Margaret Mead and Samoa [Hardcover]

Derek Freeman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 28, 1983

In 1928 Margaret Mead announced her stunning discovery of a culture in which the storm and stress of adolescence didn't exist. The resulting book, "Coming of Age in Samoa" has since become a classic - and the best-selling anthropology book of all time. Within the nature-nurture controversy that still divides scientists, Mead's evidence has long been a crucial "negative instance", an apparent proof of the sovereignty of culture over biology. In this book, the author presents startling but wholly convincing evidence that Mead's proof is false. On the basis of years of patient fieldwork and historical research, Freeman refutes Mead's characterization of Samoan society and adolescence point for point. Far from the relaxed transition to adulthood that Mead ascribed to permissive child-bearing and restrictive regulations against premarital sex.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 408 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press; First Edition edition (March 28, 1983)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674548302
• ISBN-13: 978-0674548305
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.7 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,024,757 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Coming of Age in America, April 25, 2002

By 

George Kocan (Warrenville, IL United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Margaret Mead and Samoa (Hardcover)

The is a most important book because it sets the record straign about Margaret Mead. Her book on Samoa created a false understanding of primitive peoples. She went to Samoa to do her PhD dissertation and came back with a myth that supported the prejudices and biases of her graduate advisor, Franz Boas. She purportedly discovered that the Samoans were the personification of Jean Jacque Roussoue's "Noble Savage." There were unspoiled by the vices of Western Civilization. The biggest vice was supposedly the West's repressive sexuality that gave rise to social aggression of various kinds. Derek Freeman blows all of this out of the water. He points out among other things that Mean did not know the language and stayed there only a few weeks. This does not come up to the standards of methodology that anthropologists have come to accept to accurately understand and describe a culture.

13 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Mead demolished., January 2, 2005

By 

Robert Vance Rose "[e-mail]" (Kennesaw, Georgia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Margaret Mead and Samoa (Hardcover)

Freeman's classic has revolutionized our conception of anthropology, and thrown this field, and others, into complete confusion on university campuses throughout the world.

Mead had a fantastically large influence on the thought of the 20th century, and it has been horribly misleading. The real origin of this ridiculous view of humanity was written about 1750 by Jean-Jacques Rousseau in his most influential "Emile, or on Education". In this absurd invitation to Utopia, Rousseau, father of modern socialist and collectivist idealogy, postulated that "love", or humanistic altuism, is the only natural instinct in the human species. Any other emotional drive is antithetical to social progress, and has been caused by the nefarious influence of "bourgeois" values. (See Bloom's recent translation of Rousseau)

Believe that, and I will sell you a large and famous bridge at an unbelievable price!

God bless Derek Freeman! Maybe some day our world will recover from Mead and from Rousseau!!

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Not all reviews are equal, November 6, 2011

By 

land lover - See all my reviews

This review is from: Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth (Pelican) (Mass Market Paperback)

Derek Freeman's vicious critique of Mead's book was declared by the American Anthropological Society to be "unprofessional" and simply not a scholarly work. Better to see Shankman's writing on Mead, his articles and books, which offer a more unbiased treatment of the issues.