Abstract
DR. MARGARET MEAD'S study of present conditions in an Indian tribe living on a reservation, of which the anonymity is preserved under the title of “Antler”, deals more particularly with the position of the women. It is, in a sense, an experimental study in that it has been undertaken with a view of elaborating and testing methods of observation which, it is pointed out, will in the near future have to be employed in an increasing degree in ethnographical observation, owing to the rapid changes which are taking place all over the world among backward peoples, as they come more and more closely into contact with civilisation, and their customs and native economy are modified thereby. In a preface, Dr. Clark Wissler points out, for example, that the Indians whom Dr. Mead has had under observation, are living under two incompatible ideals. On one hand they are trying to preserve their old tribal ideals of community, and on the other hand they are forced to conduct their life in accordance with the white concept of competition. Dr. Mead's book, which has some valuable detail bearing on moral conditions among a partially detribalised people and on the modification of conditions in marriage, is thus of both special and general interest to the student of ethnology.
The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe.
Margaret
Mead
By. (Columbia University Contributions to Anthropology, 15.) Pp. xiv + 313. (New York: Columbia University Press; London: Oxford University Press, 1932.) 28s. net.
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The Changing Culture of an Indian Tribe . Nature 131, 711 (1933). https://doi.org/10.1038/131711b0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/131711b0