Study of Culture at a Distance - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0226515087 ISBN 13: 9780226515083

Publisher: University of Chicago Press, 1953

Synopsis

The United States on the eve of the Second World War was still a society largely isolated from the world. Facing enemies with unfamiliar cultural traditions, the U.S. government turned to anthropologists for insight. The result was a research effort that continued long after the war, aimed, in the words of Margaret Mead, at analyzing the cultural regularities in the characters of individuals who are members of societies that are inaccessible to direct observation. In 1953, Margaret Mead and Rhoda Métraux produced The Study of Culture at a Distance, a compilation of research from this period. This remarkable work, long unavailable, presents a rich and complex methodology for the study of cultures through literature, film, informant interviews, focus groups, and projective techniques. The book also provides fascinating insights into such diverse cultures as China, Thailand, Italy, Syria, France, Germany, Russia, Romania, and Great Britain, and includes some highly original analysis such as that of the Soviet style of chess, a study of Jean Cocteau&rsquos classic film La Belle et la Bête, and the cultural interpretations of Rorschach tests administered to Chinese subjects.

About this title

About the Author

Margaret Mead served as Curator of Ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History from 1925 to 1969. She began her career with a study of youth and adolescence in Samoan society, published as Coming of Age in Samoa (1928). She published prolifically, becoming a seminal figure in anthropology, and was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 1979.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Chicago Press
• Publication date: 1953
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0226515087
• ISBN 13: 9780226515083
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 480
• Editor: Margaret Mead, Rhoda Metraux