Coming of Age in Samoa, first published in 1928, is a book by Margaret Mead based upon youth in Samoa and lightly relating to youth in
America. Mead's findings seemed to show that youth in Samoa are taught to grow together
and strengthen the confidence of each other. As a result, their community is much more tightly knit than that of other cultures,
and the individuals themselves are more emotionally secure. In contrast, American youth are taught to compete against each other,
leaving them isolated within their own cliques. The book also put forward the thesis that Samoan teenagers (with greater sexual
permissiveness) suffered less psychological stress than American teenagers (with stricter sexual morals).
"She emphatically criticized the neurosis-inducing nuclear family, including the stress of Christian monogamy, and used her
Samoan material to demonstrate an alternative to premarital chastity..." (Hiram Caton, "The
Mead/Freeman Controversy is Over: A Retrospect", Journal of Youth and Adolescence 29, 5 (Oct 2000))
Criticism
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 USA. It established Mead as a substantial
figure in American Anthropology, a position she would maintain for the next fifty years. The book has always been highly
controversial, and the debates around it ideologically charged. Some claim that Mead's research was fabricated, and the
National Catholic Register has even 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. [1]
The paleoconservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed Coming of Age in Samoa as #1 in its
50 Worst Books of the Twentieth
Century. Other critiques center on the lack of scientific method and the unsupported nature of many of Mead's assertions,
although this represents the lesser strand of criticism compared to claims of ideological bias and of deliberate public
provocation.
Derek Freeman Controversy
Derek Freeman, a New Zealand anthropologist, was inspired by Mead's work, and traveled to Samoa to follow up on her work. He held that
Mead had been misled in the extreme by the two girls to whom she spoke or was completely fabricating her research.
Harvard University Press published his book, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The
Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth in 1983, in which he outlined his
case: :"In this and in his 1999 book, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, Freeman explores just how Mead had
gotten it all so wrong. As he relates, Mead had dithered around Samoa aimlessly for months before starting her fieldwork.
Hopelessly behind schedule, she frittered away much of this remaining time on an unrelated project. Finally, while traveling
around the islands with two teenage girls, she had the opportunity to question them privately about their sex lives and those of
their friends.
"She must have taken it seriously," one of the girls would say of Mead on videotape years later, "but I was only joking. As
you know, Samoan girls are terrific liars when it comes to joking. But Margaret accepted our trumped up stories as though they
were true." If challenged by Mead, the girls would not have hesitated to tell the truth, but Mead never questioned their stories.
The girls, now mature women, swore on the Bible to the truth of what they told Freeman and his colleagues."[citation needed]
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 tapou rather than on actual sexual practices
within Samoan society during the period of Mead's research . (Paul Shankman, "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the
Mead-Freeman Controversy", American Anthropologist 98, 3 (1996)) Freeman was also criticised for not publishing "Margaret
Mead and Samoa" until after Mead's death in 1978, thus denying Mead a "right of reply". Considerable controversy remains over the
veracity of both Mead's and Freeman's accounts. Lowell Holmes, who completed a lesser publicised restudy 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". (Holmes, L.D. and Holmes, E.R, Samoan
Village Then And Now, Harcourt Brace, 1992)
See also
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