Mary Catherine Bateson

Mary Catherine Bateson
Mary Catherine Bateson
	Bateson in 2004
Born	December 8, 1939; New York City, U.S.
Died	January 2, 2021 (aged 81); New Hampshire, U.S.
Education	Radcliffe College (BA); Harvard University (PhD);
Occupation	Cultural anthropologist
Spouse	J. Barkev Kassarjian (m. 1960)
Children	1
Parents	Gregory Bateson; Margaret Mead;
Relatives	Jeremy Steig (cousin); William Steig (uncle); Leo Rosten (uncle);

Mary Catherine Bateson (December 8, 1939 – January 2, 2021) was an American writer and cultural anthropologist.

The daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, Bateson was a noted author in her field with many published monographs. Among her books was With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, a recounting of her upbringing by two famous parents. She taught at Harvard, Amherst, and George Mason University, among others. Bateson was a fellow of the International Leadership Forum and was president of the Institute for Intercultural Studies in New York until 2010.

Early life and education

Bateson was a graduate of the Brearley School and received her B.A. from Radcliffe in 1960 and her Ph.D. in linguistics and Middle Eastern Studies from Harvard in 1963. Her dissertation examined linguistic patterns in pre-Islamic Arabic poetry.

Personal life

Bateson was married to Barkev Kassarjian, a professor of management at Babson College, from 1960 to her death. They had one daughter, Sevanne Margaret (born 1969), an actress who works professionally under the name Sevanne Martin, and two grandsons. Through her mother's side of the family, Bateson was also the cousin of Jeremy Steig as well as a niece of William Steig and Leo Rosten. Toward the end of Bateson's residence in Iran in 1979, Catherine's mother who was paying a visit to her family in Iran died in New York. Her father then died a year later in 1980.

Death

Bateson died on January 2, 2021, at a hospice near her home in Hancock, New Hampshire, aged 81.

Style

Bateson considered herself an “activist for peace and justice” of continuing to be willing to learn. Because of her work on aging and the changing role of women in modern society, Bateson has been referred to as one of the most original thinkers of our time. Lectures by Bateson have encouraged adults to become a lot more engaged in the world and not to retire.

At the beginning of her career, she was a linguist and studied Arabic poetry. Then, she shifted her focus from a professional interest in human patterns of communication to highly-formalistic studies, which started her career as an anthropologist. Changing focus in topics, Bateson began to use her own life experience to write. Bateson used her own experience as a woman, daughter, mother, scholar, and anthropologist, who went through many different situations, as a guide for her writings. She also used cross-cultural experiences of other individuals incorporated into her writings.

One of Bateson's first books was her memoir With a Daughter's Eye in which she reflected on her earlier life with her parents: Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson. The memoir created a path for self-discovery and enablement of the experiences that she incorporated into her writings, such as her next book, Composing a Life. She questioned the gender expectations and the misogynistic reality of the 1980s with her book by using her own experience as a parallel.

In all of her work, she used that method to help fuel her writings. Many of her books are still used as inspiration for feminists who question gendered expectations.

Bibliography

Thinking Race: Social Myths and Biological Realities (2019) with Richard Goldsby
Composing a Further Life: The Age of Active Wisdom (2010)
Willing to Learn: Passages of Personal Discovery (2004)
Full Circles, Overlapping Lives: Culture and Generation in Transition (2000)
Peripheral Visions - Learning Along the Way (1994)
Composing a Life (1991)
Thinking AIDS (1988) with Richard Goldsby
Angels Fear: Towards an Epistemology of the Sacred (1987) written with Gregory Bateson
With a Daughter's Eye: A Memoir of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson (1984)
At Home in Iran (1974)
Our Own Metaphor: A Personal Account of a Conference on the Effects of Conscious Purpose on Human Adaptation (1972)
Arabic Language Handbook (1967)

External links

Papers of Mary Catherine Bateson, 1954–2004 (inclusive), 1975–2001 (bulk): A Finding Aid. Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University.