Letters from the Field, 1925-1975 (Masterplots II: Women’s Literature Series)
At a glance:
- Author: Margaret Mead
- First Published: 1977
- Type of Work: Letters
- Time of Work: 1925-1975
- Setting: Samoa, New Guinea, Bali, the West Indies, and Nebraska
- Principal Characters: Margaret Mead, Reo F. Fortune, Gregory Bateson
- Genres: Nonfiction, Memoir, Letters, Anthropology
- Subjects: Culture, Adolescence, Sex or sexuality, Gender roles, Islands, Anthropology or anthropologists, Pacific Ocean, Research, Oceania
- Locales: West Indies, Nebraska, New Guinea, Samoa, Bali
Form and Content
Margaret Mead’s Letters from the Field, 1925-1975 is a selection of letters written by Mead while on anthropological field trips to provide “one record, a very personal record, of what it has meant to be a practicing anthropologist over the last fifty years.” She recognizes that fieldwork is only one aspect of the anthropologist’s work. She even admits the inevitable subjectivity to be found in any individual observer’s account. Yet she emphasizes that fieldwork—“immersing oneself in the ongoing life of another people, suspending for the...
[The entire page is 1803 words long]
