There is a popular vision of the anthropologist as figure-of-fun which an allegorical 'Margaret Mead' is coming to represent: the blunderer into tribal life, dupe of the primitives, the self-dramatiser, spinner of graceless and unlikely theories. Another version of the anthropologist is the philosopher of culture and society in all its variations, one who understands humanity in some broad, if rather intuitive and dreamy way: Ruth Benedict, though her work is deeply unfashionable today, has this kind of position. Though both of these visions of the anthropologist have a certain plausibility, they hardly justify the tendency of recent biographies, particularly of Mead, to create retrospective stereotypes. Such books neglect the historical complexity and the difficulties of coming-into-being of anthropology as a subject. Neither Benedict nor Mead were like these types, but their life-stories do show not only how they were able to generate new ideas but also how easily - and this is really a matter of how anthropology is written - an idea could be taken up and somehow slip over the line into caricature.

LRB 31 August 1989 | PDF Download