading up anthropology.我相信他已开始深入研究人类学。
• Social anthropology is centrally concerned with the diversity of culture.社会人类学主要关于文化多样性。

12 genes   

n.基因( gene的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• You have good genes from your parents, so you should live a long time. 你从父母那儿获得优良的基因，所以能够活得很长。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Differences will help to reveal the functions of the genes. 它们间的差异将会帮助我们揭开基因多种功能。 来自英汉非文学 - 生命科学 - 生物技术的世纪

13 rebellion   

n.造反，叛乱，反抗

参考例句：

• The next year they rose up in rebellion.第二年他们就揭竿起义了。
• The new government quickly suppressed the rebellion.新政府迅速把叛乱镇压下去。

14 sexual   

adj.性的，两性的，性别的

参考例句：

• He was a person of gross sexual appetites.他是个性欲旺盛的人。
• It is socially irresponsible to refuse young people advice on sexual matters.拒绝向年轻人提供性方面的建议是对社会不负责任。

15 condemn   

vt.谴责，指责；宣判(罪犯)，判刑

参考例句：

• Some praise him,whereas others condemn him.有些人赞扬他，而有些人谴责他。
• We mustn't condemn him on mere suppositions.我们不可全凭臆测来指责他。

16 tribe   

n.部落，种族，一伙人

参考例句：

• This is a subject tribe.这是个受他人统治的部落。
• Many of the tribe's customs and rituals are as old as the hills.这部落的许多风俗、仪式都极其古老。

17 stiff   

adj.严厉的，激烈的，硬的，僵直的，不灵活的

参考例句：

• There is a sheet of stiff cardboard in the drawer.在那个抽屉里有块硬纸板。
• You have to push on the handle to turn it,becanse it's very stiff.手柄很不灵活，你必须用力推才能转动它。

18 advancement   

n.前进，促进，提升

参考例句：

• His new contribution to the advancement of physiology was well appreciated.他对生理学发展的新贡献获得高度赞赏。
• The aim of a university should be the advancement of learning.大学的目标应是促进学术。