Margaret Mead

The Making of an American Icon

Nancy C. Lutkehaus

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2018
• Print ISBN:
  9780691148083
  9780691009414
• eBook ISBN:
  9780691190273
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Social Science Biographies
• Index: Social Sciences

"Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world."--Margaret Mead


This quotation--found on posters and bumper stickers, and adopted as the motto for hundreds of organizations worldwide--speaks to the global influence and legacy of the American anthropologist Margaret Mead (1901-78). In this insightful and revealing book, Nancy Lutkehaus explains how and why Mead became the best-known anthropologist and female public intellectual in twentieth-century America.


Using photographs, films, television appearances, and materials from newspapers, magazines, and scholarly journals, Lutkehaus explores the ways in which Mead became an American cultural heroine. Identifying four key images associated with her--the New Woman, the Anthropologist/Adventurer, the Scientist, and the Public Intellectual--Lutkehaus examines the various meanings that different segments of American society assigned to Mead throughout her lengthy career as a public figure. The author shows that Mead came to represent a new set of values and ideas--about women, non-Western peoples, culture, and America's role in the twentieth century--that have significantly transformed society and become generally accepted today. Lutkehaus also considers why there has been no other anthropologist since Mead to become as famous.



Margaret Mead is an engaging look at how one woman's life and accomplishments resonated with the issues that shaped American society and changed her into a celebrity and cultural icon.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Contents
• List of Illustrations
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction: Mead as American Icon
• Chapter 1. Mead as Modern Woman
• Chapter 2. Images of the Mature Mead
• Chapter 3. Mead as Anthropologist: “Sex in the South Seas”
• Chapter 4. Mead as Anthropologist: “To Study Cannibals”
• Chapter 5. Mead as Anthropologist: “To Find Out How Girls Learn to Be Girls”
• Chapter 6. Mead and the Image of the Anthropologist
• Chapter 7. Mead as Scientist
• Chapter 8. Mead as Public Intellectual and Celebrity
• Chapter 9. The Posthumous Mead, or Mead, the Public Anthropologist
• Abbreviations of Archival Sources
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index