Margaret Mead: An American Oracle

玛格丽特·米德：一位美国先知

• 批准号: 9515387
• 负责人: Virginia Yans-McLaughlin
• 金额: $ 7万
• 依托单位: Rutgers University New Brunswick
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 1996
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 1996-09-01 至 1998-11-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=9515387&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Margaret; Mead; American; Oracle

Most scientists may seem to the general public to be a rather colorless lot. Scientific breakthroughs revolutionize our lives, but the scientists themselves rarely become figures who are easily recognized by the public. Few scientists have the flare of a Richard Feynman who captured national attention during the Challenger investigations or the audacity of a Carl Sagan to hold forth on his own television series. Fewer still, of these "public" scientists are women. Yet one woman stands out as a quintessential scientist in the public eye: Margaret Mead. From her publication of Coming of Age in Samoa when she was 27 years old, Margaret Mead oriented her career in anthropology not only to advance her position in that field but to become what Dr. Yans-McLaughlin has called a "public oracle" for science. Rather than addressing questions of interests to a narrow academic specialty, Margaret Mead always examined question which were of interest to the general public. In that first book, she addressed issues of sex and gender, growing up, the generation gap, and change in the modern world. Dr. Yans-McLaughlin argues that Mead (1901-1978) devoted her entire career to situate her research in a way that appealed to the broadest of popular interest. How she did this throughout her career and its affect on her own scientific research, on the discipline of anthropology, and on the practice of science in general in the United States will be the center of this research. This project engages and promises to contribute to scholarly literature in the history of anthropology, the history of social sciences, the study of gender in science and the history of women in the scientific professions.

在普通大众看来，大多数科学家可能是一群相当平淡无奇的人。科学突破给我们的生活带来了革命性的变化，但科学家本身很少成为容易被公众认可的人物。很少有科学家有理查德·费曼(Richard Feynman)那样的才华，他在挑战者调查期间吸引了全国的关注，也没有科学家像卡尔·萨根(Carl Sagan)那样大胆地讲述自己的电视连续剧。更少的是，这些“公众”科学家中有女性。然而，有一位女性在公众视野中脱颖而出，成为一位典型的科学家：玛格丽特·米德。27岁那年，玛格丽特·米德出版了《萨摩亚的成熟》一书。从那以后，她在人类学领域的职业生涯不仅是为了提升自己在该领域的地位，还成为了扬斯-麦克劳克林博士所说的科学“公共先知”。玛格丽特·米德不是把兴趣问题局限在一个狭隘的学术专业上，而是总是研究公众感兴趣的问题。在第一本书中，她谈及了性和性别、成长、代沟和现代世界的变化等问题。Yans-McLaughlin博士认为，米德(1901-1978)毕生致力于以一种吸引最广泛大众兴趣的方式来定位她的研究。她在整个职业生涯中是如何做到这一点的，以及它对她自己的科学研究、人类学学科以及整个美国的科学实践的影响，将是这项研究的中心。该项目致力于并承诺对人类学历史、社会科学历史、科学中的性别研究和科学职业中的妇女历史方面的学术文献作出贡献。