One world, many cultures: Margaret Mead and the limits to Cold War anthropology

When?

Monday 3 March 2008, 17:00 to 18:30

Open to:

Public, Staff, Students

Speaker:

Dr Peter Mandler

Dr Peter Mandler, University of Cambridge

This paper discusses the application of Margaret Mead's brand of 'culture and personality' anthropology to the problems and politics of the Cold War. Before and during the Second World War Mead and her colleagues developed anthropological ideas of 'national character' in part in order to give anthropology a place at the table in international relations, and Mead pursued this campaign after 1945 principally in two areas - Sovietology and 'Third World' development. The paper charts the course of these postwar campaigns through the early 1950s, at which point Mead 'returned to the natives' and more or less abandoned this particular application of the anthropology to 'contemporary' cultures, with intellectual and political consequences that the paper considers in its conclusion.