Mead, Margaret


An American anthropologist of the twentieth century, who revolutionized the field of anthropology in 1928 with her book Coming of Age in Samoa, which emphasized the role of social convention rather than biology in shaping human behavior. In later writings, she described how the behavior of men and women differed from one culture to another and thereby challenged the notion that all gender differences were innate.

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The New Dictionary of Cultural Literacy, Third Edition Copyright © 2005 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.