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'''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
mores).
:"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))
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 class=wikiexternal target=_blank>Worst Books of the Twentieth Century.
Other critiques centre 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.

Contents

Derek Freeman Controversy

See also

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."
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

★ Margaret Mead - Discusses this book, and the controversy in more
depth.
★ Culture of Samoa

★ Heretic (play) - A play by Australian playwright David
Williamson on the controversy.