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And Keep Your Powder Dry: An Anthropologist Looks at America
Margaret Mead wrote this comprehensive sketch of the culture of the United States - the first since de Tocqueville - in 1942 at the beginnning of the Second World War, when Americans were confronted by foreign powers from both Europe and Asia in a particularly challenging manner. Mead's work became an instant classic. It was required reading for anthropology students for nearly two decades, and was widely translated. It was revised and expanded in 1965 for a second generation of readers. Among the more controversial conclusions of her analysis are the denial of class as a motivating force in American culture, and her contention that culture is the primary determinant for individual character formation. Her process remains lucid, vivid, and arresting. As a classic study of a complex western society, it remains a monument to anthropological analysis.
- GenresAnthropologyNonfiction
Kindle Edition
First published November 1, 1942
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About the author
Margaret Mead
176 books489 followersMargaret Mead was an American cultural anthropologist who was frequently a featured writer and speaker in the mass media throughout the '60s and '70s as a popularizer of the insights of anthropology into modern American and western life but also a respected, if controversial, academic anthropologist.
Her reports as to the purportedly healthy attitude towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the '60s "sexual revolution" and it was only at the end of her life and career that her propositions were – albeit controversially – challenged by a maverick fellow anthropologist and literate members of societies she had long before studied and reported on. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
Her reports as to the purportedly healthy attitude towards sex in South Pacific and Southeast Asian traditional cultures amply informed the '60s "sexual revolution" and it was only at the end of her life and career that her propositions were – albeit controversially – challenged by a maverick fellow anthropologist and literate members of societies she had long before studied and reported on. Mead was a champion of broadened sexual mores within a context of traditional western religious life.
Excerpted from Wikipedia.
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June 10, 2009Mead wrote this book as a government assignment, so it should probably be read in conjunction with the companion piece: Ruth Benedict's The Crhysanthemum And The Sword, about Japanese culture in the 1940s--but I didn't--still haven't read Benedict's book.
This book is full of fascinating insights, like the culture of unassisted novice parents, the habit of saying where you're originally from, etc. Well worth reading, because although much has changed, much also has not.
This book is full of fascinating insights, like the culture of unassisted novice parents, the habit of saying where you're originally from, etc. Well worth reading, because although much has changed, much also has not.
July 24, 2016
Fascinating read, particularly as a non-American.
I now want to sit all my American friends down and ask them impertinent questions about their childhood.
I now want to sit all my American friends down and ask them impertinent questions about their childhood.
May 30, 2024
THE RENOWNED CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGIST WROTE THIS DURING WWII
Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was a famous American cultural anthropologist. She wrote in the new 1965 Preface, “This book was written in 1942 as a social scientist’s contribution to winning the war and establishing a just and lasting peace. It was frankly and completely partisan. In writing it, I attempted to use all my experience gained through the study of primitive societies, where distance provided objectivity, to present the culture and character of my own people in a way they would find meaningful and useful in meeting the harsh realities of war… In the summer of 1945 I began to write a sequel to [this book]. My intention was to discuss the postwar roles of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union… But when the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I tore up the manuscript. Once we knew that it was possible for a people to destroy the enemy, themselves, and all bystanders, the world itself had changed… “But this book, written three years earlier, was directed to a consideration of qualities in the American character that have not been altered by the fact of the bomb.. I have made no changes in the body of this book. To do so would falsify the whole. But I have added a new chapter, written in new hope.”
In the “Bibliographical Note - 1965” at the end of the book, she says, “[This book] was a pioneer venture. In 1942 no anthropologist had attempted to write about a major complex culture using the model of the whole culture that had been developed through the study of small primitive societies. No anthropologist had worked out a style of disciplined subjectivity, a way of combining the objectivity obtained by studying an alien culture and the articulate awareness of ethical involvement necessary for studying one’s own. I had to work out these problems for myself; I was fortunate in having the intellectual support of those to whom I expressed my indebtedness…” (Pg. 327)
She wrote in the Introduction, “The anthropologist is trained to see form where other people see concrete details, to think of terms which will bring together a wedding in a cathedral and a ceremony on a small South Sea Island, in which two middle-aged people with three children sit down and solemnly eat one white chicken egg. Seen in terms of the social history, both are marriages: both are socially-sanctioned ways of recognizing that two people, a man and a woman, now publicly assume complete responsibility for their children.” (Pg. 5-6)
She observes, “We are our culture. The culture of 100 years ago was the behavior of those who lived a hundred years ago… Character is also an abstraction, a way of talking about the results in human personality, of having been reared by and among human beings whose behavior was culturally regular… if the absolute believers in heredity were right, humanity would be caught in a trap which would… make Democracy a pipe dream. Because a new born baby can be brought up to be a Hottentot or a German, an Eskimo or an American, because each group of people seem to be born with the same kinds of individual differences., democracy is not a pipe dream, but a practical working plan.” (Pg. 21-22)
She notes, “that lower-lowers properly clad can go anywhere where one does not require a pedigree or personal invitation, demonstrate the lack of any absolute class standards in this country. In this respect American society is very like a fish society, based as it is on length of residence in a community rather than upon original antecedents or special personality characteristics.” (Pg. 63)
She explains, “the thesis of this book has ben that the experience of generations of men, in a changing world, leaves its marks upon the culture, in the very bodies and souls of the next generation, that the behavior of those of us who live today carries traces of other behaviors, themes developed under other stresses. There is no American race with an inalienable moral inheritance, an inalienable strength and purity---just as there is no other racial carrier of reliable human or superhuman virtues. Our behavior, good and bad, our strengths and weaknesses are the resultant of the choices, voluntary and involuntary, of those who have gone before us.” (Pg. 120)
She suggests, “We can compare the way in which Manus children, Arapesh children and American children are brought up, find out what the similar elements are which shape human materials in such similar ways, and from this derive an understanding of what makes the American character, and judge whether we can safely expect young Americans, aged twenty, to have it.” (Pg. 128)
She states, “Like the head-hunters of New Guinea, war-mongering leaders realize that if you kill all the people whom you habitually head-hunt, there will later be no one for your young men to prove their manhood on. Head-hunters’ victims, like game, must be preserved.” (Pg. 215)
She points out, “We now stand on the threshold of another great period in history, a period which will be as different from all that gone before as the machine age is from the stone age. Today we can learn nothing in the realm of production from the stone age Eskimo… We have gone beyond stone age man, beyond the realm of random experimentation, beyond the level where the genius was the man who saw the importance of what some other man had probably done by accident… Conscious invention, articulately implemented by systematic knowledge, has introduced a qualitative difference between the Eskimo or the Australian aborigine and ourselves, between the age of random trial and error and the age of purposeful invention.” (Pg. 227-228)
Although nearly eighty years old, many of Mead’s comments and insights remain of keen interest to modern readers.
Margaret Mead (1901-1978) was a famous American cultural anthropologist. She wrote in the new 1965 Preface, “This book was written in 1942 as a social scientist’s contribution to winning the war and establishing a just and lasting peace. It was frankly and completely partisan. In writing it, I attempted to use all my experience gained through the study of primitive societies, where distance provided objectivity, to present the culture and character of my own people in a way they would find meaningful and useful in meeting the harsh realities of war… In the summer of 1945 I began to write a sequel to [this book]. My intention was to discuss the postwar roles of the United States, Great Britain, and the Soviet Union… But when the atomic bombs exploded over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, I tore up the manuscript. Once we knew that it was possible for a people to destroy the enemy, themselves, and all bystanders, the world itself had changed… “But this book, written three years earlier, was directed to a consideration of qualities in the American character that have not been altered by the fact of the bomb.. I have made no changes in the body of this book. To do so would falsify the whole. But I have added a new chapter, written in new hope.”
In the “Bibliographical Note - 1965” at the end of the book, she says, “[This book] was a pioneer venture. In 1942 no anthropologist had attempted to write about a major complex culture using the model of the whole culture that had been developed through the study of small primitive societies. No anthropologist had worked out a style of disciplined subjectivity, a way of combining the objectivity obtained by studying an alien culture and the articulate awareness of ethical involvement necessary for studying one’s own. I had to work out these problems for myself; I was fortunate in having the intellectual support of those to whom I expressed my indebtedness…” (Pg. 327)
She wrote in the Introduction, “The anthropologist is trained to see form where other people see concrete details, to think of terms which will bring together a wedding in a cathedral and a ceremony on a small South Sea Island, in which two middle-aged people with three children sit down and solemnly eat one white chicken egg. Seen in terms of the social history, both are marriages: both are socially-sanctioned ways of recognizing that two people, a man and a woman, now publicly assume complete responsibility for their children.” (Pg. 5-6)
She observes, “We are our culture. The culture of 100 years ago was the behavior of those who lived a hundred years ago… Character is also an abstraction, a way of talking about the results in human personality, of having been reared by and among human beings whose behavior was culturally regular… if the absolute believers in heredity were right, humanity would be caught in a trap which would… make Democracy a pipe dream. Because a new born baby can be brought up to be a Hottentot or a German, an Eskimo or an American, because each group of people seem to be born with the same kinds of individual differences., democracy is not a pipe dream, but a practical working plan.” (Pg. 21-22)
She notes, “that lower-lowers properly clad can go anywhere where one does not require a pedigree or personal invitation, demonstrate the lack of any absolute class standards in this country. In this respect American society is very like a fish society, based as it is on length of residence in a community rather than upon original antecedents or special personality characteristics.” (Pg. 63)
She explains, “the thesis of this book has ben that the experience of generations of men, in a changing world, leaves its marks upon the culture, in the very bodies and souls of the next generation, that the behavior of those of us who live today carries traces of other behaviors, themes developed under other stresses. There is no American race with an inalienable moral inheritance, an inalienable strength and purity---just as there is no other racial carrier of reliable human or superhuman virtues. Our behavior, good and bad, our strengths and weaknesses are the resultant of the choices, voluntary and involuntary, of those who have gone before us.” (Pg. 120)
She suggests, “We can compare the way in which Manus children, Arapesh children and American children are brought up, find out what the similar elements are which shape human materials in such similar ways, and from this derive an understanding of what makes the American character, and judge whether we can safely expect young Americans, aged twenty, to have it.” (Pg. 128)
She states, “Like the head-hunters of New Guinea, war-mongering leaders realize that if you kill all the people whom you habitually head-hunt, there will later be no one for your young men to prove their manhood on. Head-hunters’ victims, like game, must be preserved.” (Pg. 215)
She points out, “We now stand on the threshold of another great period in history, a period which will be as different from all that gone before as the machine age is from the stone age. Today we can learn nothing in the realm of production from the stone age Eskimo… We have gone beyond stone age man, beyond the realm of random experimentation, beyond the level where the genius was the man who saw the importance of what some other man had probably done by accident… Conscious invention, articulately implemented by systematic knowledge, has introduced a qualitative difference between the Eskimo or the Australian aborigine and ourselves, between the age of random trial and error and the age of purposeful invention.” (Pg. 227-228)
Although nearly eighty years old, many of Mead’s comments and insights remain of keen interest to modern readers.
May 8, 2017
very dated, but somewhat interesting
November 30, 2024
Fascinating conclusions, but way more if you remember when and from what perspective it’s being written.
July 30, 2019
Really interesting view of society in the United States during World War II. Mead’s aim is to understand what makes American culture unique and argues that our approach to war and to post war must take our cultural characteristics into account. I was surprised to see the word sibling introduced as a new scientific term (the book is from 1942). There are interesting insights about the effect of being an immigrant, living on a frontier, and urbanization. Some of the material doesn’t date well: I’d like to think that we’ve moved past using the word savage to describe native people, for example. Still, I think the book is worth reading.
Displaying 1 - 6 of 6 reviews