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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Diatribe, but listen anyway,
By Hiram Caton (Griffith University, Australia) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Coming of Age in American Anthropology: Margaret Mead and Paradise (Paperback)
This is one hellova blast at Margaret Mead for her `slander' of the Samoan people and culture in her mega-bestseller, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. When I queried American Samoa's non-voting Congressman about Isaia's book, he told me: `I believe there has always been a consensus among Samoans . . . that Mead's work . . . is definitely an insult on Samoan culture . . . the older generation never seemed bothered by all this because many never had the opportunity for higher education . . . [but] I can attest to you that my generation definitely considers Mead's work as trash and an insult to the Samoan people'. The Congressman grew up in the Sixties, when Samoan radio talk shows derided Mead's use of their culture to promote relaxation of sexual morals in her own culture. She visited them, the story goes, as a `tourist on a study holiday', and, although she could scarcely speak the language, she was shown every courtesy. Then she had the hide to pretend to the white world that she knew all about those South Seas `primitives'. When Samoans began to enter white universities, and told anthropology instructors delivering the Mead line that she got it wrong, they were told to shut up because Mead was an expert and knew better. The author belongs to the generation that grew up in the 1980s. In 1984, he heard Derek Freeman give a lecture on the then raging Samoa controversy at his school in Apia. On the spot (he told me) there was born in him a mission to vindicate Samoan honor. This book is the outcome. Isaia deals with Mead's presumption of superiority by accepting the primitive label, among whom a `moron would not be disadvantaged' (yes, she said that). The moron calls on `distinguished minds' to explain his perplexities about Mead's contradictory statements on Samoan custom. This ploy is a fertile device for the irony and lampoon that provides the vehicle for his many criticisms of Mead's ethnography. Thus, perplexed as to how Samoan women could be promiscuous yet not fall pregnant, he finds the answer by looking at the question through the eyes of Western experts: the ovulation cycles of Samoan are determined by their primitive culture, so that the cycles are in non-functioning `tropical island holiday mode' (186). So it is that the experts discovered that `promiscuity itself is contraception'. (He's not making that up). As a Samoan chief, Isaia thinks it is his duty to state his people's claims against the wrongs done. In creating a counterfeit Samoa, she stole their dignity, to promote her career, yet gave no compensation for this `unauthorized use of intellectual property' (133, 185). The chief demands: repudiation of Mead's travesty by the American Anthropological Association; the withdrawal of all titles and honors that were awarded for `the greatest fraud of the century'; the withdrawal from all libraries books that propagate Mead's `counterfeit' Samoa; and compensation for damages (248f). Nothing has nor will come of this, but it's an authentic expression of Samoan honor. Mead's most disastrous pre-conception was, as she stated in Coming of Age, that `a primitive people without a written language presents a much less elaborate problem, and a trained student can master the fundamental structure of a primitive society in a few months'. (Yes, folks, she really DID write that). Primitives don't have interiority and therefore don't have hang-ups or mental illness. It's the flip-side of their easy-going manner. No strong attachments, no intense hates, no jealousy to speak of, hardly any competition. `No one', she declared, `suffers for his convictions, or fights to the death'. The chief maintains that this preconception expresses colonial racism, which held that primitives are lower on the evolutionary scale than Caucasians. How does this sound to the primitives? Here's what he says: `In simple English, we are not to be trusted in friendship, can't be relied upon, and are not capable of being reliable partners whether personal or professional because, according to [Mead], we will not stand up for what we believe in, and won't stand up for what we believe is right and wrong . . . we are a society of cowards' (121). See what ya done, Margaret? Where else did Mead go wrong? The chief says that Samoans wear a mask of affability and gracious manners that greet all who pass among them. Mead didn't look behind the mask to see the usual human range of emotions and cognitive complexity that her presuppositions said didn't exist. Thus she did not see the conflicted inner that expressed outwardly in the Mau revolt that was in process at the time of her visit. She didn't see the demands on self-control that the chiefly governance imposed on rivalry between young males. This system also exacted heavy costs from the adolescent girls. He spells out the conflicted state of Samoan sexuality, whose tension derives from unusually exacting demands for chastity and competitive male libidos seeking to deflower secretly eager virgins. Young males are conflicted because they are at the same time vigilant guardians of the sister's honor AND aspiring invaders of some sister's honor (141f). Mead claimed that Samoan custom was a `negative instance' disproving the universality of adolescent storm and stress. In reality, Samoa is a prime instance of it. What contribution does this book have to make to the continuing controversy? Speaking as one who has been looking at it and writing about it for two decades, the most telling comment is that the `experts', including Freeman, have ignored this book. And why? Because it doesn't conform to the canons of scholarship! In other words, the ethnographers have been incapable of considering Isaia's book as piece of Samoan culture, worthy of the ethnographer's attention. And why not? Maybe it's the persistence of the colonial habit of denying that `primitives' have minds capable of saying anything.
4 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Samoa vs Margaret,
By A Customer
This review is from: Coming of Age in American Anthropology: Margaret Mead and Paradise (Paperback)
This book sure proves one thing--Margaret didn't have a clue about Samoan dignity! Here we are, 75 years after her field trip, and STILL Samoans are mad as hell about her making them out to be 'animals'. The Chief really sticks to the anthropology professor for letting Mead's trashy story pass unchallenged. When Derek Freeman tried to set the record straight, they got real mad because he was giving the profession a bad name! Anyway, the Chief proves that Margaret got just about everything wrong. It's a nice sidelight that the Chief says that just about all the Samoan words and phrases in her book are the kind that children use. What a fraud that woman was!
3 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
WE NEED MORE BOOKS LIKE THIS,
By A Customer
This review is from: Coming of Age in American Anthropology: Margaret Mead and Paradise (Paperback)
NOW AND THEN COMES A BOOK THAT SHAKES OUR CONDITIONED BELIEFS. WHAT DOES AN ANTHROPOLOGIST LEARN OF A FOREIGN CULTURE IN 9 MONTHS? A WELL PUT NATIVE PERSPECTIVE. DEFAMATION, RACIST ACADEMIC CLAIMS, AND DISTORTING A NATION'S HISTORY, IS VERY SERIOUS STUFF. FROM WHAT I CAN GATHERED FROM WHAT I'VE READ IS THAT, THE SO CALLED "PRIMITIVE MIND" IS QUITE SMART AND VERY CLEVER INDEED. THE ISSUES BEING RAISED ARE QUITE RELEVANT TO GAYS, AND US WOMEN'S STRUGGLE FOR EQUALITY. FOR A NATIVE SAMOAN CHIEF TO WRITE IN A SECOND LANGUAGE IS QUITE SOMETHING. BUT WRITING IN A PROFESSIONAL TONE, AND MAKING THE WHOLE ANTHROPOLOGICAL WORLD SIT UP AND LISTEN IS QUITE AN ACHIEVEMENT. CAN BE IMPROVED BUT A WORK WELL DONE.
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