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Product Details
Series: Perennial Classics
Paperback: 256 pages
Publisher: William Morrow Paperbacks; Reprint edition (February 20, 2001)
In the unpaginated `Preface [to the] 1973 Edition', Margaret Mead stresses that her description of Samoan moeurs should be read as applying to conditions at the time of her research. She finds it needful to `shout' that advice because during her 1971 brief visit to Samoa, `young critics even asked me when am I going to revise this book and look unbelieving and angry when I say that to revise it is impossible'.
This is a reference to an abrasive session with students who told her that her description of fa'aSamoa (Samoan custom) was false and insulting. They were miffed by her styling Samoans `primitives' and her pronouncement that since anthropologists enjoy an `immense superiority', they can `master the fundamental structure' [of primitive society] . . . `in a few months' (p. 8). In keeping with this arrogance, Samoans attending university were told by their instructors that their experience of fa'aSamoa was not valid evidence against Mead's scientific study. And, as we've just seen, Mead refused to revise her book even when she knew that it is mistaken in many particulars.
For Samoans this patronizing manner was the familiar voice of the papalagi (the colonial power). Mead's hosts on her field trip, aware that she enjoyed the protection of the Pacific Fleet admiral and Boss of American Samoa, went to great lengths to provide reliable information. When they learned of what they call her luma fai tele (`shameless defamaton'), they could not comprehend how she could have betrayed their hospitality. They were also aggrieved that she deceived them about her marital status. For she accepted the title taupou (ceremonial virgin) although as a married woman she was ineligible. Then she disgraced the title by carrying on with Aviata, a young man regarded as a rake.Read more ›
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69 of 95 people found the following review helpful
Coming of Age in Samoa is a pleasantly-written South Sea fantasy, heavy with the author's social agenda upon it. If you buy the agenda, apparently you can hardly help like the book. (See reviews below.) Even if I bought the agenda (and it is hard for me to look at American society and say the sexuality Mead encouraged has made people entirely free of guilt or conflict), I would still choke on her dishonesty. But as they say in the anthro business, different strokes for different folks. Some of the defenses of this book below are hilarious. "Sure, it's largely untrue. But it reads well!" (And here I thought it was supposed to be science.) "It stimulated my thinking about culture! Mead really did interview thirty live Samoans! (In some language or other.) "Besides, what scholarship from that era would not sound like fiction today?" (Uh, honest scholarship? Do you want a book list?) The interesting thing about this book, to me, is the way it illustrates human self-deception, in particular the hubris of those who claim to speak for "Science." Being interested in such curiosities, for me personally the book was worth buying. Mead's sexual fantasies are not the only instance in the 20th Century in which anthropologists sought to throw out "religious dogma" in favor of "scientific" new theories of their own cultivation. As pleasant as an idyllic trip to the islands may be, those for whom such theories hold charm should remember that honest scholarship and imagination are two different things, that vacations in Fantasy Island usually cost something, and that the one who takes the vacation is not always the person who pays the bill.
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27 of 37 people found the following review helpful
I was the Medical Director of American Samoa a few years after Mead's six
month in Ta'u, a village in the Manu'a group and spent over two years there. On my trips to Manu'a I found and talked to Chief Tufele and those Mead worked with. With two years study of Hawaiian I was able to converse with them quite easily. Mead studied Samoan for only six weeks in Pago Pago.
There are many errors and self-projections in the work of a 23-year old girl fresh out of college on her first field trip, but not enough to incur
Freeman's wrath. About half of his criticisms are not true.
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Margaret Mead was the youngest of Boas' students who did not study American Indians until later in her life. By now most people realize that Mead set out to find a culture where sexual mores were not repressive, like her own, and forged Samonan adolescent behavior to meet her expectations. We should realize that social science in general, not just anthropology, had a mind set that culture, or learned behavior, predominated nuture or genetics. Genetics, like race, was swept under the rug in the thirties. The view was widely accepted because it contradicted nazi Germany's dogma that race mattered above all and justified a race's extermination. There is little doubt that Mead lacked the empirical evidence to justify her conclusions that adolesence did not need to be a period of turmoil and rebellion, but her book inspired countless readers to reconsider their preconceived notions of biological determinism. ernestschusky.com
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Coming of Age in Samoa is well written and engaging, an enjoyable read. Mead has an ability to present a scientific study in poetic form drawing the reader in while communicating social observations.
From a psychological perspectives there are several shortcomings. Mead did a revolutionary work; it was however somewhat incomplete and romanticized to fit Mead's personal predispositions. While stomach or back pain were indicated, No reasons for the high percentage of possible psychosomatic pain were not addressed. In addition, after only 5 months in Samoa, the level of intimacy required for disclosure of familial sexual encounters, both heterosexual and homosexual, is not often attained in such a short amount of time inside the familial clan setting.
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This item: Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation (Perennial Classics)
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