P1246990961CJDKR

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Margaret Mead, Anthropologist 1901- 1978
For Gods Sake http//www.oikos.org/forgod.htm
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If tape recorder, camera, or video is set up and
left in the same place, large batches of material
can be collected without the intervention of the
filmmaker or ethnographer and without the
continuous self-consciousness of those who are
being observed. The camera or tape recorder that
stays in one spot, that is not tuned, wound,
refocused, or visibly loaded, does become part of
the background scene, and what it records did
happen (Mead in Visual Anthropology in a
Discipline of Words).
www.inventions.org/images/science/mead.gif
She graduated from Barnard College in 1923 and
received her Ph.D. from Columbia University in
1929. Mead set out in 1925 to do fieldwork in
Samoa. Franz Boas was her advisor.
www.wellesley.edu/.../archive/2004/01/mead.gif
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Samoa, 1925
img231.imageshack.us/.../margaretmead2fh.jpg
www.loc.gov/.../treasures/images/at0113as.jpg
In 1925, Margaret Mead journeyed to the South
Pacific territory of American Samoa. She sought
to discover whether adolescence was a universally
traumatic and stressful time due to biological
factors or whether the experience of adolescence
depended on one's cultural upbringing. After
spending about nine months observing and
interviewing Samoans, as well as administering
psychological tests, Mead concluded that
adolescence was not a stressful time for girls in
Samoa because Samoan cultural patterns were very
different from those in the United States. Her
findings were published in Coming of Age in Samoa
(1928), a vivid, descriptive account of Samoan
adolescent life that became tremendously popular.
http//www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/field-samoa.html
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Mead and Bateson documented Balinese culture in
extensive field notes and through the innovative
use of still photographs and motion picture film.
Mead and Bateson produced multiple layers of
documentation of such behaviors as parent-child
interactions, ritual performances and ceremonies,
and artists at work. Among the works they
produced from their research in Bali are the film
Trance and Dance in Bali (1952) and the book
Balinese Character A Photographic Analysis
(1942). The latter contains a selection of 759
still photographs, arranged thematically to
illustrate theoretical points about Balinese
culture and character formation. For instance,
they used photographs to show how children
learned physical skills passively by having their
bodies moved into the necessary positions by
their teachers. http//www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/f
ield-bali.html
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Salvage Ethnography Cultural relativism
www.stripes.com/photoday/120403.jpg
All over the world, on every continent and
island, in the hidden recesses of modern
industrial cities as well as in the hidden
valleys that can be reached only by helicopter,
precious, totally irreplaceable, and forever
irreproducible behaviors are disappearing, while
departments of anthropology continue to send
fieldworkers out with no equipment beyond a
pencil and notebook. ..We as a discipline have
only ourselves to blame for our gross and
dreadful negligence
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Mead and BenedictIntertwined Lives Margaret
Mead, Ruth Benedict, and Their Circle by Lois
Banner
www.born-today.com/Today/pix/mead_margaret.gif
www.fsnielsen.com/.../images/ruth_benedict.jpg
RUTH BENEDICT AND MARGARET MEAD met in the
introductory course in anthropology at Barnard
College in the fall of 1922. Mead was a student
in the class Benedict the teaching assistant.
Two years later they became lovers. Their chance
meeting would change the direction of
anthropological theory.
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John Collier Jr.1913-1992We Moderns are Poor
Observers People with Limited Technology
Astute Observers
http//www.iwf.de/va-origins/biograph/coll_3.htm

• "Visual Anthropology Photography as a Research
  Method" is a classic in the field, one of the
  founding texts of our discipline. Although the
  book is still used in many classes, Collier's
  legacy is best understood through an analysis the
  personal influence he had on generations of
  students at San Francisco State University and
  the San Francisco Art Institute. Many speak of
  Collier's classes as transformative experiences,
  stating that this professor taught them how to
  see. A series of interviews with Collier's
  students, artists, photographers, filmmakers and
  visual anthropologists, provides material for a
  critique of his long-term contribution to the
  discipline of Visual Anthropology

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Collier

• Benefits of Visual
• Photography gathers selective information but the
  information is specific qualifying and
  contextual relationships
• Photographs are precise records of material
  reality
• Problems with visual
• Camera Tool that is highly sensitive to the
  attitudes of the operator
• Little that we can see that is truly free from
  bias or personal projection

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• Photographic imagery can reveal sensitivity and
  humanity of native people that challenge classic
  ethnographic texts, methods, and
  conceptualization.

http//americanimage.unm.edu/biography.html