Coming from Age in Samoa is a book by American anthropologist Margaret Mead based on her research and research on young women - on the island of Ta'u in the Samoan Islands. This book details the sexual life of adolescents in Samoan society in the early 20th century, and theorizes that culture has a major influence on psychosexual development.
First published in 1928, the book launched Mead as a pioneering pioneer and as the most famous anthropologist in the world. Since its first publication, Coming of Age in Samoa is the most widely read book in anthropology until Napoleon Chagnon YanomamÃÆ'¶: The Fierce People took over. This book has sparked years of ongoing and intense debate and controversy over questions relating to society, culture, and science. This is a key text in natural debates versus parenting, as well as discussions on issues related to family, youth, gender, social norms, and attitudes.
In the 1980s, Derek Freeman fought for many of Mead's claims, arguing that he was mocked into counterfactuals believing that the Samoan culture had more relaxed sexual norms than Western culture. However, the anthropological community as a whole has dismissed Freeman's claims, concluding that Freeman cherry-took his data, and misinterpreted both Mead's research and his interviews.
Video Coming of Age in Samoa
Content
Preface
In the preface to Coming of Age in Samoa , Mead's advisor, Franz Boas, wrote:
"Modesty, modesty, courtesy, conformity to ethical standards that are surely universal, but what constitutes manners, politeness, manners, and ethical standards are certainly not universal.This is a lesson to know that standards differ in the least way unexpected. "
Boas went on to point out that, at the time of publication, many Americans have begun to address the problems faced by young people (especially women) as they pass through adolescence as "an unavoidable period of adjustment." Boas felt that the study of the problems faced by adolescents in other cultures would illuminate.
Introduction
Mead introduced the book with a general discussion of the problems faced by adolescents in modern society and various approaches to understanding these issues: religion, philosophy, theory of education and psychology. He discusses various limitations in each approach and then introduces a new field of anthropology as a promising alternative science based on analyzing the structure and social dynamics. He compared the anthropological methodology with other behavioral scientific studies and the obvious reason that controlled experiments are much more difficult for anthropology than any other science. For this reason, the methodology is one of learning to society in their natural environment. Instead of choosing culturally well-understood cultures such as Europe or America, he chose South Sea islanders because their culture is radically different from Western culture and tends to produce more useful data as a result. However, in doing so he introduces a new complexity because he must first understand and communicate to his readers the nature of South Sea culture himself rather than investigate directly the problems of the teenager as he can in a more familiar culture. Once he has an understanding of Samoan culture he will investigate specifically how youth education and socialization are done in Samoan culture and contrast with Western culture.
Mead describes his research objectives as follows:
"I have tried to answer the question that sent me to Samoa: Is it a disturbance that plagues our teenagers because of the nature of the teenagers themselves or civilization? In different circumstances does adolescence present a different picture?"
To answer this question, he undertook his studies among a small group of Samoan people. He found a village with 600 people on the island of Ta '?, Where, during the period between six and nine months, he should know, live together, observe, and interview (after studying some Samoa) 68 young women between the ages of 9 and 20. Mead studies everyday life, education, social structure and dynamics, rituals, etiquette, etc.
Samoa life and education
Mead starts with a typical idyllic day description in Samoa. He then explains the child's education, beginning with the birth of the children, which is celebrated with a long ritual feast. After birth, however, Mead explains how most children are neglected, for girls sometimes explicitly abandoned rituals, after birth until puberty. He explained various methods of disciplining children. Most involve some sort of corporal punishment, such as hitting by hand, palm leaf, or shell. However, the punishment is largely ritual and is not intended to pose a serious danger. Children are expected to contribute meaningful work from an early age. Initially, young people of both sexes help care for the baby. As children grow older, boys' education turns to fishing, while girls focus more on parenting. However, the concept of age for the Samoans is not the same as in the West. Samoan people do not track the day of birth, and they judge maturity not on the actual number of years of life, but rather on physical outward changes in children. As a child gets bigger and stronger, he gets more work and responsibility.
Mead describes some of the specific skills children should learn about weaving and fishing, and then almost casually interrupts the first description of Samoa's sexuality, saying that in addition to working for young girls: "All of his [interest] interest is expended on dark sex, adventure. "This comes directly after a passage where Mead explains how the reputation of laziness can make a teenage girl a bad candidate for marriage, implying that for the Samoan people work ethic is a more important criterion for marriage than virginity.
Young men undergo various types of encouragement and punishment to make them competitive and aggressive. Men have many different job possibilities (eg, "home builders, fishermen, orators, woodcarvers") in the community. Status is also a balance between skill and achievement and appear humble. Also, "social prestige is enhanced by the exploitation of his romance".
For teenage girls, the main status is the question of who they are going to get married. Mead also describes adolescence and time before marriage as the highest point of a Samoan girl's life:
"But the seventeen-year-old girl does not want to get married - yet it's better to live as a girl without responsibility, and rich variety of experiences.This is the best period of her life."
Samoa Household
The next section illustrates the structure of the Samoan village: "an Samoan village comprises about thirty to forty households, each of which is headed by a tribal chief". Every household is a large family including widows and widowers. Households share a communal house: each household has several houses but no member has permanent ownership or residence of a particular building. Houses may not all be in the same part of the village.
The head of the household has the highest authority over the group. Mead explains how the extended family provides security and safety for Samoan children. Children tend to be close to relatives wherever they are, and any lost child will be missed quickly. Households also provide freedom for children including girls. According to Mead, if a girl is not happy with the particular relative who lives with her, she can always move to a different house in the same house. Mead also explains the diverse and complex status relationships that are a combination of factors such as household roles, household status in the village, individual age, etc. There are also many rules of etiquette for asking and providing assistance..
Mead describes many structures and group dynamics in Samoan culture. Group formation is an important part of Samoa's life from childhood when young people form groups to play and mischief. There are several types of group structures that may be in Samoan culture. Relationships flow down from head and head of household; men appoint other men as help and substitute them in ritual ceremonies; men form groups for fishing and other work activities; women form groups based on tasks such as parenting and household relationships. Mead describes the examples of these groups and explains the complicated rules governing how they are formed and how they function. The emphasis is on the Samoan girl, but like elsewhere she also needs to describe Samoa's social structure for the whole culture to provide a complete picture.
Mead believes that the complex and compulsory rules governing these groups mean that the traditional concept of Western friendship as a voluntary bond entered by two people with equal interests does not matter to Samoan women: "friendships are so patterned and meaningless." I once asked a married young woman if a neighbor who is always with the most uncertain and annoyed is her friend. "Of course, her father's father, and my father's father's father, are brothers. ' "
Ritual requirements (such as being able to remember specifics about family relationships and roles) are much greater for men than women. It also means more responsibility imposed on men than women: "a man who commits adultery with a wife's head is beaten and thrown away, sometimes even drowned by angry society, but the woman is only expelled by her husband".
Mead devotes entire chapters to Samoan music and the role of dancing and singing in Samoan culture. He views this as significant because they violate what norms defined by Samoans as good behavior in all other activities and provide a unique outlet for the Samoan people to express their individuality. According to Mead there is usually no greater social failure than showing excess pride, or as described by the Samoans, "assuming over a person's age". However, this does not happen when it comes to singing and dancing. In this activity, individuality and creativity are the most praised attributes, and children are free to express themselves fully from their abilities rather than paying attention to appropriate behavior based on age and status:
The elders' attitudes toward the precocity in... singing or dancing contrasted sharply with their attitude toward every other form of preconception. On the dance floor, the dreaded accusation "You think above your age" is unheard of. Little children who will be reprimanded or flogged for such behavior on other occasions are allowed to pretend, arrogance and commotion and take the center of attention without reproach. His relatives cheered because of an event that would hide their heads in shame displayed elsewhere... Often a dancer does not pay enough attention to his fellow dancers to avoid a continuing collision with them. This is a genuine feast of aggressive individualistic behavior.
Personality, sexuality, and old age
Mead describes the psychology of Samoan people as simpler, more truthful, and less driven by sexual neurosis than the west. He described the Samoans as being much more comfortable with problems like menstruation and more relaxed about non-monogamous sexual intercourse. Part of the reason is the large family structure of the Samoan villages. Conflicts that may result in disputes or divisions within a traditional Western family may be tamed in the Samoa family by simply asking one side in the conflict to move to another house that is part of the village household. Another reason Mead mentions is that Samoan people do not seem to want to give a judgmental answer. Mead explains how one of the things that makes his research difficult is that Samoans often answer almost every question with a non-committed answer, the Samoan is shrugging and saying: "Who knows?"
Mead summarizes parts of a book that discusses the life of Samoa with Samoa's elderly descriptions. Samoan women in old age "are usually more of a power in the home than parents, men are governed in part by the authority given by their titles, but their wives and brothers rule with the power of personality and knowledge of human nature."
Educational issues: America and Samoa contrast
Mead concluded that the journey from childhood into adulthood (adolescence) in Samoa is a smooth transition and is not characterized by emotional or psychological distress, anxiety, or confusion seen in the United States.
Mead concludes that this is due to Samoan girls who are part of a stable monocultural society, surrounded by role models, and where there are no basic facts about sexual intercourse, birth, bodily functions, or death. The Samoan girl was not pressured to choose from between conflicting values, as well as American girls. Mead commented, somewhat satirically:
... The father of an American girl may be a Presbyterian, an imperialist, a vegetarian, a non-alcoholic, with a strong literary preference for Edmund Burke, a believer in open and high tariff stores, who believe that the place of women is at home, the young girls should wear corsets instead of rolling their stockings, not smoking, or riding with young men at night. But his mother's father may be a Low Episcopal, a believer in high life, a strong advocate of State Rights and the Monroe Doctrine, who reads Rabelais, likes to go to musical and horse races. Her aunt is an agnostic, a staunch advocate of women's rights, an internationalist who put all her hopes on Esperanto, devoted to Bernard Shaw, and spends her spare time in an anti-surgical campaign of living beings. His brother, whom he greatly admired, had just spent two years at Oxford. He is an Anglo-Catholic, an enthusiast of all medieval things, writing a mystical poem, reading Chesterton, and a means to devote his life to searching for the lost secrets of medieval stained glass. His mother's brother...
Maps Coming of Age in Samoa
Reception
In publications, this book generates a lot of coverage both in the academic world and in popular media. The publisher Mead (William Morrow) has been lined with much support from renowned academics such as anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski and psychologist John Watson. Their praise is a public relations coup for Morrow and attracts popular attention to the book. Academic interests were soon followed by sensational headlines such as "Samoa is the Place for Women" and that Samoa is "Where the Neurosis Ceases".
Impact on anthropology
For most anthropologists before Mead, detailed in-depth field research is not a common practice. Although the subsequent reviews of his work have exposed the error by modern anthropological standards, by the time the book was published the idea of ​​living with indigenous peoples was quite a breakthrough. The use of cross-cultural comparison to highlight issues in Western societies is highly influential and contributes greatly to the increased awareness of anthropology and ethnographic studies in the United States. This establishes Mead as an important figure in American anthropology, a position he will maintain for the next fifty years.
Social influences and reactions
As Boas and Mead had hoped, this book infuriated many Westerners when it first appeared in 1928. Many American readers were surprised by his observations that young Samoan women postpone marriage for many years while enjoying free sex before finally choosing a husband. As an important study of sexual mores, the book is highly controversial and often under attack based on ideology. For example, the National Catholic List argues that Mead's findings are only a projection of his own sexual convictions and reflect his desire to remove restrictions on his own sexuality. The Intercollegiate Studies Institute listed Coming of Age in Samoa as # 1 in the list of "50 Worst Books of the Twenty Century".
Criticism of Mead methodology and conclusion
Although the Coming of Age received significant interest and praise from the academic community, Mead's research methodology also came to criticism from some reviewers and colleagues of anthropologists. Mead was criticized for not separating his speculations and personal opinions from his ethnographic descriptions of Samoa's life and to generalize thoroughly on a relatively short study period. For example, Nels Anderson writes about a book: "If it were science, this book was somewhat [sic] disappointment." It lacked a documentary basis.It was given too much for interpretation rather than the description of Dr Mead forgetting too often that he is an anthropologist and gets his own personality involved with the material. "Shortly after Mead's death Derek Freeman published a book, Margaret Mead and Samoa , claiming Mead failed to apply the scientific method and his remarks were unsupported. This criticism is discussed in detail in the section below.
The Mead-Freeman Controversy
In 1983, five years after Mead died, Derek Freeman - a New Zealand anthropologist living in Samoa - published Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Separation of the Anthropology 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, who claimed to document one of Mead's original informants, now an elderly lady, vowed that the information she and her friend gave Mead when their teen is fake; one of the girls will say Mead in the videotape a few years later:
We girls would pinch each other and tell her we were with the kids. We were just joking but he took it seriously. As you know, the Samoan girls are fabulous liars and love to make fun of people, but Margaret thinks they are all true.
Another Mead statement that Freeman focuses is his claim that through the use of chicken blood, Samoan girls can and do lie about their virginity status. Freeman pointed out that the virginity of the bride is very important for the status of the Samoan man that they have a certain ritual in which the bridal hymen is manually broke in public, by the man himself or by the head, making fraud through chicken blood impossible. On this basis, Freeman argues that Mead must base his account on (false) rumors from non-Samoan sources.
The argument relies on where the taupou system sits in Samoa society. According to Mead, the system Antitrust reception and reaction
After the beginning of the discussion, many anthropologists have concluded that Freeman is systematically misinterpreting Mead's view of the relationship between nature and parenting, as well as data on Samoan culture. According to Freeman's colleague, Robin Fox, Freeman "seems to have a special place in hell reserved for Margaret Mead, for no apparent reason at all at that time."
In addition, many field and comparative studies by anthropologists have since found that adolescence is not experienced in the same way in all societies. The systematic cross-cultural study of adolescents by Schlegel and Barry, for example, concludes that adolescents experience a harmonious relationship with their families in most non-industrial societies around the world. They found that, when family members need each other throughout their lives, independence, as expressed in teenage rebellion, is minimal and counterproductive. Teenagers tend to rebel only in industrialized societies that practice neolocal residence patterns (where young adults need to move their homes away from their parents). Neolocal residence patterns are generated from young adults living in industrialized communities who migrate to take on new jobs or in similar geographic populations. Thus, Mead's analysis of adolescent conflicts is upheld in comparative literature on societies around the world.
First, these critics speculate that he waited until Mead died before publicizing his criticism so he would not be able to respond. However, in 1978, Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but he was sick and died a few months later without responding.
Second, Freeman's critics point out that, by the time he arrived at the scene, Mead's original informant was an old woman, a grandmother, and had converted to Christianity, so their testimony to him might be inaccurate. They further argue that the Samoan culture has changed considerably in the decades after Mead's original research; after intense missionary activity, many Samoans began to adopt the same sexual standards as Americans who were so shocked by Mead's book. They suggest that such women, in this new context, are not likely to speak candidly about their teenage behavior. Further, they suggest that these women may not be as honest and honest about their sexuality when talking to an elderly man as they will speak to a woman near their own age. But all the women concerned have become Christians during their interview as teenagers.
Some anthropologists have criticized Freeman on methodological and empirical grounds. For example, they claim that Freeman has united publicly articulated ideals with behavioral norms - that is, while many Samoa women will publicly acknowledge that it is ideal for virginity, in practice they engage in high-level premarital sex and boasting about their sexual relations among themselves. Freeman's own data documenting the existence of premarital sexual activity in Samoa. In a western Samoa village, he documented that 20% of children aged 15 years, 30% of 16 years, and 40% of 17-year-olds had premarital sex. In 1983, the American Anthropological Association held a special session to discuss Freeman's book, which they did not invite. Their criticism was formally made at the 82nd annual meeting of the American Anthropological Association next month in Chicago, where a special session, in which Freeman was not invited, was held to discuss his book. They delivered a motion stating Freeman Margaret Mead and Samoa "not well written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading". Freeman commented that "trying to get rid of the major scientific issues by raising a hand is a striking demonstration of the way in which beliefs can dominate the intellectual thinking".
In the years that followed, anthropologists vigorously debated these issues. Leading scholars published on this issue include Appell, who stated "I find Freeman's argument really convincing"; Brady: "Freeman's book finds little but tends to reinforce what many anthropologists already suspect" about the ethnographic adequacy of Mead, Feinberg, Leacock, Levy, Marshall, Nardi, Patience, Paxman, Scheper-Hughes, Shankman, Young, and Juan.
Just like Mead's works, Freeman's account has been challenged as ideologically encouraged to support his own theoretical point of view (sociobiology and interactionism), as well as assigning high-level Meads to gullible and biased. Freeman's opinion on the Samoan sexual customs has been challenged, in turn, because it is based on the public declaration of sexual morality, virginity, and taupou rather than actual sexual practices in Samoan society during the Mead research period.
Lowell Holmes-who completed his less publicized publication-commented later: "Mead is better able to identify with, and therefore connect with, teenagers and young adults on issues of sexuality than I do (at 29, married to a wife and child) or Freeman, ten years older than me. "
In 1996, Martin Orans examined Mead's records stored in the Library of Congress, crediting him for leaving all his recording data available to the general public. Orans concludes that Freeman's basic criticism - that Mead was deceived by the virgin ceremony Fa'apua'a Fa'amu (who later swore to Freeman that he had played a joke about Mead) - wrong for several reasons: first, Mead is very aware of the shape and frequency Samoa jokes; secondly, he provides a careful explanation of the sexual restrictions on the girls of the ceremonies that correspond to Fa'apua'a Fa'amu's account to Freeman; and third, that Mead's record makes it clear that he has reached his conclusion of Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Therefore he concluded, contrary to Freeman, that Mead was never a victim of lies. Oran suggests that Mead's data support several different conclusions, and that Mead's conclusions depend on interpretive or fabrication, rather than positivist, approaches to culture. Oran concludes that because of Mead's interpretive approach - common to contemporary cultural anthropology - the hypothesis and its conclusions are essentially unprovable and hence "not even false".
In 1999, Freeman published the book Fateful Hatred of Margaret Mead: Analysis of the History of His Samoan Research . This included new material, especially the interview that Freeman called "the extraordinary historical significance" and "very important" of one teenage informant Mead later by a Samoan Chief of the National University of Samoa (in 1988 and 1993) and her daughter ( in 1995). The 1925-1926 correspondence between Franz Boas and Margaret Mead was also available for Freeman. He concludes in the introduction to the book that "exciting revelations about sexual behavior in some cases are simply extrapolations from whispering intimacy, whereas the greatest consequence is the result of a mischievous trick".
Freeman argues that Mead collects other evidence that contradicts his own conclusions, such as a teacher who attributes that in adolescence women are always escorted by female family members. He also claims that due to the decision to take an ethnological trip to Fitiuta, only eight weeks left for his main research into teenage girls, and is now "practically impossible" to find time with sixty-six girls he will study, since public schools have reopened. With the remainder of the time, he instead went to Ofu, and much of his research came from talking to two of his Samoa girlfriends, Fa'apua'a and Fofoa. Freeman claims Mead's letter to Boas reflects that he was influenced by the sexuality studies of the Marquesas Islands, and that he attempted to confirm the same information by questioning Fa'apua'a and Fofoa. He sent his conclusions to Boas on March 14 and with "little left to do" he stopped his journey.
According to Freeman estimates: "there is no systematic and direct investigation of the sexual behavior of a sample of teenage girls ever done.In contrast, Margaret Mead's story of teenage sexual behavior at the Coming of Age in Samoa and elsewhere is based on what she has done. by Fa'apua'a and Fofoa, supplemented by such questions he had previously made. "When Fa'apua'a told Freeman, in the 80s, that he and his friend were joking, Freeman defended his testimony in the introduction to his second book about Mead: that octagarian memory is very good, and he swears to the Bible, as a Christian, that's true
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