The Enduring Relevance of Anthropology
Why we're giving away a book signed by Margaret Mead in 1946
If you were to ask an American 50 years ago who they think of when they hear the term “culture”, there’s a pretty good chance Margaret Mead would come to mind. She was a famous anthropologist who spent her career helping people both within and beyond her discipline understand culture, her area of deep expertise. Her career as a public intellectual began at age 25 when her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa, became a best seller in 1928.
Today, culture is a term that people seem to use constantly. In business, “culture trumps strategy”. Political thought leaders and pundits often claim they are fighting a “culture war” and have lively debates about “cancel culture” and “woke culture”. And “Culture” is the best selling album by the Migos, edging out their sophomore album “Culture II.” It’s clearly a topic that people care about and want to understand, but it’s also one of those concepts that we rarely define. It’s like, culture is everything and everywhere while still meaning something unique to every cultural group. It’s more of a vibe than a concept.
To people who study culture professionally, cultural anthropologists, culture is what happens when a group of people spend enough time interacting with each other that they begin to share certain values, beliefs, behaviors, norms and practices. It is crucial to how human beings survive as well as make sense of the human experience. It can also be at the root of systemic problems and human suffering. While culture is a powerful unifying force that shapes the reality of cultural insiders, it’s often the source of conflict within and between groups.
Culture, a term often associated with traditions, rituals and customs, extends far beyond its conventional boundaries. From college football to the corporate world, culture tends to emerge as a topic of conversation. Anthropologists provide us with the methodological, theoretical, and ethical tools to understand culture. The best anthropology works result in learning how to see the world from the perspectives of people who have very different life experiences from our own.
Understanding the perspectives of multiple cultures also allows for better scientific analysis, including when studying politically charged topics like race and gender. By studying the various ways concepts like these show up in different cultures, we can gain an understanding of fundamental aspects of human experiences alongside insight into the, at times, profound differences across cultures, and the knowledge that the reality one person faces is not everyone’s. To anthropology, empathy is as much about producing useful scientific knowledge as it is about personal and professional ethics. And, because of the extremely personal methods that anthropologists sometime employ to do their jobs, ethics are always top-of-mind for most anthropologists.
In the current political landscape, discussions on gender have become more relevant than ever. Margaret Mead conducted groundbreaking research on how culture shapes various conceptualizations of gender. She revealed to a massive audience how anthropology, then in its infancy, can generate a scientific understanding of what it means to be human. Her work highlighted the variability of gender norms across different societies and paved the way for more accurate conversations about gender across academia and the public sphere. But while Mead relied on data to shape her opinions, her work was often politicized. Scientists today understand the topics of gender, biological sex, and gender identity much better than in the early days of anthropology. Yet these topics are more controversial among the general public than ever.
Mead became one of the most famous scientists of the 20th Century because she knew how to communicate about her work in ways that made it relevant and understandable to non-academics. We need more human scientists who can shape culture based on a scientific understanding of it. Culture Capitalist exists to help make that happen.
In that spirit, we’re giving away a copy of From the South Seas: Studies of Adolescence and Sex in Primitive Societies that Mead signed in 1946, while she was still early in her career. It’s an artifact from another era, when scientists like Albert Einstein, BF Skinner, and Margaret Mead shaped American public discourse based on their expertise. We’ll send the book to a random member of Ferret’s expert network who opts in to the giveaway next year. And because members can also make referrals, with higher referral commissions until early next year, we will give an additional entry each time they are mentioned as a referral during a sign-up. We expect this is our first rare book giveaway of many.