[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":-1},["ShallowReactive",2],{"detail-sidebar-cat-0-en-105":3,"doc-seo-136177-105":59,"doc-detail-136177-en":131},{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":6},0,"success",[7,13,18,23,28,33,38,43,48,51,55],{"id":8,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":10,"show_sort_weight":11,"slug":12},1,"Document","Story & Novel",90,"story-novel",{"id":14,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":15,"show_sort_weight":16,"slug":17},2,"Literature",80,"literature",{"id":19,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":20,"show_sort_weight":21,"slug":22},4,"Exam",70,"exam",{"id":24,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":25,"show_sort_weight":26,"slug":27},5,"Comic",60,"comic",{"id":29,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":30,"show_sort_weight":31,"slug":32},6,"Technology",50,"technology",{"id":34,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":35,"show_sort_weight":36,"slug":37},7,"Healthcare",40,"healthcare",{"id":39,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":40,"show_sort_weight":41,"slug":42},8,"Research & Report",30,"research-report",{"id":44,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":45,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":47},9,"Religion & Spirituality",20,"religion-spirituality",{"id":46,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":49,"show_sort_weight":46,"slug":50},"World Cup","world-cup",{"id":52,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":53,"show_sort_weight":52,"slug":54},10,"Lifestyle","lifestyle",{"id":56,"doc_module":4,"doc_module_name":9,"category_name":57,"show_sort_weight":24,"slug":58},19,"General","general",{"code":4,"msg":60,"data":61},"ok",{"site_id":62,"language":63,"slug":64,"title":65,"keywords":66,"description":67,"schema_data":68,"social_meta":124,"head_meta":126,"extra_data":128,"updated_unix":130},105,"en","the-forgotten-ethnographic-legacy-of-margaret-mead-1931-1939-paul-shankman-2025","The Forgotten Ethnographic Legacy of Margaret Mead (1931 1939) - Paul Shankman 2025","","The article examines Margaret Mead’s fieldwork-driven legacy, focusing on the period associated with 1931–1939 and the broader ethnographic ambitions that shaped her career. It recounts how Mead returned to New Guinea after earlier research challenges, including professional criticism and demanding field conditions. The narrative highlights personal constraints, motivations to prove ethnographic competence, and the logistical realities of studying groups in remote, disease-prone regions while negotiating scholarly exclusivity in anthropology.",{"@graph":69,"@context":123},[70,84,106],{"@type":71,"itemListElement":72},"BreadcrumbList",[73,77,79,82],{"item":74,"name":75,"@type":76,"position":8},"https://docshare.wps.com","Home","ListItem",{"item":78,"name":9,"@type":76,"position":14},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/",{"item":80,"name":40,"@type":76,"position":81},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/research-report/",3,{"item":83,"name":65,"@type":76,"position":19},"https://docshare.wps.com/document/the-forgotten-ethnographic-legacy-of-margaret-mead-1931-1939-paul-shankman-2025/136177/",{"url":83,"name":65,"@type":85,"image":86,"author":91,"headline":65,"publisher":94,"fileFormat":97,"inLanguage":63,"description":67,"dateModified":98,"datePublished":99,"encodingFormat":97,"isAccessibleForFree":100,"interactionStatistic":101},"DigitalDocument",{"url":87,"@type":88,"width":89,"height":90},"https://docshare.wps.com/thumbnails/the-forgotten-ethnographic-legacy-of-margaret-mead-1931-1939-paul-shankman-2025/136177.png","ImageObject",300,407,{"name":92,"@type":93},"Himbo","Person",{"url":74,"name":95,"@type":96},"DocShare","Organization","application/pdf","2026-09-18","2026-08-21",true,{"@type":102,"interactionType":103,"userInteractionCount":105},"InteractionCounter",{"@type":104},"ViewAction",11,{"@type":107,"mainEntity":108},"FAQPage",[109,115,119],{"name":110,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":112},"Why did Margaret Mead continue pursuing additional fieldwork despite health setbacks?","Question",{"text":113,"@type":114},"She believed young anthropologists needed more time in the field and wanted to address professional criticism questioning her ethnographic abilities. Personal circumstances also pushed her toward renewed fieldwork commitments.","Answer",{"name":116,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":117},"What changed Mead’s plans after earlier experiences among the Omaha?",{"text":118,"@type":114},"Boas advised that the Navajo were already being studied and emphasized expectations of having “one culture, one ethnographer.” This forced Mead and Fortune to look elsewhere rather than pursue the Navajo.",{"name":120,"@type":111,"acceptedAnswer":121},"What were the main challenges of studying groups in New Guinea during the 1930s?",{"text":122,"@type":114},"New Guinea’s interior was largely unknown, travel was difficult, living conditions were perilous due to malaria and other diseases, and reaching target communities required extensive provisioning and careful planning.","https://schema.org",{"og:url":83,"og:type":125,"og:title":65,"og:site_name":95,"og:description":67},"article",{"robots":127,"canonical":83},"index,follow",{"doc_id":129,"site_id":62},136177,1787355321,{"code":4,"msg":5,"data":132},{"doc_id":129,"user_id":133,"nickname":92,"user_avatar":134,"doc_module":4,"category_id":39,"category_name":40,"doc_title":65,"doc_description":67,"doc_content":135,"file_id":136,"file_url":137,"file_type":138,"file_size":139,"view_count":105,"is_deleted":4,"is_public":8,"is_downloadable":8,"audit_status":8,"page_count":140,"language":141,"language_code":63,"site_id":62,"html_lang":63,"table_of_contents":142,"faqs":143,"seo_title":144,"seo_description":67,"update_tm":130,"read_time":145},687197100911,"https://ap-avatar.wpscdn.com/avatar/a000239b6f1da00475?x-image-process=image/resize,m_fixed,w_180,h_180&k=1785132997149421697","The Forgotten Ethnographic Legacy of Margaret Mead (1931–1939)  \nPaul Shankman  \nUniversity of Colorado-Boulder, Department of Anthropology 2025  \nPOUR CITER CET ARTICLE  \nShankman, Paul, 2025. « The Forgotten Ethnographic Legacy of Margaret Mead (1931 1939) », Encyclopédie Bérose des histoires de l'anthropologie. [https://doi.org/10.70601/27jf9i0](https://doi.org/10.70601/27jf9i0) .  \nVersion PDF générée le 21 août 2026.  \nISSN 2648-2770  \nPublication en accès libre sous Licence Creative Commons-CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Creative Commons : AttributionUtilisation non commerciale-Pas d’œuvre dérivée 4.0 International. Cette licence s’applique sauf mention contraire pour certains contenus (photographies, illustrations ou fichiers dont les droits spécifiques sont précisés) .  \n[https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/)  \nReturn to New Guinea  \nBetween 1925 and 1930, Margaret Mead conducted fieldwork in American Samoa, Manus, and on the Omaha reservation in Nebraska, authoring two best-selling books and one professional monograph with another two in the works [1] . She was becoming widely known as a popular author and anthropology’s public face. Having just turned 30, Mead could have rested on these laurels. Furthermore, because she was somewhat immobilized due to a fractured ankle and on ongoing malarial episodes, she was not in the best physical condition for additional fieldwork. But Mead was a committed fieldworker. She felt that young anthropologists needed to spend more time in the field and, because she was a museum curator rather than an academic, she could spend more time there. Mead had also been stung by professional criticism that questioned her ethnographic abilities, and she wanted to put those doubts to rest.  \nThere was a more personal reason behind Mead’s determination to do more fieldwork. On returning from American Samoa, Mead learned that she had a tipped uterus and would probably not be able to carry a child to term. Based on this prognosis, she chose to divorce Luther Cressman and pursue fieldwork with her future husband, Reo Fortune, whom she had met aboard ship returning from American Samoa in 1926. Indeed, Mead and Fortune had already worked together on Manus and the Omaha reservation. She and Fortune would continue to make fieldwork their mission.  \nThe couple approached Boas about the possibility of studying the Navaho, whose culture, unlike the Omaha, was considered “living” and “intact”. Perhaps fieldwork among the Navaho would compensate for their disappointing experience among the Omaha whose culture Mead  \n1 / 22  \nconsidered “broken”. However, Boas informed them that the Navaho were already being studied and that the group “belonged” to other anthropologists. This was an era of ethnographic exclusivity when ethnographers were expected to have their own “people”. Since there was no shortage of cultures available to be studied, Boas encouraged the idea of“one culture, one ethnographer”. Mead and Fortune would have to look elsewhere. For them, this meant a return to Melanesia, this time to the mainland of eastern New Guinea which, like the Admiralties, was under Australian rule. They could have chosen a less challenging region, but that was simply not who Mead and Fortune were.  \nThe Mountain Arapesh  \nWith more than 800 different language groups, steamy swamps, torrential rains, swollen rivers, dense forests, and an impenetrable mountainous interior, New Guinea was largely unknown in the early 1930s. In the European imagination, the interior was thought to be particularly “wild”. Indeed, the great high valleys ofthe New Guinea interior were not even explored until the 1930s when gold was discovered there. Travel in the interior was often difficult, and living conditions were fraught with peril, including malaria and other diseases.  \nMead wrote that,“New Guinea, along with the islands that surround it, was virtually terraincognita to Americans…”(19","cbCaipmy0RB1kLuo","https://ap.wps.com/l/cbCaipmy0RB1kLuo","pdf",212870,22,"English","# Return to New Guinea\n## The Mountain Arapesh","[{\"question\":\"Why did Margaret Mead continue pursuing additional fieldwork despite health setbacks?\",\"answer\":\"She believed young anthropologists needed more time in the field and wanted to address professional criticism questioning her ethnographic abilities. Personal circumstances also pushed her toward renewed fieldwork commitments.\"},{\"question\":\"What changed Mead’s plans after earlier experiences among the Omaha?\",\"answer\":\"Boas advised that the Navajo were already being studied and emphasized expectations of having “one culture, one ethnographer.” This forced Mead and Fortune to look elsewhere rather than pursue the Navajo.\"},{\"question\":\"What were the main challenges of studying groups in New Guinea during the 1930s?\",\"answer\":\"New Guinea’s interior was largely unknown, travel was difficult, living conditions were perilous due to malaria and other diseases, and reaching target communities required extensive provisioning and careful planning.\"}]","The Forgotten Ethnographic Legacy of Margaret Mead (1931 1939) - Paul Shankman 2025 | PDF",55]