In the Margaret Mead Selection, From
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies, taken from Feminist
Theory: A Reader, she looks at the justifications for gender roles. She examines the huge range of variances that
gender roles have across cultures, and determines that it is ludicrous to
suggest that one is naturally predisposed to universal traits, temperaments or
roles because of one’s sex. Furthermore,
she asserts that all cultures dramatize certain traits that are based on
biological sex, though which traits are affiliated with sex differ to varying
degrees between cultures. After
comparing the differences between cultures, performing a thought experiment on
a possible alternate cause for the creation of gender related dispositions and
roles, and identifying three possible directions a civilization may take
regarding the these roles and temperaments, Mead proposes a solution to the
arbitrariness of sex based cultural inculcation. Society should focus on each individual’s
capacity and potential based on his or her own, unique predispositions and
temperaments, and in order “…to achieve a richer culture we must recognize the
whole gamut of human potentialities, and so weave a less arbitrary social
fabric, one in which each diverse human gift will find a fitting place.”(134) This essay will explore how Mead develops her
theory, and will find much to agree with her about, while providing an
examination of some potential problems resulting from possible incompleteness
and research bias.
Mead begins by qualifying her paper in
terms of what it is not intended to be.
The paper is not intended to be a quantitative or qualitative analysis
of sex differences among cultures, nor is it meant to explore whether women
vary more or less than men do in terms of temperaments. The paper is not intended to be a survey of
women’s rights, nor an inquisitive look into the foundations of feminism. All it is, in her words, “is…an account of
how three primitive societies have grouped their social attitudes toward
temperament about the very obvious facts of sex-difference.”(130) Mead claims that her purpose in studying this
phenomenon in these “simple societies” is because they are similar to the
industrialized Western complex societies, merely differing in size and
scope. Her investigation was centered on
a “fierce” group, a “gentle” group, and a “graceful” group, the Mundugumor, Arapesh,
and Tchambuli, respectively. Beyond
that, she mentioned that the gentle group insisted that women’s heads were
stronger than men’s heads. Otherwise, her
only mention of these particular groups in the selection was that they each
focused on sex-difference as a factor for determining which temperaments to
promote and which social roles each individual of the group were to be groomed
for, though they each chose different temperaments to apply to females and
males of the group. To support her claim
that different cultures treat sex-difference in varying ways, Mead goes on to
mention five other groups and a particular characteristic, or temperament, of
each. The specific group she gives the
most space to in the selection being discussed is the Dakota Indians, where she
talks about the berdache. The berdache were males who failed to prove their
masculinity and have given up the battle, choosing to take on the social role
of women and thenceforth serve as a tool of warning to shame other young males
into not giving up the fight for maleness.
In order to not take a cheap shot and
criticize Mead for her lack of exposition on her findings in the selection, it
becomes necessary to find any available resource that more fully explains the
relevance of the three tribes she investigated.
Class discussion and a look at the Library of Congress webpage devoted
to a Margaret Mead exhibition from 2001-2002 filled in a few missing
pieces. Briefly, the men and women in
the Arapesh tribe were found to be “gentle, responsive, and cooperative.” The men and women in the Mundugumor tribe
were found to be “violent and aggressive, seeking power and position.” The Tchamubli tribe consisted of men and
women who were distinctly different from each other in temperament, “the woman
being dominant, impersonal, and managerial and the male less responsible and
more emotionally dependent.” (LOC) When
these three tribes gender behaviors are put on a chart, it becomes obvious that
sex-determined inclinations or propensities become substantially less likely
and that the inclinations of men and women are largely, and perhaps entirely,
the function of socialization within a given culture. The table below shows that each of the four
cultures displays different temperamental norms, and it appears that those
norms are not necessarily the function of biological sex. Assuming there is a causal factor, a reasonable
explanation is cultural inculcation, not sex.
Also, it is interesting that Mead finds that any deviation from the
cultural temperament norm is seen as being worthy, within the culture, of
condemnation by others within the culture, and this is universal. (131)
|
Culture
|
Arapesh
|
Mundugumor
|
Tchambuli
|
Western
|
|
Biological Sex Identification
|
Male / Female
|
Male / Female
|
Male / Female
|
Male / Female
|
|
Observed Temperament – Gender based
(Masculine/Feminine)
|
Fem./Fem.
|
Masc./Masc.
|
Fem. / Masc.
|
Masc./Fem.
|
Based on this observation, Mead
identifies three different courses of action for any society wishing to
experience a “planned order of society.”
The first option is the Western option where men and women are raised to
be “contrasting, complementary, and antithetical” to each other, and direct all
of the society’s institutions to pursue such an end.(131) The risk with this option is that any child
with temperamental inclinations that don’t comport to the cultural norms is
forced into a social structure where those gifts are lost, or at least
minimized, and replaced with the behaviors trained into the child by
society. Mead asserts that this wasting
of talents is hurtful to men and women, and “does violence” to them both.(132)
The second option is to ignore
biological sex and raise children to be either masculine or feminine in order
to fulfill the roles defined by the culture, and which requires either a
masculine or feminine temperament. This
can result in masculine and feminine males, and females, not defined by their
sex, but by their gendered behaviors and inclination, which would be trained
into them by the society. Mead seems to
find this option to be an advance compared to the first option, though still
arbitrary in nature, calling it a “parody of all the attempts that society has
made…to define an individual’s role in terms of sex, or color, or date of
birth, or shape of head.”(133)
Mead’s third option is to not only
refuse to apply gender roles based on masculinity and femininity as a result of
biological sex, but to refuse the idea of gender roles altogether. By focusing on a child’s talents,
inclinations, temperament and character as they become evident, society could
raise them around the variety of traits and the temperaments that are unique to
the individual. This eliminates superficial classifications
and serves as a way to promote the individual and the special qualities each
person can bring into society, each performing according to their supported,
natural talents.(134) No longer would
social roles be based on an arbitrary characteristic, but on the chosen roles
of the individuals that make up the society.
At first blush Mead’s third option seems
to be an egalitarian, individualistic ideal that promotes self actualization
and personal liberty. It would probably
not be difficult to find many who would support such an ideal, but there are
some potential risks involved. First,
such a society takes the primacy of the individual to levels never before
realized by even the most individualistic society. This elevation of the person as sacred is
likely to come at a risk to the society at large, also known as a community,
which may have competing ideals.
Granted, if it is assumed that somehow a society could ever exist along
the lines theorized by Mead, it can further be assumed that the society would
not have any competing ideals, otherwise her utopia would never have come into
being. The ideal she puts forth is
currently unattainable in the near future.
This is not to say that over a long enough time it could not be
realized, but when you consider the thousands of years of human existence and
the fact that even in one of the most individualized countries of the world,
the U.S.A., there are still vestiges of coverture in the laws and the culture
at large, to believe Mead’s third option can be realized within the next few
generations seems absurd. However, it is
one worth working toward.
One possible problem with the idea that
temperament is a function of cultural inculcation is that it isn’t quite
conclusive. Mead’s research is not
quantitative in any sense of the word, nor does it address any aspect of
evolutionary biology, or evolutionary psychology. It is entirely possible that there are some
few temperaments that are generally most prevalent in men or women, based on
their sex. Furthermore, it is possible
that these general traits are such that they contribute to the survival of the
species through mate selection, child rearing, emotional attachment over time,
or some other important end as yet unknown.
If there are studies that tend to show this as being the case, Mead
might argue that the genetic contribution is both minimal and, given the right
environmental conditions, unnecessary.
If she is right, then over time it is quite possible that any possible
genetic traits that create a propensity toward certain temperaments depending
on a person’s sex might eventually be relegated to the status of the
appendix. This basically means that
while it is still present in each person’s genetic make-up, this genetic trait
will be no stronger or weaker in one than it is in another, regardless of sex.
In
conclusion, Mead has shown a very strong argument against the belief that women
have feminine traits, and men have masculine traits, as a function of and in
proportions appropriate to their sex.
What she has not done is show that any and all variations that have ever
been deemed to be masculine or feminine are not in any way generally the result
of one’s sex. She also hasn’t accounted
for the origins of social customs regarding sex based roles and
temperaments. Without knowing the
genealogy of gender it is impossible to know from where it comes or why it is
there. Also, to assume that biological
sex is the equivalent of eye color in terms of arbitrariness for the
determination of social roles seems somewhat biased in that it makes sex
generally meaningless in all areas other than simple procreation. While it may be true that simple procreation
is the only identifiable purpose of sex differences, social roles throughout
history have shown that the core of society is, in large part, family. To have family, there must be at least one to
care for and raise the infant to self-sufficiency. Has biology, through sex, or perhaps merely
identifiably based on sex, provided the temperaments to men and women in
different measures for this, or another, natural purpose, or purposes, that
modern, civilized people no longer need?
Works
Cited
Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the
Power of Culture - To the Field and Back | Exhibitions -Library of Congress.
Library of Congress. nd. Web. 30 September 2012 <http://www.loc.gov/exhibits/mead/mead-field.html>
Mead, Margaret. “From
Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies. Feminst
Theory: A Reader. Wendy Kolmar and Frances Bartkowski. Mountain
View, CA: Mayfield Publishing Company, 2000. p130-134. Print
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