The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy
The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy
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玛格丽特·米德的毁灭：人类学争议的剖析
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发表时间：
2011
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通讯作者：
A. Dreger
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作者：
A. Dreger
山克曼对人类学家德里克·弗里曼的《垃圾米德》的精湛描述，相当于你在一场所谓的科学争议史上真正想要的一切：它是学术性的、可读的、跨学科的、透彻的、多汁的。Shankman是位于博尔德的科罗拉多大学的人类学教授，他在这项工作中证明了我在研究生医学史课程中经常告诉学生的一点：你不需要被训练成一个历史学家来做好历史;你只需要致力于证据，知道时间会向前发展。幸运的是，尚克曼知道，最具可读性的历史很少是简单的向前发展。他在书中讲述了1983年，也就是米德去世几年后，关于玛格丽特·米德的“争议”如何在国际媒体上爆发，当时哈佛大学出版社向新闻媒体提供了弗里曼的《玛格丽特·米德与萨摩亚：一个人类学神话的制造与毁灭》（Margaret Mead and Samoa：The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth）的出版前副本。这种方法几乎保证了没有人类学家或历史学家会准备挑战弗里曼对米德和她的工作的描述，因为他们没有看到弗里曼的书。回答记者的问题需要潜在的批评者弗里曼相信记者的代表弗里曼的代表，并要求他们进入一个“争议”在声音咬，所以很多人拒绝，使弗里曼的书长腿凭借一个倾斜的环境，而不是自然的价值。在他1983年的书和随后的出版物中，弗里曼建立了一个关于米德的故事，特别挑战了她在1928年的畅销书《萨摩亚成年：西方文明原始青年的心理研究》中对萨摩亚青少年的描绘。正如《成年》的副标题所暗示的那样，米德希望她的通俗化在她自己的文化中起到一种社会工具的作用。引用尚克曼的话，“在描写萨摩亚和美国青少年之间的对比时，米德成为了一个社会批评家，而不仅仅是一个民族志学者”（第103页）。山克曼通过对米德自己的传记以及20世纪20年代美国的性政治的仔细描述，优美地解释了《成年的到来》。在今天的条件下，米德是一个积极的性在她的工作和她的个人生活。她喜欢与男人和女人的浪漫和性伴侣在一起，不管她嫁给了谁。她试图用《成年》来暗示，如果女孩们能够玩弄性--她声称萨摩亚的女孩们通常都是这样--那么女性获得性的挣扎可能会大大减少。Shankman这样总结道：“虽然萨摩亚不是她自己的生活，正如弗里曼所相信的那样，这本书是米德对20世纪20年代美国的看法的体现。这样一本书在米德的自我形象中是有意义的：“像鲍亚士、萨皮尔和本尼迪克特一样，米德把自己看作是一个公民科学家。她不满足于做一个书呆子式的学者，她想成为一个公共知识分子和活动家，利用人种学数据来解决重要的公共问题”（第108页）。对弗里曼来说，他想成为那个把玛格丽特·米德带回来的人。他继续着自己的名声，越来越多地把自己描绘成他所创作的戏剧中的合作明星，并将其命名为1996年版的《玛格丽特·米德和异教徒》。弗里曼声称自己对颠覆米德范式负有个人责任，他认为米德范式使美国人类学倒退了半个多世纪，并误导了整个世界。据说“米德范式”是反生物学的、反进化论的、反科学的和文化决定论的。弗里曼致力于第一次探测A。Dreger（&）医学人文和生物伦理学计划，范伯格医学院，西北大学，750 N。Lake海岸驱动器，套房625，芝加哥，IL 60611，美国电子邮件：a-dreger@northwestern.edu
Shankman’s masterful account of anthropologist Derek Freeman’s‘‘trashing ofMargaretMead’’amounts to everything you really want in a history of an alleged scientific controversy: it is scholarly, readable, interdisciplinary, thorough, and juicy. Shankman, a professor of anthropology at the University of Colorado at Boulder, proves in this work what I always tell students inmy graduate history ofmedicine course: you don’t need to be trained as an historian to do good history; you just have to be devoted to evidence and know that time goes forward. Fortunately, Shankman knows that the most readable histories rarelysimplygoforward.Hebeginshisbookbyrecounting how the‘‘controversy’’over Margaret Mead exploded onto the international media scene in 1983, several years after Mead’s death, when Harvard University Press provided journalistic outlets pre-publication copies of Freeman’s Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. This approach pretty much guaranteed that no anthropologists or historians would be ready to challenge Freeman’s account of Mead and her work, since they had not had the benefit of seeing Freeman’s book. To answer reporters’ questions required potential critics of Freeman to trust the reporters’ representations of Freeman’s representations—and required them to enter into a‘‘controversy’’ in sound bites—so many declined, enabling Freeman’s book to grow long legs by virtue of a skewed environment rather than natural worthiness. In his 1983 book and subsequent publications, Freeman built up a story about Mead that specifically challenged her portrayal of Samoan adolescence in her popular 1928 book, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. As the subtitle of Coming of Age implied,Meadhad intendedherpopularization to function as a sort of social tool in her own culture. To quote Shankman, ‘‘In writing about the contrast between adolescence in Samoa and theUnited States,Mead became a social critic, not simply an ethnographic reporter’’ (p. 103). Shankman beautifully explains Coming of Age through a careful account of Mead’s ownbiographyaswell as the sexual politics of 1920sAmerica. In today’s terms, Mead was a sex positive individual in both her work and her personal life. She enjoyed the romantic and sexual company of both women and men, no matter to whom shewasmarried.She tried touseComingofAge to suggest that the struggles of female adolescencemight substantially lessen were girls able—as she claimed they generally were in Samoa—to dally with sex. Shankman sums it up thus: ‘‘While Samoawas not her own lifewrit large, as Freeman believed, the book [Mead’sComingofAge]was amanifestoofMead’sviews about America in the 1920s’’ (p. 105). A book like this made sense in Mead’s self-image: ‘‘Like Boas, Sapir, and Benedict, Mead sawherself as a citizen-scientist.Not contentwith being a bookish academic, she wanted to be a public intellectual and activist, using ethnographic data to address important public issues’’(p. 108). For his part, Freeman wanted to be the man who brought MargaretMeaddown.Ashecontinuedhiscampaignagainsther reputation,Freeman increasinglyportrayedhimselfgrandiosely as the co-star in the drama he had created, entitling the 1996 edition of his book Margaret Mead and the Heretic. Freeman claimed tobepersonally responsible forundoingwhathe termed ‘‘the Mead paradigm,’’‘‘a paradigm that he believed had held American anthropology back for more than half a century and had misled the whole world. The ‘Mead paradigm’ was allegedly antibiological, antievolutionary, antiscientific, and culturally deterministic. Freemanwas committed tofirst sounding the A. Dreger (&) Medical Humanities and Bioethics Program, Feinberg School of Medicine, Northwestern University, 750N. Lake Shore Drive, Suite 625, Chicago, IL 60611, USA e-mail: a-dreger@northwestern.edu