MUNDUGUMOR (Smithsonian Series in Ethnographic Inquiry)

MCDOWELL, N,: THE MUNDUGUMOR, FROM THE FIELD NOTES OF MARGARET MEAD AND REO FORTUNE, WASHINGTON, DC, 1991, xiv 337 p, figuras,Encuadernacion original, Nuevo,

This work undertakes several tasks at once. In attempting to expand Mead's and (to a much lesser extent) Fortune's 1932 field notes into a monograph on the Mundugumor of New Guinea's Speik region, McDowell also evaluates the quality of the original data and the effects of the theoretical milieu in which it was gathered. The outcome is strikingly different than that arrived at by Derek Freeman, whose Margaret Mead and Samoa ( LJ 5/1/83) derided both Mead's skills as a fieldworker and the culture theory that influenced her. McDowell shapes Mead's materials into something like an ethnography and finds that this is possible because Mead's notes allowed for far more complexity and contradiction (i.e., they reflected real life) than her simplistic published portrayals ever could. For specialists.
- Glenn Petersen, Baruch Coll., CUNY
Copyright 1991 Reed Business Information, Inc.