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Technology and Social Change
 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the advent of nuclear weapons rendered the contents out-of-date.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was out-of-date.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.
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Margaret Mead.
Page from Learning to Live in
One World manuscript,
July 9, 1945.
Typescript.
Manuscript Division
(249)
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Arthur Herzog, photographer.
"Margaret Mead and Rhoda
Metraux looking at American children's drawings of Sputnik,"
1958.
Gelatin silver print.
Manuscript
Division (252a)
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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.
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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.
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Ken Heyman, photographer.
Margaret Mead talking to
Balinese students. Denpasar, Bali, January 1958.
Gelatin silver print.
Courtesy of photographer
Ken Heyman (252q)
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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
(252L)
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Library of Congress