Book dossier

Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy

by Lenora Foerstel

The legendary Margaret Mead changed Americans' views of themselves by relating information collected from remote peoples to our society - a society that she did not consider necessarily to be the pinnacle of human development. However, Mead and her followers have been criticized for promulgating sensationalized and inaccurate images of Melanesian societies, including savagery, cannibalism, and wanton sexuality. This book deals with the consequences of such Western condescension. Destined to be highly controversial, this book for the first time brings a multicultural outlook to bear on Margaret Mead, scrutinizing her role and impact on Western anthropology, colonialism, and strategic and business interests in the South Pacific. The contributors, most of them avowedly activist supporters of the concept of a nuclear-free and independent Pacific, include Warilea Iamo, Papua New Guinea's first anthropologist; John D. Waiko, Director of the New Guinea Institute of Applied Social and Economic Research; Nahau Rooney, the daughter of one of Mead's informants, and; Susanna Ounei, a leader of a New Caledonian independence front. Lenora Foerstel is an instructor in Ethnohistory at the Maryland College of Art. She was a member of the 1953 American Museum of Natural History Expedition to Manus Island, led by Dr. Margaret Mead. Angela Gilliam teaches at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. She has served as adviser to the Papua New Guinea Permanent Mission to the United Nations on New Caledonia.