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APRIL 2003

Anthropologist Bateson Speaks at Barnard
by Kim Brown

Personal identity shines brighter when viewed through Mary Catherine Bateson’s words. “We are not what we know but what we are willing to learn,” she once said. Parts of oneself shift into focus when considered in the light of her work.

Ms. Bateson is a writer and cultural anthropologist who has written and co-authored numerous books and articles. Full Circles, Overlapping Lives is her most recent book. Composing a Life is best known. She is the daughter of Margaret Mead, the most famous anthropologist the world has ever known. Recently, Ms. Bateston spoke at her mother’s alma mater, Barnard College.

She came to speak about Composing a Life, education issues and personal commitment. But first things first, Ms. Bateson, currently a Visiting Professor at Harvard Graduate School of Education, asked that the podium be replaced with a small table. After the table was covered with a blue cloth she hopped on, preparing to deepen the audience’s understanding of life.

She began with institutions of higher learning. Just as there are health maintenance organizations, colleges, she argued, “should think of themselves as learning maintenance organizations.” Their role is not to prepare adults for jobs but rather “maintain, broaden and deepen our curiosity throughout our life cycle.”

She should know about developing the mind throughout life. She is, after all, on a sixth career. She recently retired as Clarence J. Robinson Professor in Anthropology and English at George Mason University and is president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York City.

“When I sat down and wrote Composing a Life the problem that I was grappling with was the discontinuities in my own life, some of which had to do with being a woman,” she told the audience. “I got my doctorate in Middle Eastern studies and linguistics, writing on classical Arabic poetry, right? And [my husband] took a job in Manila.”

Composing a Life addresses changes in women’s lives due to marriage, childbirth, chauvinism and other factors. Continuing learning and curiosity are necessary resources to meet these challenges, Ms. Bateson says.

“I really believe that the place to be in this world that’s so diverse and so rapidly changing and so unpredictable is to be unremittingly curious and trying to understand and never say, ‘I have come to a final clear understanding.’”

The very dilemma that many women face, trying to balance multiple commitments, is actually a tremendous strength, Ms. Bateson says. It helps to broaden understanding and resist oversimplification of decisions.

Ms. Bateson rejects the metaphor of juggling responsibilities. She says it is “trivializing.”

“If you tell me that my efforts to live a rich, complicated, creative life count as juggling, what are you telling me? First you’re telling me I’m going to drop something.”

The audience laughed. In her closing remarks she spoke about the importance of reflection. “Experience doesn’t make you wise. Thinking about experience is what makes you wise,” she said. “What we do in classrooms is what sets the stage for this process of growing, complexifying, balancing and reflecting.”#

 

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