- Paperback: 304 pages
- Publisher: Basic Books; New edition edition (Sep 17 1999)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0813336937
- ISBN-13: 978-0813336930
- Product Dimensions: 22.8 x 15.2 x 2 cm
- Shipping Weight: 449 g
- Average Customer Review: 2.7 out of 5 stars See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #1,400,063 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- See Complete Table of Contents
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Margaret Mead's 1928 Coming of Age in Samoa, a report of her anthropological study of adolescent girls and a triumph of cultural relativism, firmly established her as a guiding voice of anthropology. Her work was mostly unquestioned during her lifetime, but in 1983 anthropologist Derek Freeman released a critical review of her work, showing that her assertion that adolescence in Samoa is easier because of free sexuality (upon which she based her nurture-over-nature theories) is in conflict with the facts of Samoan life and even with her own field notes. He suffered insult and approbation from nearly every member of the scientific establishment, to whom Mead was a hero and a saint, but he has rejoined the fray, perhaps to finish it, with The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead.
This scholarly review examines all of the primary sources related to Mead's fieldwork and the important 1987 recanting of one of her informers. Forcefully written and carefully constructed, Freeman's book shows that Mead's stay in Samoa was too brief and too consumed with a much larger ethnographic project to have accumulated much data on adolescent sexuality. Her need to finish the project and her fervent belief in culturalism then led her to accept the joking references of her two closest informers about free sex as truth. Careful to make it clear that his focus is on Mead's science, Freeman shows that it is extremely unlikely that Mead deliberately falsified her report, simply that her preconceptions blinded her to inconvenient facts. Given the impressive evidence arrayed here, it's hard to see how Mead's work in Samoa can be now viewed as anything but a pretty fable. --Rob Lightner --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Australian anthropologist Freeman set off a firestorm of controversy with his 1983 book, Margaret Mead and Samoa, which presented Mead's 1928 bestseller, Coming of Age in Samoa, as wildly inaccurate and based on slipshod research. Now Freeman goes even further, using a wealth of new evidence to argue not only that Mead was the victim of her own predisposition to reach conclusions acceptable to her mentor, the cultural determinist Franz Boas, but also that she had the wool pulled over her eyes by some canny Samoans. In 1987, Freeman interviewed Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, who was a 24-year-old ceremonial virgin in 1925-26 when, as one of Mead's principal informants, she claimed that she and other young women regularly spent nights with members of the opposite sex. But in 1987 (and in a 1989 videotaped interview), Fa'apua'a stated that her youthful boasts of premarital promiscuity were a mischievous prank, an outright fabrication made in response to Mead's insistent questions. Moreover, "recreational lying" is a widespread practice in Samoa, Freeman reports. Freeman draws on his own fieldwork in Samoa, on Mead's Samoan field notes (which he pried loose from the Library of Congress) and on newly unearthed correspondence between Mead and Boas in which Mead admits that she made no systematic investigation of Samoan sexual behavior. His painstaking detective work is convincing and leaves the woman known as the "Mother-Goddess of American Anthropology" teetering precariously on her pedestal. Photos.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
Innings in the nature/nurture debate,
By John C. Landon "nemonemini" (New York City) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Fateful Hoaxing Of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis Of Her Samoan Research (Paperback)
Although this book smacks of comeuppance in the nature/nurture wars,with Freeman somewhat preditorily showing an excessive ... factor with his prey, it is interesting reading nonetheless, as it shows indirectly the whole dilemma of fieldwork, with its question mark, how observe another culture at all. The account of the genesis of Coming of Age in Samoa is convincing, although the issue of the hoaxing of Mead as to the actual facts of this coming of age remains slightly ambiguous. But the overall account suggests that the entire project was a bit thin in substance, of excessively short duration, and a prime example of prior assumptions influencing results. It is also a story of how our theories end up influencing our present, which is a challenge to our claims on science. The influence of this book on general culture is therefore a considerable irony. I think Freeman is on guard, hence his account stands up fairly well, but I would also check the challengers here, to this, and to the previous work on this subject by the author. In fact, what is the basis for any claim to observe another culture? Not via tourist photography, in any case.
1.0 out of 5 stars
examine the intentions,
By "anthropologue" (chicago, il) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Fateful Hoaxing Of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis Of Her Samoan Research (Paperback)
Read between the lines of scientific rhetoric here: it is already clear that Freeman's misogynistic perspective couldn't be more slanted, but also pay attention to what he reveals about his own methodology and key informants! Are they any more "objective" than Mead's? When you've got two conflicting bodies of field research amounting to two completely different conclusions, examine the intentions. Mead may have suffered from the dreaded curse of "subjectivity" as she attempted to show that americans' ideas of gender do not signify innate differences in men and women (read: that women are not biologically or naturally inferior to men, and that female adolescence does not have to be a painful experience). What can possibly be Freeman's excuse for his subjective maliciousness? Well, perhaps it is to keep Mead with her still threatening ideas in her place.
1.0 out of 5 stars
Outsider's Perspective: A Twisted Interpretation,
By Moreli J. Niuatoa (Claremont, CA USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Fateful Hoaxing Of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis Of Her Samoan Research (Paperback)
It has been over seventy-years (74 to be exact) since Mead's first study took place in Samoa (American Samoa specifically). Her study revealed some of the controversial matters pertaining to adolescents in Samoa. By controversial I mean "a superficial interpretation" of the Samoan lifestyle and cultural norms and, at the same jeopardizing its principles. This not only place the reputation of the Samoan adolescents in a rut, but may also do an injustice to them. The 'truth' about the Samoan adolescents is something that has never been revealed to an outsider. I am a Samoan; born and raised in Samoa--Manu'a. I had lived the life of adolescence; dreamt the dream of adolescence; envisioned the vision of adolescence. The bottom line is, the culture of a Samoan adolescent is a culture of "absurdity and gagging." Nothing that comes out of it is absolutely true. An outsider's perpective is merely a twisted interpretation of it. A few months, or even a year (or two)of study will not surface the true reality of the Samoan adolescent world. Mead's field-study in Manu'a, I believe, was based on information from her closest informants of a very short period of time. It is aweful difficult for me as a Samoan with many sisters to accept Mead's findings on the Samoan adolescents. I appreciate Freeman's work in reevaluating Mead's work for a better understanding (about the truth) of the readers. Thank you. Any correspondance, please send to: Moreli J. Niuatoa, 1325 North College Avenue, Claremont, CA 91711. Or email: mjniuatoa@hotmail.com. Thank you and God bless.
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