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Kindheit und Jugend auf Samoa

2009-05-07T21:05:46Z

Webbbbbbber: Can someone please help find the source for this statement?

'''Coming of Age in Samoa''' is a book by [[Margaret Mead]] based upon youth in [[Samoa]] and lightly relating to youth in [[United States|America]], first published in 1928. In the foreword to ''Coming of Age in Samoa'', Mead's advisor, [[Franz Boas]], wrote of its significance that

:Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.

Boas went on to point out that at the time of publication, many Americans had begun to discuss the problems faced by young people (particularly women) as they pass through [[adolescence]] as "unavoidable periods of adjustment." Boas felt that a study of the problems faced by adolescents in another culture would be illuminating.

And so, as Mead herself described the goal of her research: "I have tried to answer the question which sent me to [[Samoa]]: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?" To answer this question, she conducted her study among a small group of [[Samoa]]ns — a village of 600 people on the island of [[Tau, Samoa|Ta‘ū]] — in which she got to know, lived with, observed, and interviewed (through an interpreter) 68 young women between the ages of 9 and 20. She 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.

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]] but eventually married, settled down, and successfully reared their own children.

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.<ref>[http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1169 Discovery.org].</ref> The [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]] listed ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' as #1 in the list of what it thinks are the "50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century".<ref>[http://www.mmisi.org/ir/35_01/50worst.pdf MMISI.org].</ref> Other critiques center on the lack of scientific method and the unsupported nature of many of Mead's assertions. "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."<ref>Library of Congress, "Afterward: Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead."</ref>

=== The Mead-Freeman controversy ===

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, [[Derek Freeman]] 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 in Samoa'', directed by Frank Heimans, which claims to document Mead's original informants, now middle-aged women and converted to Evangelical Christianity, swearing that the information they provided Mead when they were teenagers was false.{{fact|may 2009}}

<blockquote>"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."</blockquote>

Another account of Mead which Freeman attacked particularly was her claim that Samoan girls could and do lie about their status of virginity by the use of chicken blood. <ref>Mead, "Social Organization of Mana'u</ref> Freeman pointed out that virginity of the bride is so crucial to the status of Samoan man that they have specific ritual in which the bride's hymen is manually ruptured in public, by the groom himself or by the chief, making use of chicken blood impossible. On this ground, Freeman argued that Mead must have based her account on (false) hearsay from non Samoan sources. <ref>"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.[http://www.jstor.org/pss/681822]</ref>

While some have asserted that Freeman based his critique on four years of field experience in Samoa and on recent interviews with Mead's surviving informants, others respond that he "had nearly a half-century of research on Samoa and (knew) its culture and language inside out",<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>. while Mead spent only nine months in Samoa and did not speak the language.<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>.

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, but 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 (see Freeman 1983).

After an initial flurry of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that the truth would probably never be known, although most published accounts of the debate have also raised serious questions about Freeman's critique.<ref>(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)</ref>

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, when Freeman died in 2001, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' pointed out that Freeman tried to publish his criticism of Mead as early as 1971, but American publishers rejected his manuscript. In 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.

Second, Freeman's critics point out that by the time Freeman 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 allege that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research, that 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.

Some anthropologists also criticized Freeman on methodological and empirical grounds. For example, they claimed 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 amongst themselves.<ref>Shore 1982: 229-230</ref> 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.<ref>Freeman, 1983: 238-240.</ref> In 1983, the [[American Anthropological Association]] held a special session to discuss Freeman's book, in which they did not invite Freeman.<ref>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 Dr. Freeman was not invited, was held to discuss his book.[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref> They passed a motion declaring Freeman's ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." Dr. 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."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref>

In the years that followed, anthropologists vigorously debated these issues. People who challenged Freeman include Appell, Brady, Feinberg, Leacock, Levy, Marshall, Nardi, Patience, Paxman, Scheper-Hughes, Shankman, Young and Juan.<ref>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.</ref>

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.<ref name="shankman-1996">Shankman, 1996.</ref> Freeman was also criticized for not publishing ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' until after Mead's death in 1978, thus denying Mead a "right of reply", however, it was later shown that Freeman did try to publish his finding as early as possible and even sent his work to Mead but she was unable to reply.

Considerable controversy remains over the veracity of both Mead's and Freeman's accounts. Lowell Holmes, who completed a lesser publicized 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".<ref name="Holmes-1992">Holmes & Holmes, 1992.</ref>

Freeman continued to argue his case in the 1999 publication of ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research'', introducing new information in support of his arguments. After Freeman died, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' concluded that "many anthropologists have agreed to disagree over the findings of one of the science's founding mothers, acknowledging both Mead's pioneering research and the fact that she may have been mistaken on details."[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]
If further stated that Freeman's work "was initially greeted with disbelief or anger, but gradually won wide -- although not complete -- acceptance".[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]

==See also==

* [[Culture of Samoa]]
* [[Heretic (play)]] - A play by Australian playwright [[David Williamson]] on the controversy.

==Videos==

*[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3157675332479529894&q=margaret+mead+and+samoa&total=11&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Margaret Mead and Samoa;] review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]''

==References==

* Gregory Acciaioli, ed. 1983 "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy" ''Canberra Anthropology (special issue)'' 6(1): 1-97.
* George Appell, 1984 "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry" ''Eastern Anthropology'' 37: 183-214.
*[[Mary Catherine Bateson]], ''With a Daughter's Eye''. 1984 ISBN 0-688-03962-6 , (2003 ppb ISBN 0-06-097573-3)
* Ivan Brady, 1991 "''The Samoa Reader'': Last Word or Lost Horizon?" ''Current Anthropology'' 32: 263-282.
* [[Hiram Caton]], Editor (1990). "The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock". University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2.
* Richard Feinberg 1988 "Margaret Mead and Samoa: ''Coming of Age'' in Fact and Fiction" ''American Anthropologist'' 90: 656-663
* Leonora Foerstel and Angela Gilliam (eds) (1992). ''Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1983). ''Margaret Mead and Samoa. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2.
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1999). ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research''. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7.
*Hilary Lapsley (1999) ''Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women'' University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
*Lowell D. Holmes (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: Simon and Schuster.
* Eleanor Leacock 1988 "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us" in ''Central Issues in Anthropology'' 8(1): 3-20.
*Robert Levy 1984 "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Problem of Seeing Things as They Are" ''Ethos'' 12: 85-92
* Jeannette Mageo 1988 ''Mālosi'': A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression" ''Pacific Studies'' 11(2): 25-65
* Mac Marshall 1993 "The Wizard from Oz Meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and Ethnographic Authority" in ''American Ethnologist''20(3): 604-617.
* [[Bonnie Nardi]] 1984 "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa" ''Feminist Studies'' 10: 323-337.
* Allan Patience and Josephy Smith 1987 "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of a Biobehavioral Myth" ''American Anthropologist'' 88: 157-162.
* David B. Paxman 1988 "Freeman, Mead, and the Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Polynesian Society" ''Pacific Studies'' 1(3): 1-19
*Roger Sandall 2001 ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays'' ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
*Nancy Scheper-Hughes 1984 "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry" in ''Human Organization 43(1): 85-93.
* Paul Shankman 1996 "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy" in ''American Anthropologist''98(3): 555-567.
* Brad Shore 1982 ''Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery'' New York: Columbia University Press.
*R.E. Young and S. Juan 1985 "Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: The Ideological Virginity of Anthropologists'' Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology'' 21: 64-81.
*Mary E. Virginia, "DISCovering U.S. History", Benedict, Ruth (1887-1948), Online Edition, (ed Detroit: Gale), 2003

===Footnotes===
{{reflist}}

[[Category:1928 books]]
[[Category:Anthropology books]]

Kindheit und Jugend auf Samoa

2009-05-05T03:24:07Z

Webbbbbbber: see talk page

'''Coming of Age in Samoa''' is a book by [[Margaret Mead]] based upon youth in [[Samoa]] and lightly relating to youth in [[United States|America]], first published in 1928. In the foreword to ''Coming of Age in Samoa'', Mead's advisor, [[Franz Boas]], wrote of its significance that

:Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.

Boas went on to point out that at the time of publication, many Americans had begun to discuss the problems faced by young people (particularly women) as they pass through [[adolescence]] as "unavoidable periods of adjustment." Boas felt that a study of the problems faced by adolescents in another culture would be illuminating.

And so, as Mead herself described the goal of her research: "I have tried to answer the question which sent me to [[Samoa]]: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?" To answer this question, she conducted her study among a small group of [[Samoa]]ns — a village of 600 people on the island of [[Tau, Samoa|Ta‘ū]] — in which she got to know, lived with, observed, and interviewed (through an interpreter) 68 young women between the ages of 9 and 20. She 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.

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]] but eventually married, settled down, and successfully reared their own children.

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.<ref>[http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1169 Discovery.org].</ref> The [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]] listed ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' as #1 in the list of what it thinks are the "50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century".<ref>[http://www.mmisi.org/ir/35_01/50worst.pdf MMISI.org].</ref> Other critiques center on the lack of scientific method and the unsupported nature of many of Mead's assertions. "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."<ref>Library of Congress, "Afterward: Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead."</ref>

=== The Mead-Freeman controversy ===

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, [[Derek Freeman]] 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 in Samoa'', directed by Frank Heimans, which documents Mead's original informants, now middle-aged women, swearing that the information they provided Mead when they were teenagers was false.

<blockquote>"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."</blockquote>

Another account of Mead which Freeman attacked particularly was her claim that Samoan girls could and do lie about their status of virginity by the use of chicken blood. <ref>Mead, "Social Organization of Mana'u</ref> Freeman pointed out that virginity of the bride is so crucial to the status of Samoan man that they have specific ritual in which the bride's hymen is manually ruptured in public, by the groom himself or by the chief, making use of chicken blood impossible. On this ground, Freeman argued that Mead must have based her account on (false) hearsay from non Samoan sources. <ref>"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.[http://www.jstor.org/pss/681822]</ref>

While some have asserted that Freeman based his critique on four years of field experience in Samoa and on recent interviews with Mead's surviving informants, others respond that he "had nearly a half-century of research on Samoa and (knew) its culture and language inside out",<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>. while Mead spent only nine months in Samoa and did not speak the language.<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>.

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, but 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 (see Freeman 1983).

After an initial flurry of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that the truth would probably never be known, although most published accounts of the debate have also raised serious questions about Freeman's critique.<ref>(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)</ref>

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, when Freeman died in 2001, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' pointed out that Freeman tried to publish his criticism of Mead as early as 1971, but American publishers rejected his manuscript. In 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.

Second, Freeman's critics point out that by the time Freeman 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 allege that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research, that 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.

Some anthropologists also criticized Freeman on methodological and empirical grounds. For example, they claimed 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 amongst themselves.<ref>Shore 1982: 229-230</ref> 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.<ref>Freeman, 1983: 238-240.</ref> In 1983, the [[American Anthropological Association]] held a special session to discuss Freeman's book, in which they did not invite Freeman.<ref>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 Dr. Freeman was not invited, was held to discuss his book.[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref> They passed a motion declaring Freeman's ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." Dr. 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."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref>

In the years that followed, anthropologists vigorously debated these issues. People who challenged Freeman include Appell, Brady, Feinberg, Leacock, Levy, Marshall, Nardi, Patience, Paxman, Scheper-Hughes, Shankman, Young and Juan.<ref>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.</ref>

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.<ref name="shankman-1996">Shankman, 1996.</ref> Freeman was also criticized for not publishing ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' until after Mead's death in 1978, thus denying Mead a "right of reply", however, it was later shown that Freeman did try to publish his finding as early as possible and even sent his work to Mead but she was unable to reply.

Considerable controversy remains over the veracity of both Mead's and Freeman's accounts. Lowell Holmes, who completed a lesser publicized 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".<ref name="Holmes-1992">Holmes & Holmes, 1992.</ref>

Freeman continued to argue his case in the 1999 publication of ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research'', introducing new information in support of his arguments. After Freeman died, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' concluded that "many anthropologists have agreed to disagree over the findings of one of the science's founding mothers, acknowledging both Mead's pioneering research and the fact that she may have been mistaken on details."[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]
If further stated that Freeman's work "was initially greeted with disbelief or anger, but gradually won wide -- although not complete -- acceptance".[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]

==See also==

* [[Culture of Samoa]]
* [[Heretic (play)]] - A play by Australian playwright [[David Williamson]] on the controversy.

==Videos==

*[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3157675332479529894&q=margaret+mead+and+samoa&total=11&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Margaret Mead and Samoa;] review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]''

==References==

* Gregory Acciaioli, ed. 1983 "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy" ''Canberra Anthropology (special issue)'' 6(1): 1-97.
* George Appell, 1984 "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry" ''Eastern Anthropology'' 37: 183-214.
*[[Mary Catherine Bateson]], ''With a Daughter's Eye''. 1984 ISBN 0-688-03962-6 , (2003 ppb ISBN 0-06-097573-3)
* Ivan Brady, 1991 "''The Samoa Reader'': Last Word or Lost Horizon?" ''Current Anthropology'' 32: 263-282.
* [[Hiram Caton]], Editor (1990). "The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock". University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2.
* Richard Feinberg 1988 "Margaret Mead and Samoa: ''Coming of Age'' in Fact and Fiction" ''American Anthropologist'' 90: 656-663
* Leonora Foerstel and Angela Gilliam (eds) (1992). ''Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1983). ''Margaret Mead and Samoa. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2.
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1999). ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research''. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7.
*Hilary Lapsley (1999) ''Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women'' University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
*Lowell D. Holmes (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: Simon and Schuster.
* Eleanor Leacock 1988 "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us" in ''Central Issues in Anthropology'' 8(1): 3-20.
*Robert Levy 1984 "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Problem of Seeing Things as They Are" ''Ethos'' 12: 85-92
* Jeannette Mageo 1988 ''Mālosi'': A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression" ''Pacific Studies'' 11(2): 25-65
* Mac Marshall 1993 "The Wizard from Oz Meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and Ethnographic Authority" in ''American Ethnologist''20(3): 604-617.
* [[Bonnie Nardi]] 1984 "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa" ''Feminist Studies'' 10: 323-337.
* Allan Patience and Josephy Smith 1987 "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of a Biobehavioral Myth" ''American Anthropologist'' 88: 157-162.
* David B. Paxman 1988 "Freeman, Mead, and the Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Polynesian Society" ''Pacific Studies'' 1(3): 1-19
*Roger Sandall 2001 ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays'' ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
*Nancy Scheper-Hughes 1984 "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry" in ''Human Organization 43(1): 85-93.
* Paul Shankman 1996 "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy" in ''American Anthropologist''98(3): 555-567.
* Brad Shore 1982 ''Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery'' New York: Columbia University Press.
*R.E. Young and S. Juan 1985 "Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: The Ideological Virginity of Anthropologists'' Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology'' 21: 64-81.
*Mary E. Virginia, "DISCovering U.S. History", Benedict, Ruth (1887-1948), Online Edition, (ed Detroit: Gale), 2003

===Footnotes===
{{reflist}}

[[Category:1928 books]]
[[Category:Anthropology books]]

Kindheit und Jugend auf Samoa

2009-05-04T17:39:22Z

Webbbbbbber: Undid revision 287729142 by Slrubenstein (talk) rv unexplained undo

'''Coming of Age in Samoa''' is a book by [[Margaret Mead]] based upon youth in [[Samoa]] and lightly relating to youth in [[United States|America]], first published in 1928. In the foreword to ''Coming of Age in Samoa'', Mead's advisor, [[Franz Boas]], wrote of its significance that

:Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.

Boas went on to point out that at the time of publication, many Americans had begun to discuss the problems faced by young people (particularly women) as they pass through [[adolescence]] as "unavoidable periods of adjustment." Boas felt that a study of the problems faced by adolescents in another culture would be illuminating.

And so, as Mead herself described the goal of her research: "I have tried to answer the question which sent me to [[Samoa]]: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?" To answer this question, she conducted her study among a small group of [[Samoa]]ns — a village of 600 people on the island of [[Tau, Samoa|Ta‘ū]] — in which she got to know, lived with, observed, and interviewed (through an interpreter) 68 young women between the ages of 9 and 20. She 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.

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]] but eventually married, settled down, and successfully reared their own children.

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.<ref>[http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1169 Discovery.org].</ref> The [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]] listed ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' as #1 in the list of what it thinks are the "50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century".<ref>[http://www.mmisi.org/ir/35_01/50worst.pdf MMISI.org].</ref> Other critiques center on the lack of scientific method and the unsupported nature of many of Mead's assertions. "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."<ref>Library of Congress, "Afterward: Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead."</ref>

=== The Mead-Freeman controversy ===

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, [[Derek Freeman]] 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 in Samoa'', directed by Frank Heimans, which documents Mead's original informants, now middle-aged women, swearing that the information they provided Mead when they were teenagers was false.

<blockquote>"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."</blockquote>

Another account of Mead which Freeman attacked particularly was her claim that Samoan girls could and do lie about their status of virginity by the use of chicken blood. <ref>Mead, "Social Organization of Mana'u</ref> Freeman pointed out that virginity of the bride is so crucial to the status of Samoan man that they have specific ritual in which the bride's hymen is manually ruptured in public, by the groom himself or by the chief, making use of chicken blood impossible. On this ground, Freeman argued that Mead must have based her account on (false) hearsay from non Samoan sources. <ref>"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.[http://www.jstor.org/pss/681822]</ref>

While some have asserted that Freeman based his critique on four years of field experience in Samoa and on recent interviews with Mead's surviving informants, others respond that he "had nearly a half-century of research on Samoa and (knew) its culture and language inside out",<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>. while Mead spent only nine months in Samoa and did not speak the language.<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>.

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, but 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 (see Freeman 1983).

After an initial flurry of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that the truth would probably never be known, although most published accounts of the debate have also raised serious questions about Freeman's critique.<ref>(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)</ref>

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, when Freeman died in 2001, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' pointed out that Freeman tried to publish his criticism of Mead as early as 1971, but American publishers rejected his manuscript. In 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.

Second, Freeman's critics point out that by the time Freeman 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 allege that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research, that 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.

Some anthropologists also criticized Freeman on methodological and empirical grounds. For example, they claimed 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 amongst themselves.<ref>Shore 1982: 229-230</ref> 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.<ref>Freeman, 1983: 238-240.</ref> In 1983, the [[American Anthropological Association]] held a special session to discuss Freeman's book, in which they did not invite Freeman.<ref>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 Dr. Freeman was not invited, was held to discuss his book.[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref> They passed a motion declaring Freeman's ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." Dr. 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."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref>

In the years that followed, anthropologists vigorously debated these issues. People who challenged Freeman include Appell, Brady, Feinberg, Leacock, Levy, Marshall, Nardi, Patience, Paxman, Scheper-Hughes, Shankman, Young and Juan.<ref>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.</ref>

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.<ref name="shankman-1996">Shankman, 1996.</ref> Freeman was also criticized for not publishing ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' until after Mead's death in 1978, thus denying Mead a "right of reply", however, it was later shown that Freeman did try to publish his finding as early as possible and even sent his work to Mead but she was unable to reply.

Considerable controversy remains over the veracity of both Mead's and Freeman's accounts. Lowell Holmes, who completed a lesser publicized 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".<ref name="Holmes-1992">Holmes & Holmes, 1992.</ref>

Freeman continued to argue his case in the 1999 publication of ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research'', introducing new information in support of his arguments. After Freeman died, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' concluded that "many anthropologists have agreed to disagree over the findings of one of the science's founding mothers, acknowledging both Mead's pioneering research and the fact that she may have been mistaken on details."[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]
If further stated that Freeman's work "was initially greeted with disbelief or anger, but gradually won wide -- although not complete -- acceptance".[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]

==See also==

* [[Culture of Samoa]]
* [[Heretic (play)]] - A play by Australian playwright [[David Williamson]] on the controversy.

==Videos==

*[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3157675332479529894&q=margaret+mead+and+samoa&total=11&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Margaret Mead and Samoa;] review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]''

==References==

* Gregory Acciaioli, ed. 1983 "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy" ''Canberra Anthropology (special issue)'' 6(1): 1-97.
* George Appell, 1984 "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry" ''Eastern Anthropology'' 37: 183-214.
*[[Mary Catherine Bateson]], ''With a Daughter's Eye''. 1984 ISBN 0-688-03962-6 , (2003 ppb ISBN 0-06-097573-3)
* Ivan Brady, 1991 "''The Samoa Reader'': Last Word or Lost Horizon?" ''Current Anthropology'' 32: 263-282.
* [[Hiram Caton]], Editor (1990). "The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock". University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2.
* Richard Feinberg 1988 "Margaret Mead and Samoa: ''Coming of Age'' in Fact and Fiction" ''American Anthropologist'' 90: 656-663
* Leonora Foerstel and Angela Gilliam (eds) (1992). ''Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1983). ''Margaret Mead and Samoa. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2.
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1999). ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research''. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7.
*Hilary Lapsley (1999) ''Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women'' University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
*Lowell D. Holmes (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: Simon and Schuster.
* Eleanor Leacock 1988 "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us" in ''Central Issues in Anthropology'' 8(1): 3-20.
*Robert Levy 1984 "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Problem of Seeing Things as They Are" ''Ethos'' 12: 85-92
* Jeannette Mageo 1988 ''Mālosi'': A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression" ''Pacific Studies'' 11(2): 25-65
* Mac Marshall 1993 "The Wizard from Oz Meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and Ethnographic Authority" in ''American Ethnologist''20(3): 604-617.
* [[Bonnie Nardi]] 1984 "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa" ''Feminist Studies'' 10: 323-337.
* Allan Patience and Josephy Smith 1987 "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of a Biobehavioral Myth" ''American Anthropologist'' 88: 157-162.
* David B. Paxman 1988 "Freeman, Mead, and the Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Polynesian Society" ''Pacific Studies'' 1(3): 1-19
*Roger Sandall 2001 ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays'' ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
*Nancy Scheper-Hughes 1984 "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry" in ''Human Organization 43(1): 85-93.
* Paul Shankman 1996 "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy" in ''American Anthropologist''98(3): 555-567.
* Brad Shore 1982 ''Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery'' New York: Columbia University Press.
*R.E. Young and S. Juan 1985 "Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: The Ideological Virginity of Anthropologists'' Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology'' 21: 64-81.
*Mary E. Virginia, "DISCovering U.S. History", Benedict, Ruth (1887-1948), Online Edition, (ed Detroit: Gale), 2003

===Footnotes===
{{reflist}}

[[Category:1928 books]]
[[Category:Anthropology books]]

Kindheit und Jugend auf Samoa

2009-05-03T22:01:39Z

Webbbbbbber: /* The Mead-Freeman controversy */ rv POV language

'''Coming of Age in Samoa''' is a book by [[Margaret Mead]] based upon youth in [[Samoa]] and lightly relating to youth in [[United States|America]], first published in 1928. In the foreword to ''Coming of Age in Samoa'', Mead's advisor, [[Franz Boas]], wrote of its significance that

:Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.

Boas went on to point out that at the time of publication, many Americans had begun to discuss the problems faced by young people (particularly women) as they pass through [[adolescence]] as "unavoidable periods of adjustment." Boas felt that a study of the problems faced by adolescents in another culture would be illuminating.

And so, as Mead herself described the goal of her research: "I have tried to answer the question which sent me to [[Samoa]]: Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization? Under different conditions does adolescence present a different picture?" To answer this question, she conducted her study among a small group of [[Samoa]]ns — a village of 600 people on the island of [[Tau, Samoa|Ta‘ū]] — in which she got to know, lived with, observed, and interviewed (through an interpreter) 68 young women between the ages of 9 and 20. She 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.

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]] but eventually married, settled down, and successfully reared their own children.

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.<ref>[http://www.discovery.org/scripts/viewDB/index.php?command=view&id=1169 Discovery.org].</ref> The [[Intercollegiate Studies Institute]] listed ''Coming of Age in Samoa'' as #1 in the list of what it thinks are the "50 Worst Books of the Twentieth Century".<ref>[http://www.mmisi.org/ir/35_01/50worst.pdf MMISI.org].</ref> Other critiques center on the lack of scientific method and the unsupported nature of many of Mead's assertions. "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."<ref>Library of Congress, "Afterward: Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead."</ref>

=== The Mead-Freeman controversy ===

In 1983, five years after Mead had died, [[Derek Freeman]] 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 in Samoa'', directed by Frank Heimans, which documents Mead's original informants, now middle-aged women, swearing that the information they provided Mead when they were teenagers was false.

<blockquote>"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."</blockquote>

Another account of Mead which Freeman attacked particularly was her claim that Samoan girls could and do lie about their status of virginity by the use of chicken blood. <ref>Mead, "Social Organization of Mana'u</ref> Freeman pointed out that virginity of the bride is so crucial to the status of Samoan man that they have specific ritual in which the bride's hymen is manually ruptured in public, by the groom himself or by the chief, making use of chicken blood impossible. On this ground, Freeman argued that Mead must have based her account on (false) hearsay from non Samoan sources. <ref>"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.[http://www.jstor.org/pss/681822]</ref>

While some have asserted that Freeman based his critique on four years of field experience in Samoa and on recent interviews with Mead's surviving informants, others respond that he "had nearly a half-century of research on Samoa and (knew) its culture and language inside out",<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>. while Mead spent only nine months in Samoa and did not speak the language.<ref>Architects of the Culture of Death, Donald De Marco and Benjamin Wiker, 2004</ref>.

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, but 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 (see Freeman 1983).

After an initial flurry of discussion, many anthropologists concluded that the truth would probably never be known, although most published accounts of the debate have also raised serious questions about Freeman's critique.<ref>(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)</ref>

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, when Freeman died in 2001, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' pointed out that Freeman tried to publish his criticism of Mead as early as 1971, but American publishers rejected his manuscript. In 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.

Second, Freeman's critics point out that by the time Freeman 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 allege that Samoan culture had changed considerably in the decades following Mead's original research, that 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.

Some anthropologists also criticized Freeman on methodological and empirical grounds. For example, they claimed 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 amongst themselves.<ref>Shore 1982: 229-230</ref> 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.<ref>Freeman, 1983: 238-240.</ref> In 1983, the [[American Anthropological Association]] held a special session to discuss Freeman's book, in which they did not invite Freeman.<ref>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 Dr. Freeman was not invited, was held to discuss his book.[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref> They passed a motion declaring Freeman's ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading." Dr. 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."<ref>[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]</ref>

In the years that followed, anthropologists vigorously debated these issues. People who challenged Freeman include Appell, Brady, Feinberg, Leacock, Levy, Marshall, Nardi, Patience, Paxman, Scheper-Hughes, Shankman, Young and Juan.<ref>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.</ref>

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.<ref name="shankman-1996">Shankman, 1996.</ref> Freeman was also criticized for not publishing ''Margaret Mead and Samoa'' until after Mead's death in 1978, thus denying Mead a "right of reply", however, it was later shown that Freeman did try to publish his finding as early as possible and even sent his work to Mead but she was unable to reply.

Considerable controversy remains over the veracity of both Mead's and Freeman's accounts. Lowell Holmes, who completed a lesser publicized 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".<ref name="Holmes-1992">Holmes & Holmes, 1992.</ref>

Freeman continued to argue his case in the 1999 publication of ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research'', introducing new information in support of his arguments. After Freeman died, his obituary in the ''New York Times'' concluded that "many anthropologists have agreed to disagree over the findings of one of the science's founding mothers, acknowledging both Mead's pioneering research and the fact that she may have been mistaken on details."[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]
If further stated that Freeman's work "was initially greeted with disbelief or anger, but gradually won wide -- although not complete -- acceptance".[http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9806E0DD103CF936A3575BC0A9679C8B63]

==See also==

* [[Culture of Samoa]]
* [[Heretic (play)]] - A play by Australian playwright [[David Williamson]] on the controversy.

==Videos==

*[http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3157675332479529894&q=margaret+mead+and+samoa&total=11&start=0&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=0 Margaret Mead and Samoa;] review of the nature vs. nurture debate triggered by ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]''

==References==

* Gregory Acciaioli, ed. 1983 "Fact and Context in Etnography: The Samoa Controversy" ''Canberra Anthropology (special issue)'' 6(1): 1-97.
* George Appell, 1984 "Freeman's Refutation of Mead's Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implications for Anthropological Inquiry" ''Eastern Anthropology'' 37: 183-214.
*[[Mary Catherine Bateson]], ''With a Daughter's Eye''. 1984 ISBN 0-688-03962-6 , (2003 ppb ISBN 0-06-097573-3)
* Ivan Brady, 1991 "''The Samoa Reader'': Last Word or Lost Horizon?" ''Current Anthropology'' 32: 263-282.
* [[Hiram Caton]], Editor (1990). "The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock". University Press of America. ISBN 0-8191-7720-2.
* Richard Feinberg 1988 "Margaret Mead and Samoa: ''Coming of Age'' in Fact and Fiction" ''American Anthropologist'' 90: 656-663
* Leonora Foerstel and Angela Gilliam (eds) (1992). ''Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire and the South Pacific''. Philadelphia: Temple University Press
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1983). ''Margaret Mead and Samoa. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. ISBN 0-674-54830-2.
* [[Derek Freeman]] (1999). ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research''. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press. ISBN 0-8133-3693-7.
*Hilary Lapsley (1999) ''Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict: The Kinship of Women'' University of Massachusetts Press. ISBN 1-55849-181-3
*Lowell D. Holmes (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: Simon and Schuster.
* Eleanor Leacock 1988 "Anthropologists in Search of a Culture: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and All the Rest of Us" in ''Central Issues in Anthropology'' 8(1): 3-20.
*Robert Levy 1984 "Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Problem of Seeing Things as They Are" ''Ethos'' 12: 85-92
* Jeannette Mageo 1988 ''Mālosi'': A Psychological Exploration of Mead's and Freeman's Work and of Samoan Aggression" ''Pacific Studies'' 11(2): 25-65
* Mac Marshall 1993 "The Wizard from Oz Meets the Wicked Witch of the East: Freeman, Mead, and Ethnographic Authority" in ''American Ethnologist''20(3): 604-617.
* [[Bonnie Nardi]] 1984 "The Height of Her Powers: Margaret Mead's Samoa" ''Feminist Studies'' 10: 323-337.
* Allan Patience and Josephy Smith 1987 "Derek Freeman in Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of a Biobehavioral Myth" ''American Anthropologist'' 88: 157-162.
* David B. Paxman 1988 "Freeman, Mead, and the Eighteenth-Century Controversy over Polynesian Society" ''Pacific Studies'' 1(3): 1-19
*Roger Sandall 2001 ''The Culture Cult: Designer Tribalism and Other Essays'' ISBN 0-8133-3863-8
*Nancy Scheper-Hughes 1984 "The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry" in ''Human Organization 43(1): 85-93.
* Paul Shankman 1996 "The History of Samoan Sexual Conduct and the Mead-Freeman Controversy" in ''American Anthropologist''98(3): 555-567.
* Brad Shore 1982 ''Sala'ilua: A Samoan Mystery'' New York: Columbia University Press.
*R.E. Young and S. Juan 1985 "Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: The Ideological Virginity of Anthropologists'' Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology'' 21: 64-81.
*Mary E. Virginia, "DISCovering U.S. History", Benedict, Ruth (1887-1948), Online Edition, (ed Detroit: Gale), 2003

===Footnotes===
{{reflist}}

[[Category:1928 books]]
[[Category:Anthropology books]]