Margaret Mead:President-Elect, 1974

Wilton S. Dillon

Blackberry Winier, Margaret Mead's1972 autobiography of her earlieryears, bears this dedication: "To theeight peoples who have admitted me totheir lives I dedicate this book in whichI try to give of my own life as theyhave given of theirs."

Such a demonstrated willingness topractice personally what she believesvital to science and ethics-sharing andmaking knowledge public-is a reveal-ing characteristic of the president-electof the AAAS. Her sense of reciprocityin fieldwork parallels both a strongsense of obligation to make sciencemeaningful on a global scale in returnfor the intellectuLal gifts of past genera-tions, together with the stupport ofcontemporary patrons and critics ofscience. Dedicated to preserve thefragile web of life on this planet, sheregards argumentation and criticism,aimed at the scientific endeavor, as asign of caring, intimacy, and truth-seeking.

In 1935 as a member of the inter-disciplinary team to "plan research incompetitive and cooperative habits,"she edited a collection of essays on 12cuLltures; its first printing appeared in1937 as Cooperation and ComiipetitionA mtong Primnitive Peoples. That effortserves today as a base line for herapplied anthropological task of work-ing out a new symbiosis between scien-tists and their publics. She already ismobilizing her interpersonal, interdisci-plinary, interorganizational, and inter-cultural networks toward the aim ofincreasing cooperation among competi-tors for scarce resources during theselean years in science. Her webs ofcommuLnications are a function of herdecades of robust activity coupled withher remarkably detailed memory ofpersons and places. Robert Lowie'spraise of her specificity in 1937 ("thesystematic observation of countless con-

The author is director of semtlinars, SmiiithsonlianInstitution. Washington, D.C. 20560.

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crete instances") applies as well, in1974, to her retrieval of pertinent bitsof written and unwritten materialneeded to solve a problem or illuminatea mystery. She now brings to the AAASmore than a half century of scholarlyand public endeavors as a major focusof her formidable energies.When pressed humorously by ad-

mirers several years ago to declare hercandidacy for the presidency of theUnited States, she replied that shewould leave that to the professionalpoliticians who had chosen that kindof career; she had chosen science, andwoLild work through its various institu-tions for the public good. Some institu-tions are of her own creation.One is the InstituLte for Interculttural

StuLdies, which provides small-scale sup-port for nev rcsearch projects, includ-ing those of young newcomers to thebehavioral sciences. The Scientists' In-stituLte for PuLblic Information (SIPI),of which she was president in 1970-72,the World Society of Ekistics (presi-dent, 1969-71), and the Anthropologi-cal Film InstituLte (president, 1970) areamong the others she has helped tonuLrtuLre. She was an early leader of theSociety for Applied Anthropology,fouLnded at Harvard Business Schoolin 1941, and is identified by an earlycollaborator, Eliot D. Chapple, as re-sponsible for the use of Kipling's poemThe Sons of Martha as a statement ofwhat applied anthropologists are allabouLt. Her central professional iden-tity lies with the American Anthropo-logical Association which she also hasscrved as president.

Views on Leadership

With her duLal citizenship in both theUnited States and the world at large,Margaret Mead has a keen interest inthe kinds of political leadership bywhich top execuLtives of a given nation

take responsibility "for all the people."Her avocational study of the evolutionof the American presidency, comparedwith other forms of chieftancy, hasproduced some inquiries into the timeswhen certain Presidents of the UnitedStates became aware that they shouldtry to represent and lead everybody-not only those who voted for them.Her AAAS presidency will be marked,no doubt, by a similar outlook fromthe start. (She makes, however, a sharpcontrast between the tasks of a poli-tician whose professionalism she ad-mires and the metier of a scientistpracticing citizenship.) She shares withGlenn T. Seaborg, Mina Rees, Athel-stan Spilhaus, and Roger Revelle-among recent AAAS presidents-aview of the AAAS as a bonding devicefor all the disciplines in a constantlyevolving community with separate dis-ciplines and sections linked by the needfor synergistic approaches to new un-knowns.

A Systems Approach

SuLch an ectumenical view of sciencereflects her relation to the pioneer workin the development of cybernetic theorywhich grew out of the early MacyFoundation conferences. Her book,Smcall Conzferenices, written with PaulByers, draws in part on the Macy ex-perience organized by the late FrankFremont-Smith. Moreover, that viewfits with her active role in the Societyfor General Systems Research, whichshe prcsided over in 1971. All of theseviews of the relation between the wholeand the parts are congruent with theapproach of anthropology and othersciences that concentrate on studyingthe interconnectedness of phenomena.

She was born 16 December 1901 inPhiladelphia, and her 45 years of workat the American Museum of NaturalHistory in New York, starting in 1926,cuLlminated with the 1971 opening ofthe Hall of the Peoples of the Pacific.Her present title of "Curator Emeritus"has prodtuced little change in her placeof work or her pace. She continues toserve as adjunct professor at ColumbiaUniversity. Her "leisure" consists ofthose intervals when she beats her owndeadlines of fieldwork, lectuLring, writ-ing, and appearing before TV cameras.She had planned to spend her 70thbirthday in Peking learning somethingabotut the scientific community there;when the visa failed to materialize, sheadapted happily to the opportunity to

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spend 3 weeks with her daughter, MaryCatherine Bateson (Mrs. Barkev Kas-sarjian), and her granddaughter, Se-vanne, in Cambridge, Massachusetts.Her grandmother role has not been ne-glected even though the Kassarjiansnow live in Teheran. For global travel-ers, Teheran proves a convenient placeto visit, as witness Mead's recent re-uLnion with her family there while enroute back here from India where, afterhaving been a winner of the Kalingaprize for the popularization of science,she visited and collected her honor-ary degrees (her 22nd and 23rd) fromthe universities of Delhi and Bombay.Earlier honorary doctorates of law,humanities, and science came fromsuch institutions as Ewha in Korea,Emory, Harvard, California at Berke-ley, Lincoln, Goucher, Columbia, Skid-more, Cincinnati, Kalamazoo, andLeeds. Wake Forest has ofTered hera degree, but she has not yet foundthe moment in her schedule to acceptthis academic tribute. She has beentrustee or member of the board of di-rectors of many colleges and universi-ties, Hampton Institutc in Virginiabeing onie to which she has devotedmutch attentioni.

Mead's Own Coming of Age

Because she is one of the most famIouLsof anthropologists, Mead's formal edu-cation is well known to those who havefollowed her carcer since Cominog ofAge in Salmioa was ptiblished while shewas still in her 20's and a fellow inthe Biological Sciences of the NationalResearch CouLncil. A conventional bio-graphical sketch reveals that she earneda B.A. from Barnard College in 1923,and a Ph.D. from Columbia in 1929.Black berry Winzter, however, remainsthe miost revealiln documelntation of herown personiality as it developed in thevariouLs cnvirons of Philadelphia (whereher father tauLght economics at theWhartoni School): Swarthmore, Doyles-town, New Hope, and other com-munllities that mirrored the differeiitstyles of the Miethodists, Quakers, Uni-tariains, and Episcopalians. She alter-nated f'ornmal schooling with homestudy, at the knees of a remarkably in-flLelltial graiidndother and an activistmother. The firstborn of five she hadthree sisters and one brother-Meadspenit her unchallenginlg high schooldays during World War I trying outher literary skills as a poet, a diarist,a letter writer, the beginner of a novel26 APRIL 1974

Margaret Mead

a magazine editor, and creator of "shortplays for school occasions." Her con-tilnuilng interest in literature is recordedin her 1959 book, Ani Anthropologistat Work: Wr-itinigs of Rut/h Benedict,whicih provides some sLamples of thepoetry used in communillcation betweenNMead and such colleagues as Benedictand Edward Sapir in the 1920's. Hercitation as a memiiber of the AnmericanAcadenmy of Arts and Letters paid trib-titc to the literary qLualities of Cominigof Age in Samoai and Growing Up inNew Guinea; the original mantLscriptswere exhibited for their artfUl linedrawings of hulmlan figures and archi-tectuLral details in the marlgins of fieldnotes.

"At different times," she wrote inher autobiography, "I wanted to be-come a lawyer, a nun, a writer, or aminister's wife with six children. Look-ing to my grandmother and my motherfor models, I expected to be a profes-sional womaan and a wife and mother."

Looking for her then undefined pro-fessional preparation, Mead started, in1919, a briet period of study at De-Pauw University, at Greencastle, Indi-ana; she moved to Barnard in 1920where she crossed Broadway to starther pivotal collaboration at Columnbiawith Ruth Benedict, who served thenas a teaching assistant to Franz Boas.It was Boas who first encouLragedMead's stuLdies of human adolescenceas part of mapping out new fields foranthropology. CoILumbia's first anthro-pology professor, Boas (1858-1942)drew upon his earlier German educationin physics and geography in shapingthat eclectic discipline. Mead remainsa star among his numerous illustriouLs

students who include Alfred Kroeber,Robert Lowie, Melville Herskovits, PaulRadin, A. A. Goldenweiser, Reo For-tune, and Charles Wagley. She becamea supreme practitioner of Boas' exact-ing standards of field investigations.

Mead, uinlike other senior scien-tists who spend their mature yearsas administrator-statesmen-philosophers,persists in returning "to the field," inpublishing fresh materials to illuminatecontinuities or discontinLities of humangroups caught up in rapid change in-duced by new technology and integra-tion into larger social units. She madeher 16th expedition in 1973, revisitinga Mountain Arapesh group now re-settled in New Britain. Boas' insistenceon linguistic preparation for fieldworkalso encouraged Mead to learn to useseven languages to pursuLe her studiesin New Guinea, Samoa, the Admiraltyislands, and Bali. Her field techniquesin the 1920's-the "stonie age tools"of the pencil and notebook have beensupplenmented by motion picture andsouLnd recording equipment as a meansof bringing fieldwork Lip to moderntimes. During her sojourn as a FogartyScholar at the National Institutes ofHealth in the autUmnn of 1973, Meaddevoted great cffort to soliciting moraland financial support for an interna-tional study center of anthropologicalfilms to be established at the SmithsonianInIstitLutioll for research and educationalpLurposes.Low ie, writing of Boas in The Histoty

of LEthnological Theory, remarked:"Women [anthropologists] have madeimportant contribuLtions independentlyof Boas, but probably nowhere havethey achieved so much work as tinderthe stimulation of the Colulmlbia at-maosphere-witness the publications ofDrs. Elsie Clews Parsons, RuLth Bene-dict. Gladys Reichard, Erna Gunther,Margaret Mead, Gene Weltfish, andRuth Underhill." The Columbia groupalso included Ruth Bunzel, Frederickade Lagunla, Esther Goldfrank, and otherdistillguished women in science.

In 1975, Mead will become the firstanthropologist since Boas, in 1931, toassumiie the presidency of AAAS. Theirpredecessors from anthropology were:James D. Dana (1854), Lewis HenryMorgan (1880), Daniel G. Brinton(1894), and F. W. PuLtmnan (1898),the last before Boas gave his retiringpresidential caddress on 29 Decemaber1932 in Atlaantic City. (The Anthr-opo-logical Society of Washington celebratedin 1971 the centennial of Morgan'sSmithsoniiani classic, Svysten.S of Co0i-

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sanguinity and Affinity; his later workAncient Society has been canonized bysome Marxists.) Mead, despite her per-sonal and historic ties with the earliergreats of anthropology, represents avastly changed profession. She herself,through her pioneering syntheses ofbiological, psychological, and socialaspects of personality in culture, hasmade major contributions to our mod-ern understanding of how humans learnadult roles in specific cultures. Her longyears at the American Museum of Nat-ural History, as she worked alongsidespecialists in turtles, fish, birds, andbaboons, reinforced an early premisethat Homo sapiens can be understoodbest through our links with other crea-tures with and without backbones. Sheonce opposed changing the name of theSociety for Applied Anthropology tothat of Human Organization, matchingthe title of its journal, because of thenecessity of reminding people that be-havior takes place in a physical bodywith a nervous system. That insistencehas helped to influence such diverseresearch as that of Ray Birdwhistell inkinesics and Alan Lomax in canto-metrics. Both Konrad Lorenz, theethologist, and Gray Walter, the brainspecialist, were presented to New Yorkscientists under her auspices. At theSmithsonian symposium, Man andBeast: Comparative Social Behavior,she brought back to light some nearlyforgotten research by Helen Blauvelton kids and lambs because of its impli-cations for understanding mother-infant interaction among humans. Herinterest in human brain evolution hasbeen stimulated recently by conversa-tions with Paul MacLean and a dayin his laboratories at Poolesville, Mary-land. This is all of a piece wi-th heryears of collaboration with psychiatristsat the Menninger Clinic, the Universityof Cincinnati, and Emory University,and with those in the World HealthOrganization and the World Federationof Mental Health, which she helped tostart.

Mead's mind moves with the great-est of ease from molecular biology toecosystems. Such inclusiveness andthinking concentrically serves her inextrapolating from the behavior of anidiosyncratic individual to small groupsand thence to planning, say, a mega-lopolis from Detroit to Chicago, or con-templating about how humans fit intoan interplanetary communications sys-tem. The speed with which she can shiftfrom one unit of analysis to another,finding analogies and metaphors to feed

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new insights, produces, of course, somecries of alarm from less synoptic spe-cialists. Her strong equation of a per-sonal with a scientific ethic representsanother thought process well known tothose who have worked with her. Newstaff members in her office at the mu-seum are sternly reminded by Meadnot to ask the central switchboardoperator to look up telephone numbersbecause this would put too great aburden on the whole system. Thealumnae of Mead's office would makean interesting study in themselves asenriched survivors of such on-the-jobtraining in daily ethics. Mead, whoonce helped draft the code of ethicsof the Society for Applied Anthropol-ogy, with its emphasis on "taking thewhole into account," in recent yearshas interrupted fieldwork to comeback to preside over ethics discussionsof the American Anthropological As-sociation.Such mental and ethical traits are

consistent, too, with much of hercollaboration with Rhoda Metraux.Mead's earlier work on Arapesh artand supernaturalism and Balinese imag-ery was followed by research, in col-laboration with Metraux, on Americanresponses to wartime conditions and,of late, on American images of scienceand scientists. All are products of thehuman brain.

The historic tension between scienceand religion as competitors for "ex-plaining" the universe is absent in herwriting and work. With Dobzhansky,Tobach, and Light, she edited Scienceand the Concept of Race, and shiftednaturally 4 years later to the famousdiscussion of right and wrong in Rapon Race with James Baldwin. To Loveor to Perish: The Technological Crisisand the Churches is another recentbook that she co-edited. As scientist-citizen, she is a co-worker in a numberof religious institutions: the Academyof Religion and Mental Health, Teil-hard Centre for the Future of Man and,as co-chairman, the U.S.A. Task Forceon the Future of Mankind and the Roleof the Christian Churches in a Worldof Science-Based Technology. HerTerry lectures on religion, delivered atYale, produced the book, Continuitiesin Cultural Evolution. One of her new-est books is Twentieth Century Faith:Hope and Survival. Her first husbandwas the archeologist Luther Cressman,a graduate of General TheologicalSeminary, whom she married in 1923in Buckingham, Pennsylvania. Shelater was married to 'the anthropologist

Reo Fortune, and subsequently to theanthropologist Gregory Bateson. Hersisters became the wives of WilliamSteig, the cartoonist, and Leo Rosten,the author of The Education of HymanKaplan.Among other important differences

between Mead and her anthropologistpredecessors who were presidents ofthe AAAS are her pioneering studiesof contemporary, complex, industrialsocieties rather than the small, homo-geneous stable societies that have beenregular fare for anthropologists. Thecontroversy over national characterstudies has not deterred her from abelief that nation states are "legitimate"subject matter for anthropology; shehas written such books as: And KeepYour Powder Dry, Soviet Attitudestoward Authority, Male and Female,The School in American Culture,Themes in French Culture (with RhodaMetraux), The Wagon and the Star: AStudy of American Community Initia-tive (with Muriel Brown), and Cultureand Commitment: A Study of theGeneration Gap. Her newest book,Ruth Benedict: A Bibliography, now inpress at Columbia, reflects their jointwork on the study of cultures at adistance, particularly in Columbia Uni-versity Research in Contemporary Cul-tures. The research methods in thisproject developed out of Ruth Bene-dict's wartime study of Japanese cul-ture, The Chrysanthemum and theSword, Geoffrey Gorer's work on Japa-nese and American character structure,Gregory Bateson's work on nationalcharacter and morale building, andMead's own work on Anglo-Americancontrasts. This creative project, financedby the Office of Naval Research, hasbeen described by Mead and Metrauxin The Study of Culture at a Distance.

Taking on the presidency of theAAAS will bring her more frequentlyback to Washington, a city she findshas changed considerably since herWorld War II residence as executivesecretary of the Committee on FoodHabits of the National Research Coun-cil. Her 3-month stay in Washingtonin 1973 while at the National Institutesof Health prompted her observationthat New York and Washington arenow much closer than before: "samestories and gossip at about the sametime, with Washington having lost itsmonopoly for 'inside dope' and being'where all the action is.'" Nevertheless,with the concentration of federal agen-cies and the Congress here, she findsthat she can get done in 3 weeks what

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might have taken her several monthsotherwise. She also discovered that"grass roots" are in the nation's capitalas well as in "the provinces," and thatenvironmentalists need not remain inless polluted or less populated sectionsof the country to make their impact onimproving the quality of life. Politi-cians generally have two homes, onehere and the other in their constituen-cies, she points out, and are able tosee in both places what scientists needto do to cope competently with thebig interrelated issues of energy, food,nutrition, education, and population.

Views on Time Lag

Mead's studies of time perspectiveof "primitives" have conditioned herawareness of how long it takes for anidea or an invention to start beingoperative in complex civilization. Evenwith telecommunications and electron-ics, humans today seem to have to wait20 years for an innovation to take on,an observation she shared with the lateLawrence K. Frank. This is a dan-gerously long time when one is facedwith the sudden impact of 400 yearsof inventions, she recently told theNew York Academy of Sciences.But with typical cheer and hope, sheis relishing the larger part the AAAScan play in the education of the pub-

lic, and in providing the atmosphere ofa collegium where scientists can com-municate across disciplines. The ideaof scientists as an exclusive, priestlycaste is anathema to her, though shehas learned and can speak a number ofspecialized vocabularies used in differ-ent sectors of academia. During theCopernican quincentennial celebrationsin 1973, she applauded John ArchibaldWheeler's suggestion to incorporateinterdisciplinary collegia into the sym-posium sponsored by the Smithsonianand the National Academy of Sciences.That scientists need to learn fromone another and from persons inother callings is a fixed premise of herown behavior. Her numerous lecturesaround the United States are an essen-tial part of her learning about thesubtle and major shifts of opinions,style, and world views evolving insideand outside the academic establish-ment. Sol Tax has commented that onthe road Mead is doing fieldwork mostof the time. A clinical perspective,however, has not inhibited her capacityfor friendship and empathy with anamazingly diverse group of humans.Her celebrity status is unknown tomany she holds as close friends onvarious continents. Few of her intel-lectual friends have ever read all shehas written. Yet even strangers, view-ing the beautiful documentary TV film,"Margaret Mead's New Guinea Jour-

nal" have stood up to applaud thewarmth of her communications withher informants. Mead the observer ex-pects to be observed in return. MatthewHuxley has suggested that the NationalPortrait Gallery, when it decides to in-clude Mead in its collection, shouldrun some film loops from that docu-mentary, within a gilt frame, to cap-ture that capacity for friendship andto symbolize her patronage of photog-raphy as a tool of art and science.The interest of Mead in the non-

human universe grows out of a life-long inquiry into human conceptionsof space and time, and how they arechanged by new technology; she haslong been an active supporter of spaceexploration. Thus the new president-elect of AAAS has proposed to theSmithsonian Institution and NASAthalt they cooperate in designing aceremonial to say farewell to Pioneer10 as it leaves our solar system andbecomes, from the perspective of pos-sible other creatures, an "unidentifiedflying object" which we Earth peoplewill be able to authenticate. With theclose of Roger Revelle's administration,the AAAS will enjoy some im-portant continuity as Mead picks uphis presidential competence in "think-ing big" without losing sight of vital,small particulars (interrelated, ofcourse) in the advancement of a veryhuman science.

Elections

AAAS Council Meeting, 1974

William Bevan

The AAAS Council held its 1974meeting on 1 March in San Franciscoin the South Parlor of the San Fran-cisco Hilton Hotel, with 54 of its 74members in attendance at the morningsession and 47 at the afternoon session.President Roger Revelle presided.

Leonard M. Rieser, retiring presi-dent and chairman of the Board ofDirectors, opened the meeting by call-ing to the Council's attention the re-sponsibilities assigned to it by the As-

26 APRIL 1974

sociation's new constitution, particu-larly those of establishing the generalpolicies governing all programs of theAssociation and of reviewing thoseprograms, including meetings and pub-lications.The executive officer's report of

1973 activities, which had been dis-tributed to Council members in ad-vance of the meeting, is reproduced onpage 496 of this issue of Science, to-gether with the budget for 1974.

The Committee on Nominations re-ported the election, by mail ballot ofthe Council, of the following new com-mittee members:

Comm)nittee on Council Affairs: Rob-ert Berliner, Claire Nader, and Wil-liam Sturtevant. (Other members ofthis committee are Margaret Mead,chairwoman, Daniel G. Aldrich, Jr.,Dorothy E. Bliss, Edward C. Creutz,Garrett Hardin, Homer E. Newell,Roger Revelle, and George Sprugel,Jr.)

Colunicil Commnittee onz Fellows:Nancy S. Anderson, Lewis M. Brans-comb, Ezra Glaser, Harlan Lewis,Robert T. Orr, Robert G. Page, MaryLouise Robbins, and Ruth D. Turner.(This is a new committee whose es-tablishment was authorized by a bylawamendment adopted by the Council atits Mexico City meeting on 26 June1973.)

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Margaret Mead: President-Elect, 1974Wilton S. Dillon

DOI: 10.1126/science.184.4135.490 (4135), 490-493.184Science 

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