Mayoría de edad en Samoa

Mayoría de edad en Samoa

Página de título original (1928)
Autor	Margaret Mead
País	Estados Unidos
Idioma	inglés
Sujeto	Cultura y sociedad de Samoa
Editor	William Morrow y Co.
Fecha de publicación	1928
Tipo de medio	Imprimir ( tapa blanda )
Paginas	297

Parte de una serie sobre el
Antropología del parentesco
Conceptos básicos Afinidad Consanguinidad Matrimonio Tabú incesto Endogamia Exogamia Mitad Monogamia Poliginia Poligamia Concubinato Poliandria Precio de la novia Servicio de novia Dote Primos paralelos / cruzados Matrimonio de primos Levirato Sororate Matrimonio fantasma Relación de broma Familia Linaje Clan Cohabitación Ficticio  / Leche  / Fomentar el parentesco Descendencia Cognático  / Bilateral Matrilateral Sociedad de la casa Avunculate Linealidades Ambilinealidad Unilinealidad Matrilinealidad Patrilinealidad Formularios de hogar y residencia Extendido Matrifocal Matrilocal Neolocal Nuclear Patrilocal
Terminología Terminología de parentesco Terminologías clasificatorias Por grupo Iroqueses Cuervo Omaha Esquimal (inuit) hawaiano sudanés Dravidian  (debatido)
Estudios de caso Aborigen australiano birmano chino filipino Poliandria en el Tíbet  / en la India Feminista Chambri Mosuo Sexualidad Mayoría de edad en Samoa
Teóricos principales Diane campana Tom Boellstorff Jack Goody Gilbert Herdt Don Kulick Roger Lancaster Louise Lamphere Eleanor Leacock Claude Lévi-Strauss Bronisław Malinowski Margaret Mead Henrietta Moore Lewis H. Morgan Stephen O. Murray Michelle Rosaldo David M. Schneider Marilyn Strathern
Artículos relacionados Teoría de la alianza Sociedades matrilineales / matrilocales Antropología feminista Sexo y represión en la sociedad salvaje Vinculación social y crianza del parentesco
Antropología social Antropología cultural
v t mi

La mayoría de edad en Samoa es un libro de la antropóloga estadounidense Margaret Mead basado en su investigación y estudio de la juventud, principalmenteniñas adolescentes , en la isla de Ta'u en las islas de Samoa . El libro detalla la vida sexual de los adolescentes en la sociedad de Samoa a principios del siglo XX y teoriza que la cultura tiene una influencia principal en el desarrollo psicosexual.

Publicado por primera vez en 1928, el libro lanzó a Mead como investigador pionero y como el antropólogo más famoso del mundo. Desde su primera publicación, Coming of Age in Samoa fue el libro más leído en el campo de la antropología hasta que Yanomamö: The Fierce People de Napoleon Chagnon lo superó. ^[1] El libro ha provocado años de intenso debate y controversia en curso sobre cuestiones relativas a la sociedad , la cultura y la ciencia. Es un texto clave en el debate naturaleza versus crianza , así como en discusiones sobre temas relacionados con la familia, la adolescencia, el género, las normas sociales y las actitudes. ^[2]

En la década de 1980, Derek Freeman refutó muchas de las afirmaciones de Mead y argumentó que fue engañada para que creyera de manera contrafáctica que la cultura de Samoa tenía normas sexuales más relajadas que la cultura occidental. ^[3] Sin embargo, la comunidad antropológica en general ha rechazado las afirmaciones de Freeman, concluyendo que Freeman seleccionó sus datos y tergiversó tanto la investigación de Mead como las entrevistas que realizó. ^{[4] [5] [6]} El trabajo de campo de Mead para "Coming of Age" también fue analizado, y se encontraron grandes discrepancias entre sus declaraciones publicadas y sus datos de campo. ^{[7] [8]} Los propios samoanos tienden a criticar lo que Mead escribió sobre su cultura, especialmente su afirmación de que la promiscuidad adolescente era socialmente aceptable en Samoa en la década de 1920. ^[9]

Contenido

Prólogo

En el prólogo de la mayoría de edad en Samoa , el asesor de Mead, Franz Boas , escribe:

"La cortesía, la modestia, los buenos modales, la conformidad con normas éticas definidas son universales, pero lo que constituye cortesía, modestia, buenos modales y normas éticas definidas no es universal. Es instructivo saber que las normas difieren de las formas más inesperadas". ^[10]

Franz Boas (ca 1915, 57 años)

Boas continuó señalando que, en el momento de la publicación, muchos estadounidenses habían comenzado a discutir los problemas que enfrentan los jóvenes (particularmente las mujeres) al atravesar la adolescencia como "períodos inevitables de ajuste". Boas sintió que un estudio de los problemas que enfrentan los adolescentes en otra cultura sería esclarecedor. ^[10]

Introducción

Margaret Mead (ca de 1930 a 1950, 30 o 40 años)

Mead presenta el libro con una discusión general de los problemas que enfrentan los adolescentes en la sociedad moderna y los diversos enfoques para comprender estos problemas: religión, filosofía, teoría de la educación y psicología. Ella discute varias limitaciones en cada enfoque y luego presenta el nuevo campo de la antropología como una ciencia alternativa prometedora basada en el análisis de estructuras y dinámicas sociales. Contrasta la metodología del antropólogo con otros estudios científicos del comportamiento y las razones obvias por las que los experimentos controlados son mucho más difíciles para la antropología que para otras ciencias. Por eso su metodología es la de estudiar sociedades en su entorno natural. En lugar de seleccionar una cultura que se entienda bastante bien, como Europa o América, eligeLos habitantes de las islas del Mar del Sur porque su cultura es radicalmente diferente de la occidental y, como resultado, es probable que produzcan datos más útiles. Sin embargo, al hacerlo, introduce una nueva complejidad en el sentido de que primero debe comprender y comunicar a sus lectores la naturaleza de la cultura del Mar del Sur en sí, en lugar de ahondar directamente en los problemas de la adolescencia como podría hacerlo en una cultura más familiar. Una vez que comprenda la cultura de Samoa , profundizará en los detalles de cómo se lleva a cabo la educación y la socialización de los adolescentes en la cultura de Samoa y la contrastará con la cultura occidental. ^[11]

Mead describió el objetivo de su investigación de la siguiente manera:

"He tratado de responder a la pregunta que me envió a Samoa: ¿los disturbios que afligen a nuestros adolescentes se deben a la naturaleza de la adolescencia misma oa la civilización? ¿En diferentes condiciones, la adolescencia presenta un cuadro diferente?" ^[11]

Para responder a esta pregunta, realizó su estudio entre un pequeño grupo de samoanos. Encontró un pueblo de 600 personas en la isla de Ta'ū , en el que, durante un período de entre seis y nueve meses, conoció, convivió, observó y entrevistó (habiendo aprendido algo de Samoa) a 68 mujeres jóvenes entre las edades de 9 y 20. Mead estudió vida diaria, educación, estructuras y dinámicas sociales, rituales, etiqueta, etc. ^[11]

Vida y educación de Samoa

Niñas de Samoa ( c.  1902 )

Mead comienza con la descripción de un típico día idílico en Samoa. Luego describe la educación infantil, comenzando con el nacimiento de los niños, que se celebra con una larga fiesta ritual. Sin embargo, después del nacimiento, Mead describe cómo se ignora en su mayoría a los niños, ya que las niñas a veces se ignoran explícitamente en un ritual, desde el nacimiento hasta la pubertad . Ella describe los diversos métodos para disciplinar a los niños. La mayoría implica algún tipo de castigo corporal, como golpear con las manos, hojas de palma o conchas. Sin embargo, el castigo es mayoritariamente ritualista y no pretende infligir daños graves. Se espera que los niños contribuyan con un trabajo significativo desde una edad muy temprana. Inicialmente, los niños pequeños de ambos sexos ayudan a cuidar a los bebés. Sin embargo, a medida que los niños crecen, la educación de los niños pasa a la pesca, mientras que las niñas se centran más en el cuidado de los niños. Sin embargo, el concepto de edad para los samoanos no es el mismo que en Occidente. Los samoanos no llevan un registro de los días de nacimiento y juzgan la madurez no por el número real de años de vida, sino más bien por los cambios físicos externos del niño.

Para las adolescentes, el estatus es principalmente una cuestión de con quién se casarán. Mead también describe la adolescencia y el tiempo antes del matrimonio como el punto culminante de la vida de una niña samoana:

"But the seventeen year old girl does not wish to marry – not yet. It is better to live as a girl with no responsibility, and a rich variety of experience. This is the best period of her life."^[12]:14–39

Samoan household

Three Samoan women preparing to make kava (c. 1890)

The next section describes the structure of a Samoan village: "a Samoan village is made up of some thirty to forty households, each of which is presided over by a head man". Each household is an extended family including widows and widowers. The household shares houses communally: each household has several houses but no members have ownership or permanent residence of any specific building. The houses may not all be within the same part of the village.

The head man of the household has ultimate authority over the group. Mead describes how the extended family provides security and safety for Samoan children. Children are likely to be near relatives no matter where they are, and any child that is missing will be found quite rapidly. The household also provides freedom for children including girls. According to Mead, if a girl is unhappy with the particular relatives she happens to live with, she can always simply move to a different home within the same household. Mead also describes the various and fairly complex status relations which are a combination of factors such as role in the household, the household's status within the village, the age of the individual, etc. There are also many rules of etiquette for requesting and granting favors.^[12]:39–58

Samoan social structures and rules

Samoan female ceremonial dancer (Thomas Andrew, c. 1890s)

Mead describes the many group structures and dynamics within Samoan culture. The forming of groups is an important part of Samoan life from early childhood when young children form groups for play and mischief. There are several different kinds of possible group structures in Samoan culture. Relations flow down from chiefs and heads of households; men designate another man to be their aid and surrogate in courting rituals; men form groups for fishing and other work activities; women form groups based on tasks such as child caring and household relations. Mead describes examples of such groups and describes the complex rules that govern how they are formed and how they function. Her emphasis is on Samoan adolescent girls, but as elsewhere she needs to also describe Samoan social structures for the entire culture to give a complete picture.

Mead believes that the complex and mandatory rules that govern these various groups mean that the traditional Western concept of friendship as a bond entered into voluntarily by two people with compatible interests is all but meaningless for Samoan girls: "friendship is so patterned as to be meaningless. I once asked a young married woman if a neighbor with whom she was always upon the most uncertain and irritated terms was a friend of hers. 'Why, of course, her mother's father's father, and my father's mother's father were brothers.'"

The ritual requirements (such as being able to remember specifics about family relations and roles) are far greater for men than women. This also translates into significantly more responsibility being put on men than women: "a man who commits adultery with a chief's wife was beaten and banished, sometime even drowned by the outraged community, but the woman was only cast out by her husband".

Mead devotes a whole chapter to Samoan music and the role of dancing and singing in Samoan culture. She views these as significant because they violate the norms of what Samoans define as good behavior in all other activities and provide a unique outlet for Samoans to express their individuality. According to Mead there is normally no greater social failing than demonstrating an excess of pride, or as the Samoans describe it, "presuming above one's age". However, this is not the case when it comes to singing and dancing. In these activities, individuality and creativity are the most highly praised attributes, and children are free to express themselves to the fullest extent of their capabilities rather than being concerned with appropriate behavior based on age and status:

The attitude of the elders toward precocity in ... singing or dancing, is in striking contrast to their attitude towards every other form of precocity. On the dance floor the dreaded accusation "You are presuming above your age" is never heard. Little boys who would be rebuked or whipped for such behavior on any other occasion are allowed to preen themselves, to swagger and bluster and take the limelight without a word of reproach. The relatives crow with delight over a precocity for which they would hide their heads in shame were it displayed in any other sphere ... Often a dancer does not pay enough attention to her fellow dancers to avoid continually colliding with them. It is a genuine orgy of aggressive individualistic behavior.^{[12]:59–122}

Personality, sexuality, and old age

Samoan women in traditional dress (c. 1910s)

Mead describes the psychology of the individual Samoan as being simpler, more honest, and less driven by sexual neuroses than the west. She describes Samoans as being much more comfortable with issues such as menstruation and more casual about non-monogamous sexual relations.^[13] Part of the reason for this is the extended family structure of Samoan villages. Conflicts that might result in arguments or breaks within a traditional Western family can be defused in Samoan families simply by having one of the parties to the conflict relocate to a different home that is part of the household within the village.^[14] Another reason Mead cites is that Samoans do not seem eager to give judgmental answers to questions. Mead describes how one of the things that made her research difficult was that Samoans would often answer just about every question with non-committal answers, the Samoan equivalent to shrugging one's shoulders and saying: "Who knows?"

Portrait of three Samoan girls (Thomas Andrew, c. 1890s)

Mead concludes the section of the book dealing with Samoan life with a description of Samoan old age. Samoan women in old age "are usually more of a power within the household than the old men. The men rule partly by the authority conferred by their titles, but their wives and sisters rule by force of personality and knowledge of human nature."^{[12]:122–195}

Educational problems: American and Samoan contrasts

Mead concluded that the passage from childhood to adulthood (adolescence) in Samoa was a smooth transition and not marked by the emotional or psychological distress, anxiety, or confusion seen in the United States.

Mead concluded that this was due to the Samoan girl's belonging to a stable, monocultural society, surrounded by role models, and where nothing concerning the basic human facts of copulation, birth, bodily functions, or death, was hidden. The Samoan girl was not pressured to choose from among a variety of conflicting values, as was the American girl. Mead commented, somewhat satirically:

... [an American] girl's father may be a Presbyterian, an imperialist, a vegetarian, a teetotaller, with a strong literary preference for Edmund Burke, a believer in the open shop and a high tariff, who believes that women's place is in the home, that young girls should wear corsets, not roll their stockings, not smoke, nor go riding with young men in the evening. But her mother's father may be a Low Episcopalian, a believer in high living, a strong advocate of States' Rights and the Monroe Doctrine, who reads Rabelais, likes to go to musical shows and horse races. Her aunt is an agnostic, an ardent advocate of women's rights, an internationalist who rests all her hopes on Esperanto, is devoted to Bernard Shaw, and spends her spare time in campaigns of anti-vivisection. Her elder brother, whom she admires exceedingly, has just spent two years at Oxford. He is an Anglo-Catholic, an enthusiast concerning all things medieval, writes mystical poetry, reads Chesterton, and means to devote his life to seeking for the lost secret of medieval stained glass. Her mother's younger brother ...^{[12]:195–234}

Reception

On publication, the book generated a great deal of coverage both in the academic world and in the popular press. Mead's publisher (William Morrow) had lined up many endorsements from well known academics such as anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and psychologist John Watson. Their praise was a major public relations coup for Morrow and drew popular attention to the book. Academic interest was soon followed by sensational headlines such as "Samoa is the Place for Women" and that Samoa is "Where Neuroses Cease".^[4]:113

Impact on anthropology

For most anthropologists before Mead, detailed immersive fieldwork was not a common practice. Although subsequent reviews of her work have revealed faults by the standards of modern anthropology, at the time the book was published the idea of living with native people was fairly ground breaking. The use of cross-cultural comparison to highlight issues within Western society was highly influential and contributed greatly to the heightened awareness of anthropology and ethnographic study in the United States. It established Mead as a substantial figure in American anthropology, a position she would maintain for the next fifty years.^[4]:94–95

Social influences and reactions

As Boas and Mead expected, this book upset many Westerners when it first appeared in 1928. Many American readers felt shocked by her observation that young Samoan women deferred marriage for many years while enjoying casual sex before eventually choosing a husband. As a landmark study regarding sexual mores, the book was highly controversial and frequently came under attack on ideological grounds. For example, the National Catholic Register argued that Mead’s findings were merely a projection of her own sexual beliefs and reflected her desire to eliminate restrictions on her own sexuality.^[15] The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed Coming of Age in Samoa as #1 on its list of the "50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century".^[16]

Critique of Mead's methodology and conclusions

Although Coming of Age received significant interest and praise from the academic community, Mead's research methodology also came in for criticism from several reviewers and fellow anthropologists. Mead was criticized for not separating her personal speculation and opinions from her ethnographic description of Samoan life and for making sweeping generalizations based on a relatively short period of study.

For example, Nels Anderson wrote about the book: "If it is science, the book is somewhat of a disappointment. It lacks a documental base. It is given too much to interpretation instead of description. Dr. Mead forgets too often that that she is an anthropologist and gets her own personality involved with her materials."^{[4]:114–115}

Shortly after Mead’s death, Derek Freeman published a book, Margaret Mead and Samoa, that claimed Mead failed to apply the scientific method and that her assertions were unsupported. This criticism is dealt with in detail in the section below.^[17]

The Mead–Freeman controversy

See also: Derek Freeman § Freeman vs. Mead: A self described heresy

Derek Freeman

Freeman's 1983 book

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, Derek Freeman – a New Zealand anthropologist who lived in Samoa – published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth, in which he challenged all of Mead's major findings. In 1988, he participated in the filming of Margaret Mead and Samoa, directed by Frank Heimans, which claims to document one of Mead's original informants, now an elderly woman, swearing that the information she and her friend provided Mead when they were teenagers was false; one of the girls would say of Mead on videotape years later:

We girls would pinch each other and tell her we were out with the boys. We were only joking but she took it seriously. As you know, Samoan girls are terrific liars and love making fun of people but Margaret thought it was all true.^[18]

Another of Mead's statements on which Freeman focused was her claim that through the use of chicken blood, Samoan girls could and do lie about their status of virginity.^[19] Freeman pointed out that virginity of the bride is so crucial to the status of Samoan men that they have a specific ritual in which the bride's hymen is manually ruptured in public, by the groom himself or by the chief, making deception via chicken blood impossible. On this ground, Freeman argued that Mead must have based her account on (false) hearsay from non-Samoan sources.^[20]

The argument hinged on the place of the taupou system in Samoan society. According to Mead, the taupou system is one of institutionalized virginity for young women of high rank, and it is exclusive to women of high rank. According to Freeman, all Samoan women emulated the taupou system, and Mead's informants denied having engaged in casual sex as young women and claimed that they had lied to Mead.^[21]

Anthropological reception and reactions

After an initial flurry of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that Freeman systematically misrepresented Mead's views on the relationship between nature and nurture, as well as the data on Samoan culture. According to Freeman's colleague Robin Fox, Freeman "seemed to have a special place in hell reserved for Margaret Mead, for reasons not at all clear at that time".^[22]

Moreover, many field and comparative studies by anthropologists have since found that adolescence is not experienced in the same way in all societies. Systematic cross-cultural study of adolescence by Schlegel and Barry, for example, concluded that adolescents experience harmonious relations with their families in most non-industrialized societies around the world.^[23]

They find that, when family members need each other throughout their lives, independence, as expressed in adolescent rebelliousness, is minimal and counterproductive. Adolescents are likely to be rebellious only in industrialized societies practicing neolocal residence patterns (in which young adults must move their residence away from their parents). Neolocal residence patterns result from young adults living in industrial societies who move to take new jobs or in similar geographically mobile populations. Thus, Mead's analysis of adolescent conflict is upheld in the comparative literature on societies worldwide.^[24]

First, these critics have speculated that he waited until Mead died before publishing his critique so that she would not be able to respond. However, in 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.^[21]:xvi

Second, Freeman's critics point out that, by the time he arrived on the scene, Mead's original informants were old women, grandmothers, and had converted to Christianity, so their testimony to him may not have been accurate. They further argue that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research; after intense missionary activity, many Samoans had come to adopt the same sexual standards as the Americans who were once so shocked by Mead's book. They suggested that such women, in this new context, were unlikely to speak frankly about their adolescent behavior. Further, they suggested that these women might not be as forthright and honest about their sexuality when speaking to an elderly man as they would have been speaking to a woman near their own age.^[24]

Some anthropologists criticized Freeman on methodological and empirical grounds.^[25][26] For example, they stated that Freeman had conflated publicly articulated ideals with behavioral norms – that is, while many Samoan women would admit in public that it is ideal to remain a virgin, in practice they engaged in high levels of premarital sex and boasted about their sexual affairs among themselves.^[27] Freeman's own data documented the existence of premarital sexual activity in Samoa. In a western Samoan village, he documented that 20% of 15 year-olds, 30% of 16 year-olds, and 40% of 17 year-olds had engaged in premarital sex.^{[21]:238–240} In 1983, the American Anthropological Association held a special session to discuss Freeman's book, to which they did not invite him. Their criticism was made formal at the 82nd annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association the next month in Chicago, where a special session, to which Freeman was not invited, was held to discuss his book.^[28] They passed a motion declaring Freeman's Margaret Mead and Samoa "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible, and misleading". Freeman commented that "to seek to dispose of a major scientific issue by a show of hands is a striking demonstration of the way in which belief can come to dominate the thinking of scholars".^[28]

In the years that followed, anthropologists vigorously debated these issues. Two scholars who published on the issue include Appell, who stated "I found Freeman's argument to be completely convincing";^[29] and Brady, who stated "Freeman's book discovers little but tends to reinforce what many anthropologists already suspected" regarding the adequacy of Mead's ethnography.^[30] They were supported by several others.^[31]

Much like Mead's work, Freeman's account has been challenged as being ideologically driven to support his own theoretical viewpoint (sociobiology and interactionism), as well as assigning Mead a high degree of gullibility and bias. Freeman's refutation of Samoan sexual mores has been challenged, in turn, as being based on public declarations of sexual morality, virginity, and taupou rather than on actual sexual practices within Samoan society during the period of Mead's research.^[32]

Lowell Holmes – who completed a lesser-publicized re-study – commented later: "Mead was better able to identify with, and therefore establish rapport with, adolescents and young adults on issues of sexuality than either I (at age 29, married with a wife and child) or Freeman, ten years my senior."^[33]

In 1996, Martin Orans published his review^[34] of Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress, crediting her for leaving all her recorded data as available to the general public. Orans concludes that Freeman's basic criticism (that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead) was false for several reasons: first, Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking; second, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that corresponds to Fa'apua'a Fa'amu's account to Freeman; and third, that Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. He therefore concludes, contrary to Freeman, that Mead was never the victim of a hoax.^[34]

Orans points out that Mead's data supports several different conclusions, and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an interpretive, rather than positivist, approach to culture. Orans concludes that due to Mead's interpretive approach – common to most contemporary cultural anthropology – her hypotheses and conclusions are essentially unfalsifiable and therefore "not even wrong".^[34]:11–13

Freeman's 1998 book

In 1998, Freeman published another book The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead.^[35] It included new material, in particular interviews that Freeman called of "exceptional historical significance" and "of quite fundamental importance" of one of Mead's then-adolescent informants by a Samoan chief from the National University of Samoa (in 1988 and 1993) and of her daughter (in 1995).^[35]:ix Correspondence of 1925–1926 between Franz Boas and Margaret Mead was also newly available to Freeman. He concludes in the introduction to the book that "her exciting revelations about sexual behavior were in some cases merely the extrapolations of whispered intimacies, whereas those of greatest consequence were the results of a prankish hoax".^[35]:1

Freeman argues that Mead collected other evidence that contradicts her own conclusion, such as a tutor who related that as of puberty girls were always escorted by female family members.^[35]:127 He also claims that because of a decision to take ethnological trips to Fitiuta, only eight weeks remained for her primary research into adolescent girls, and it was now "practically impossible" to find time with the sixty-six girls she was to study, because the government school had reopened.^{[35]:130–131} With the remaining time, she instead went to Ofu, and the bulk of her research came from speaking with her two Samoan female companions, Fa'apua'a and Fofoa. Freeman claims Mead's letters to Boas reflect that she was influenced by studies of sexuality from Marquesas Islands, and that she was seeking to confirm the same information by questioning Fa'apua'a and Fofoa.^[35]:139 She sent her conclusions to Boas on March 14^{[35]:142–143, 146} and with "little left to do"^[35]:148 she cut short her trip.^[35]:146

Freeman claimed that "no systematic, firsthand investigation of the sexual behavior of her sample of adolescent girls was ever to be undertaken. Instead, Margaret Mead's account of adolescent sexual behavior in Coming of Age in Samoa and elsewhere was based on what she had been told by Fa'apua'a and Fofoa, supplemented by other such inquiries that she had previously made."^[35]:147 As Fa'apua'a told Freeman, in her 80s, that she and her friend had been joking, Freeman defends her testimony in the introduction of his second book about Mead: Both that the octagenarian's memory was very good, and that she swore on the Bible, as a Christian, that it was true.^{[35]:12, 7}

In 2009, a detailed review of the controversy was published by Paul Shankman.^[4] It supports the contention that Mead's research was essentially correct, and concludes that Freeman cherry-picked his data and misrepresented both Mead and Samoan culture.^[4][5][6]

See also

• Culture of Samoa
• Heretic, a play by Australian playwright David Williamson that explores Freeman's reactions to Mead.
• The Sexual Life of Savages in North-Western Melanesia

References

1. John Horgan (12 November 2000). "Hearts of Darkness". New York Times. Retrieved 14 February 2021.
2. Felder, Deoborah G. (2003). A Century of Women : The Most Influential Events in Twentieth-Century Women's History. Citadel Press. pp. 135, 135. ISBN 978-0-8065-2526-6. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
3. Pinker, Steven (June 22, 2009). How the Mind Works. W. W. Norton & Company. ISBN 978-0393334777. Retrieved 15 September 2014. Margaret Mead disseminated the incredible claim that Samoans have no passions – no anger between parents and children or between a cuckold and seducer, no revenge, no lasting love or bereavement, ... no adolescent turmoil. Derek Freeman and other anthropologists found that Samoan society in fact had widespread adolescent resentment and deliquency, a cult of virginity, frequent rape, reprisals by rape victim's families, ... sexual jealousy and strong religious feeling.
4. Shankman, Paul (3 December 2009). The Trashing of Margaret Mead. The University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-23454-6.
5. Levine, Robert A. (28 May 2010). "Cutting a controversy down to size". Science. 328 (5982): 1108. doi:10.1126/science.1189202. S2CID 162343521.
6. "The Trashing of Margaret Mead". Savage Minds. 13 October 2010. Retrieved 4 August 2017.
7. Theodoratus, Robert J. "Not Even Wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Samoans." The Social Science Journal, vol. 34, no. 1, 1997, p. 101+. Gale OneFile: Psychology, link.gale.com/apps/doc/A19296207/PPPC?u=tel_a_domi&sid=PPPC&xid=3bf201b2. Accessed 5 Mar. 2021.
8. "Not even wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Samoans" by Martin Orans, https://openlibrary.org/works/OL2961434W/Not_even_wrong?edition=notevenwrongmarg0000oran
9. pp. 54 and 66 of Shankman, Paul. “The ‘Fateful Hoaxing’ of Margaret Mead: A Cautionary Tale.” Current Anthropology, vol. 54, no. 1, 2013, and the response by Leasiolagi Malama Meleisea and Penelope Schoeffel (p. 66), JSTOR, www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/669033. Accessed 9 Mar. 2021.
10. Mead, Margaret (1928). "Foreword by Franz Boas". Coming of Age in Samoa. William Morrow Paperbacks. pp. xiii–xv. ISBN 978-0688050337. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
11. Mead, Margaret (1928). "Introduction". Coming of Age in Samoa. William Morrow Paperbacks. pp. 1–14. ISBN 978-0688050337. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
12. Mead, Margaret (1928). Coming of Age in Samoa. William Morrow Paperbacks. ISBN 978-0688050337. Retrieved 3 October 2014.
13. Samoans rate romantic fidelity in terms of days or weeks at most, and are inclined to scoff at tales of life-long devotion. They greeted the story of Romeo and Juliet with incredulous contempts.^{[12]:155–156}
14. "The ease with which personality differences can be adjusted by a change of residence prevents the Samoans from pressing one another too hard.^[12]:122
15. Wiker, Benjamin (19 May 2002). "Margaret Mead's flights of fancy in Samoa". National Catholic Register. Archived from the original on 6 October 2014. Retrieved 29 September 2014.
16. Henrie, Mark; et al. (Fall 1999). "The Fifty Worst (and Best) Books of the Century" (PDF). The Intercollegiate Review. Retrieved 29 September 2014. So amusing did the natives find the white woman's prurient questions that they told her the wildest tales and she believed them! Mead misled a generation into believing that the fantasies of sexual progressives were an historical reality on an island far, far away.
17. "Margaret Mead: Human Nature and the Power of Culture: Afterward: Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead". Library of Congress. Retrieved 14 February 2021. “Mead ignored violence in Samoan life, did not have a sufficient background in – or give enough emphasis to – the influence of biology on behavior, did not spend enough time in Samoa, and was not familiar enough with the Samoan language.”
18. Frank Heimans (1987). Margaret Mead and Samoa (video).
19. Freman, Derek (March 1972). "Social Organization of Manu A (1930 and 1969) by Margaret Mead: Some errata". Journal of the Polynesian Society. 81 (1): 70–78. JSTOR 20704828.
20. Freeman, Derek (1999). ""All made of fantasy": A rejoinder to Paul Shankman". American Anthropologist. 100 (4): 972–983. doi:10.1525/aa.1998.100.4.972. JSTOR 681822. In 1943, knowing what I did of the rite of fa'amasei'au, I felt certain that Mead's account was in error and could not have come from any Samoan source.
21. Freeman, Derek (1983). Margaret Mead and Samoa. Cambridge, MA; London, UK: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2.
22. Fox, Robin (2004). Participant Observer: Memoir of a transatlantic life. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Transaction Publishers. p. 339.
23. Scheper-Hughes, Nancy (1984). "The Margaret Mead controversy: Culture, biology, and anthropological inquiry". Human Organization. 43 (1): 85–93. doi:10.17730/humo.43.1.362253166r6173m4. Archived from the original on 28 January 2013.
24. See Appell (1984), Brady (1991), Feinberg (1988), Leacock (1988), Levy (1984), Marshall (1993), Nardi (1984), Patience and Smith (1986), Paxman (1988), Scheper-Hughes (1984), Shankman (1996), and Young and Juan (1985).
25. Dreger, Alice (14 September 2011). "The trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an anthropological controversy". Archives of Sexual Behavior. 40 (6): 1341–1343. doi:10.1007/s10508-011-9843-0. ISSN 0004-0002. S2CID 142908823.
26. Shankman, Paul (1 February 2013). "The "fateful hoaxing" of Margaret Mead: A cautionary tale". Current Anthropology. 54 (1): 51–70. doi:10.1086/669033. ISSN 0011-3204. S2CID 146631601.
27. Shore, Brad (1982). Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery. New York: Columbia University Press.
28. Shaw, John (5 August 2001). "Derek Freeman, who challenged Margaret Mead on Samoa, dies at 84". The New York Times.
29. Appell, G.N. "Freeman's refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa".
30. Brady (1991)
31. Appell (1984), Brady (1991), Feinberg (1988), Leacock (1988), Levy (1984), Marshall (1993), Nardi (1984), Patience and Smith (1986), Paxman (1988), Scheper-Hughes (1984), Shankman (1996), Young and Juan (1985), and Shankman (2009).
32. Shankman, Paul (1996). "The history of Samoan sexual conduct and the Mead-Freeman controversy". American Anthropologist. 98 (3): 555–567. doi:10.1525/aa.1996.98.3.02a00090.
33. Holmes & Holmes (1992)
34. Orans, Martin (1996). Not Even Wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Samoans. Chandler and Sharp publications in anthropology and related fields. Chandler & Sharp. ISBN 0883165643.
35. Freeman, Derek (29 October 1998). The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A historical analysis of her Samoan research. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7.

Sources

• Acciaioli, Gregory, ed. (1983). "Fact and Context in Ethnography: The Samoa Controversy (special edition)". Canberra Anthropology. 6 (1): 1–97. ISSN 0314-9099.
• Appell, George (1984). "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry". Eastern Anthropology. 37: 183–214.
• Bateson, Mary Catherine (1984). With a Daughter's Eye (hardback ed.). ISBN 0-688-03962-6.
  Bateson, Mary Catherine (2003). With a Daughter's Eye (paperback ed.). ISBN 0-06-097573-3.
• Brady, Ivan (1991). "The Samoa Reader: Last word or lost horizon?" (PDF). Current Anthropology. 32 (4): 263–282. doi:10.1086/203989. JSTOR 2743829. S2CID 146338555.
• Caton, Hiram, ed. (1990). The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists take stock. University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2.
• Feinberg, Richard (1988). "Margaret Mead and Samoa: Coming of Age in fact and fiction". American Anthropologist. 90 (3): 656–663. doi:10.1525/aa.1988.90.3.02a00080.
• Foerstel, Leonora; Gilliam, Angela, eds. (1992), Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, empire, and the South Pacific, Philadelphia: Temple University Press
• Freeman, Derek (1998). The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A historical analysis of her Samoan research. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7. significant material from Acknowledgments and Introduction available free, subscription required for full text.
• Lapsley, Hilary (1999). Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The kinship of women. University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3.
• Holmes, Lowell D. (1987). Quest for the Real Samoa: The Mead/Freeman controversy and beyond'. South Hadley: Bergin and Garvey.
• Howard, Jane (1984). Margaret Mead: A life. New York, NY: Simon & Schuster.
• Leacock, Eleanor (1988). "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us". Central Issues in Anthropology. 8 (1): 3–20. doi:10.1525/cia.1988.8.1.3.
• Levy, Robert (1984). "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The problem of seeing things as they are". Ethos. 12: 85–92. doi:10.1525/eth.1984.12.1.02a00060.
• Mageo, Jeannette (1988). "Malosi: A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression". Pacific Studies. 11 (2): 25–65.
• Marshall, Mac (1993). "The Wizard from Oz meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and ethnographic authority". American Ethnologist. 20 (3): 604–617. doi:10.1525/ae.1993.20.3.02a00080.
• Nardi, Bonnie; Mead, Margaret; Freeman, Derek (1984). "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa". Feminist Studies. 10 (2): 323–337. doi:10.2307/3177870. JSTOR 3177870.
• Patience, Allan; Smith, Josephy (1987). "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The making and unmaking of a biobehavioral myth". American Anthropologist. 88: 157–162. doi:10.1525/aa.1986.88.1.02a00160.
• Paxman, David B. (1988). "Freeman, Mead, and the eighteenth-century controversy over Polynesian society". Pacific Studies. 11 (3): 1–19.
• Sandall, Roger (2001). The Culture Cult: Designer tribalism and other essays. Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3863-8.
• Schlegal, Alice; Barry, Herbert III (1991). Adolescence: An anthropological inquiry. New York, NY: Free Press. ISBN 978-0-02-927895-6.
• Shankman, Paul (2009). The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an anthropological controversy. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0-299-23454-6.
• Young, R.E.; Juan, S. (1985). "Freeman's Margaret Mead myth: The ideological virginity of anthropologists". Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology. 21 (1): 64–81. doi:10.1177/144078338502100104. S2CID 143970272.

External links

• Mead, Margaret (1928). Coming of Age in Samoa: A psychological study of primitive youth for Western civilisation – via Internet Archive.