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Margaret Mead and the Culture of Forgetting in Anthropology: a Response to Paul Roscoe

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Margaret Mead and the Culture of Forgetting in Anthropology: a Response to Paul Roscoe MICAELA Dl LEONARDO Margaret Mead and the Culture of Forgetting in Anthropology: A Response to Paul Roscoe Only connect. research, and write and speak. And this is what is curious about Paul Roscoe's piece: its anachronism, its radical lack —E. M. Forster of a sense of the historical shifts in anthropology and in the world, since Margaret Mead and Reo Fortune wrote EARLY A QUARTER CENTURY AGO, the late Eric about the Mountain Arapesh in the 1930s. Thus, while I NWolf published a ringing editorial in the New York appreciate Roscoe's long familiarity with Papua New Times titled "They Divide and Subdivide, and Call It An- Guinea (PNG) populations and his archival work, this lack thropology" (1980). Wolf's concern was the proliferation of "history and history of theory" connection means that of mutually uncommunicative subfields in our discipline both his framing of the question at hand and his empirical to the detriment of any overarching set of understandings claims leave much to be desired. Let me elaborate. of the human condition. He laid out his larger history-of- First, I certainly agree with Roscoe on the importance thought vision in Europe and the People without History of revisiting Margaret Mead's oeuvre. Mead is still, as I (1982), in which he argued for our discipline's release wrote in Exotics at Home, "the most well-known anthro- from the "bounds of its own definitions" in an historical pologist across this century in the United States, and prob- political-economic vision uniting the social sciences and ably the world. Quite simply, she represents the genus humanities sundered since the adaptive disciplinary radia- Anthropologicus to the public, and even anthropologists tion over the first half of the 20th century (1982:18). who despise her work must deal with her presence in Since Wolf made that call, centrifugal forces in an- popular culture" (1998:17; see also the Barnard College thropology have only increased. But the process has been Scholar and the Feminist Online Journal 2003). But Mead was complexified by linked historical political-economic, also more or less present in the American public sphere scholarly, and popular-cultural shifts in the United States over the course of her half-century career, and for a variety and around the globe. This is not the place to lay out in of reasons as her own work and politics altered. And this detail the sequelae of the decline of the Soviet sphere and variation is relevant to Roscoe's claims. He stresses the the triumph of both global capitalism and the new U.S. continued heavy citation of Mead's Sex and Temperament empire, nor the still-weak but certainly countervailing in- in Three Primitive Societies (1935) in order to undergird his ternational anticapitalist, antiwar, labor, women's, antira- critique of her claims about Arapesh peaceable ness. But cist, gay, environmental, and human rights movements. this particular Mead volume was centrally concerned with Nor is it the appropriate venue in which to discuss the ma- gender relations, not war. The book was so understood at jor effect of the scholarship associated with all the above- the time of publication (see my discussion of contempora- mentioned political movements, nor of the interdiscipli- neous reviews in Exotics at Home) and is so understood nary "turn to language," nor of the insidious renaissance into the present. of sociobiology, whose biological reductionisms have Roscoe thus unsuccessfully tries to harvest Mead's taken over American popular culture. (Only this morning, considerations of war and violence among the Arapesh as I write in the spring of 2003, in the wake of the U.S. in- from her larger sex and temperament frame. War, of course, vasion of Iraq, the Chicago Tribune published an extraordi- whether in the present global political economy or among narily stupid story, complete with academic quotations, the Arapesh in the 1930s, is fundamentally gendered. And about how scholars now think that war is "hard-wired," this is not only the case from the perspective of the 21st genetically determined in humans [Keller 2003].) century, but from Mead's 1930s perspective as well, She These contemporary cultural, political, economic, and was centrally concerned with all—not only intergroup— intellectual shifts—and those of any time and place—form forms of human violence, and she framed her analyses of the context within which scholars frame questions, do violence and nonviolence in terms of sex role behavior, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGIST 105(3):592-595. COPYRIGHT © 2003, AMERICAN ANTHROPOLOGICAL ASSOCIATION di Leonardo • The Culture of Forgetting 593 with particular attention to the male warrior role, a focus American cultural anthropology focused largely on the Americas and the Pacific until after World War II, and its only more horribly relevant today. 1 Here it seems that Ros- primary early twentieth-century concern was the docu- coe's unfamiliarity with feminist work in anthropology, mentation of vanishing Native American cultures and which since the 1970s has become simply mainstream in languages. American extermination or forced relocation all domains of the discipline, leads him into serious mis- of Native American groups prevented the extensive use of reading. the structuralist-functionalist frame. American anthro- pologists tended, instead, to practice "salvage ethnogra- Moving from this fundamental misconception to Ros- phy"—the collection of any and all information with a coe's specific empirical contribution, his justified criti- heavy emphasis on vanishing languages. This American cisms of Mead turn out to be, unfortunately, very old news. emphasis on culture (mental baggage)—rather than soci- British anthropologist Richard C. Thurnwald, in 1936, ety (observable, patterned behavior)—was fueled also by contemporary American psychology's high status and noted both Mead's own documentation, contra her ana- conservative, especially racist presuppositions and appli- lytic claims, of significant levels of violence among the cations. Liberal American anthropologists were, then, Arapesh and her problematic labeling of counterexamples doubly inclined toward the psychological arena—thus the to her generalizations as "aberrant" (1936:666). Peter "culture and personality" theoretical leanings of the two Worsley, in 1957, wrote that "as has often been pointed best-known women anthropologists of the early twenti- eth century, [di Leonardo 1991:4-5] out, the 'peaceful' Arapesh looked a lot different in the pa- per on Arapesh warfare that Fortune published, and in As to Roscoe's claim to improve on Freeman in citing which he rejected her account" (1957:125). And Mead's im- Ruth Benedict rather than Franz Boas as Mead's unfortu- prisonment in gestalt psychology-influenced culture and nate influence: There is a great deal more to be noted personality at this stage in her career is also far from a about Benedict beyond the flaws of the Culture and Per- novel point. Contra Roscoe's assertion of his inability "to sonality school, and its roots not only in Gestalt psychol- locate any such comment in published work," Worsley ex- ogy but in Boas' revulsion against racist U.S. psychology. plicitly noted the "feeling of suspicion amongst anthro- Benedict is a fascinating figure with an entire and growing pologists that the facts have been tailored or selected to fit literature devoted to her—not to mention the Society of a preconceived case" (1957:125, emphasis in original). Lesbian and Gay Anthropologists' annual Ruth Benedict Moreover, more than a half century ago, both Worsley award. But suffice it to say here that we should only wish and Wolf wrote, very compellingly and far more broadly that Mead had been more, not less, influenced by Benedict than Roscoe, about Culture and Personality's intellectual over the 1930s and 1940s. As I have written, flaws. As I summarize in Exotics at Home: Although Benedict was a chief architect of the "culture The "culture and personality" paradigm inherently ignored and personality" paradigm, she often transcended its in- politics and economy and thus tended to reduce ques- tellectual limits, and her sense of her responsibilities as a tions about shifting economic and political inequality to citizen drew from a broader compass ... to escape the questions of individual or group psyche. Class, race, and paradigm into a progressive political argument. other social divisions were homogenized, and "cultural Benedict is a far more thoroughgoing democrat [than snapshots" effaced historical contingency. Eric Wolf has Mead] with a strong grasp of the ironies of American ra- noted that the "culture-and-personality schools. made cism . .. [During World War II] Benedict published Race: a moral paradigm of each individual culture. They spoke Science and Politics ... an accessible work with distinctly of patterns, themes, world view, ethos, and values, but Popular Front sympathies.. Late in the text, Benedict not of power . the anthropologists' culture of the thir- follows her antiracist mandate in the direction of eco- ties and forties was 'political economy' turned inside out, nomic democracy, commenting both on Europe and the all ideology and morality, and neither power nor econ- United States: "[Those in power] are faced with two alter- natives: they must keep down the rank and file by the use omy" (Wolf 1974:257). Anthropologists working within of naked force, or they must see to it that the major goods this mandate tended to make wildly unjustified claims of life are available to a much greater proportion of the about the connection of personality to social process—as population than in earlier European history. We are far did and still do other scholars and the public at large, in from having made economic sufficiency general in Amer- response to the simultaneous commercialization and psy- ica, and essential liberties—opportunity to work, freedom chologization of American culture. British anthropologist of opinion on moot points, and equality of civil liber- Peter Worsley complained that "in this sort of anthropol- ties—are far from won.
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