Visiting Margaret Mead

While planning a day trip to a hiking spot, I remembered that Margaret Mead, possibly America’s best known anthropologist, is buried in suburban Philly. We piled into the car, and I made everyone listen to the audiobook Gods of the Upper Air, a history of early 20th century anthropology and of 20th century cultural relativism. Franz Boas, Mead and others opposed the conventional wisdom of the day that the white race was “self-evidently” superior. That kept at it long enough that their views became the prevalent ones in scientific anthropology.

Mead’s grave is in a little churchyard right beside the local highway we were taking to our destination. Hers is one of the smaller, more humble stones in the yard, which was not surprising, exactly, though she was likely the closest person to a celebrity in residence.

Mead was a science communicator of a couple of big ideas taught in every Anthro 101 class. That there’s more than one way to “do” gender and sex. That 20th century Western norms aren’t “the human condition,” whatever that is. That “race” and gender are not biology, and that biology isn’t destiny.

A bunch of ideas that seemed settled.