Margaret Mead: Blackberry Winter

 Word Count: 339

From Blackberry Winter by Margaret Mead

Margaret Mead’s work is very different from the other women writers we have studied. Mainly because most of the women we have studied focused on their own experience within their own culture but Mead discusses her experience within another culture and how she responds to it within the context of her own culture. 

She discusses what being an anthropologist means and what she was taught when she went to school but also the things she changed when teaching. She says, “it is a wasteful system, a system I have no time for. I try to work against it by giving students a chance to work over my own field preparations and notes…” (560). She is referring to the system of teaching anthropology in schools. She recognizes the faults within the system and boldly tries to make it better and change the system.

She mentions the importance of respecting other cultures especially when immersed in it. She says, “To do it well, one has to sweep one’s mind clear of presupposition, even those about other cultures in the same part of the world in which one is working” (560). Comparisons cannot happen until later and this gives her a better result when going to Samoa and other places in the field. When she was in Samoa she learned all of these things. She says, “I learned to eat and to enjoy Samoan food and to feel unabashed, when as a guest, I was served first and the whole family sat about sedately waiting for me to finish so that they, in turn, could eat. I learned the complex courtesy phrases and how to pass kava – something I never did as it is only appropriate for an unmarried woman to do so” (565). She must learn to accept the customs as someone who lived there would otherwise she would not learn their importance or their meaning. In this way, Margaret was actually doing the analysis work for us and instead we see her process and how she informed and changed anthropology.