“Learning to Live in One World” National Character | Margaret Mead As a Cultural Commentator
Mead
was profoundly affected by the bombing of Hiroshima in 1945 and
the dawning of the nuclear age. At the time, she was working on
a book called Learning to Live in One World, which
dealt with planning for life in a postwar world. Later she claimed
to have destroyed the almost-completed book manuscript because
the advent of nuclear weapons rendered the contents out-of-date.
The book was never published.
Applying her anthropological skills, Mead gathered information on people's reactions to the atomic bomb. She incorporated their views into her work as she sought a model for living in a radically changed world, a world in which human beings could destroy themselves. In addition to ongoing concern over humanitarian issues and growing involvement in international organizations, in this period she became increasingly interested in the public perception of science and in space exploration. Haunted by the specter of nuclear war, Mead focused in the remaining years of her life on finding new ways to live and thrive in a world transformed by new forms of technology. Mead had been interested in cultural stability and change since her student days, and the rapid pace of social change and its impact on relations between the generations was a major theme in her postwar writings.
Unfinished Book
In her autobiography, Mead writes: “The atomic bomb exploded over Hiroshima in the summer of 1945. At that point I tore up every page of a book I had nearly finished. Every sentence was out-of-date. We had entered a new age.” Despite her dramatic statement, draft pages from that book—Learning to Live in One World—remained in her files. The notion that everyone on the planet was interrelated remained a focus of her writings and other public statements for the rest of her life.
Margaret Mead. Page from Learning to Live in One World manuscript, July 9, 1945. Typescript. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (249)
Examining Sputnik Drawings
Margaret Mead and Rhoda Métraux (b. 1914) began working together on food habits issues during World War II. Following the war, they continued their work, collaborating on studies of contemporary cultures. In the 1950s, they inaugurated a project to study images of the scientist among American students. After the launch of the Soviet satellite Sputnik in 1957, they expanded the latter project to include children's images of that satellite. Here Mead (right) and Métraux (left) examine American children's drawings of Sputnik.
Arthur Herzog, photographer. “Margaret Mead and Rhoda Metraux looking at American children's drawings of Sputnik,” 1958. Gelatin silver print. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (252a)
In a Balinese Classroom
Here Mead, during a return trip to Bali, speaks to boys at a high school about the recent launching of the Soviet satellite Sputnik. Later she collected drawings of Sputnik from them and other Balinese children. She also had people in various other places collect children's depictions of Sputnik. The man standing near Mead at the front of the room is the school principal, Madé Kalér, who had been their secretary when she and Bateson lived in Bali in the 1930's.
Ken Heyman, photographer. Margaret Mead talking to Balinese students. Denpasar, Bali, January 1958. Gelatin silver print. Courtesy of photographer Ken Heyman (252q)
Balinese Drawings of Sputnik
In the postwar years, Mead was especially concerned with the impact of technology on people's lives around the world and on the way they thought. One of her interests was space exploration. During her Bali field visit in 1957–58, Mead had Balinese youths draw images of Sputnik, which had been launched a few months earlier. These are two of more than 100 drawings of the spacecraft collected on that trip.
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Balinese child's drawing of Sputnik orbiting the earth by a male, aged 13, ca. 1957—58. Pencil on paper. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (252f)
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Balinese child's drawing of Sputnik by a female, aged 13, ca. 1957—58. Pencil on paper. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (252g)
American Drawings of Sputnik
As Mead had done after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, she collected—and had other people collect—contemporaneous reactions to the Sputnik launching. The Papers of Rhoda Bubendey Métraux, held by the Library, include Sputnik essays and drawings from younger children as well as responses to questionnaires and interviews from older children and adults in the United States and Canada.
The drawings displayed were made shortly after the launch of Sputnik by two thirteen-year-old girls in Saratoga Springs, New York.
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American child's drawing of Sputnik by a female, aged 13, October 16, 1957. Crayon on paper. Manuscript Division (252h)
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American child's drawing of Sputnik by a female, aged 13, October 18, 1957. Crayon on paper. Manuscript Division, Library of Congress (252L)
“Learning to Live in One World” National Character | Margaret Mead As a Cultural Commentator
