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Cover of Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies by Margaret Mead

Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies

Margaret Mead

  • 335 pages · about 6 hours
  • First published 1935
  • 49 editions
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1 About this book

Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies is a book by anthropologist Margaret Mead, published in 1935. Based on her ethnographic fieldwork, Mead profiled three New Guinea cultures with distinct gender systems, and explored the question of what happens when an individual's emotional disposition is at odds with society's gender expectations.

The focus of the book is temperament, that is patterns of personality and emotions, and "with the cultural assumptions that certain temperamental attitudes are 'naturally' masculine and others 'naturally' feminine." The three societies in question were all in the Sepik River basin of Papua New Guinea: the Mountain Arapesh people, the Mundugumor (or Biwat) people, the Tchambuli (now spelled Chambri) people.

Summary adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Identification (Psychology)
  • Indigenous peoples
  • Anthropology
  • Cultural Anthropology
  • Social science
  • Native races
  • Traditional societies
  • Social life and customs

2 About Margaret Mead

1901–1978

Margaret Mead (December 16, 1901 – November 15, 1978) was an American cultural anthropologist, author and speaker, who appeared frequently in the mass media during the mid-twentieth century. Mead's first ethnographic work, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928), addressed adolescence and sexuality and catapulted her to national visibility.

Bio adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0)

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