Coming Of Age In Samoa

CONTROVERSY

Derek Freeman, a , in which he outlined his case. For example:

:"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.

:Mead kept prodding the girls. She did not want to hear about traditional taboos or Christian restraints. She wanted to hear about frolicking on the beach. The girls had no idea what Mead was up to. They didn't know she was an anthropologist or what one even was. But what they did know and enjoy was the "recreational lying" common among Samoan girls. Eager to please, they proceeded to spin the kind of yarns that Mead wanted to hear. Pinching each other all the way, they filled Mead's head with wild tales of nocturnal liaisons under the palm trees.

:"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. "

However, it should be acknowledged that Freeman's account has been challenged as being ideologically driven to support his own theoretical viewpoint ( Sociobiology ), and that considerable controversy remains over the veracity, or otherwise, of both Mead's and Freeman's account. Lowell Holmes completed a much less publicised restudy chronologically in between Mead and Freeman, and commented later about how "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)

LINKS

Margaret Mead - Discusses this book, and the controversy in more depth.

Culture Of Samoa

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Coming Of Age In Samoa