Coming of Age in Samoa by Margaret Mead

Now, she was determined to find how the war had changed and affected the people of New Guinea.

She continued to write and lecture, and to memorise at Columbia University and at Fordham, until her death from pancreatic crabmeat in 1978. Her status seemed secure, and her books were continually in print and use in anthropology courses as outstanding contribution to the understanding of patriarchal societies, and how they both were similar to, and collided with, Western civilization.

It was not until five days after her death, in 1983, that controversy began to swirl around Mead's writing, curiously her research in Coming of Age in Samoa. Australian anthropologist, Derek Freeman launched a rather vicious and even personal attack on Mead. This attack "inspired a form of worldwide forums and discussions, and aroused spirited defense of her career. Her archean welkin lead may have been hurried and imperfect, but her chivalrous view of human nature enduresa" (Howard 1984 118) What was Freeman's book and his argument, calling Mead's work "a myth" all nigh? Freeman claims that "Margaret Mead was an affirm cultural determinist, under the heavy influence of people such as Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, two of the most important early figures in American cultural anthropology." (Turnbull 1983 32) concord to Freeman, Mead "dismissed biology, or nature, as

It is interesting to posting that some of the contemporary anthropologist Freeman cites as helping him canvas that much of Mead's work was flawed by producing works that were inverse to Mead's findings actually praised her work. "Lowell D. Holmes, for example, said he thought Mead's account 'remarkably reliable, and both he and Eleanor Gerber readily saw, in the simple passage of time, bill enough for any discrepancies." (Turnbull 33)

"It appeared that the controversy would die out in academia until Freeman announced in the late 1980sa that he had 'crucially important new evidence' that resolved the controversy.

" (Cote 31) What Freeman referred to, according to Cote, were statements make by Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, an elderly woman who had been one of Mead's age-mate Samoan friends during her 1925-26 study. According to this now elderly woman, she and a friend perpetrated a snake oil on Mead when they were on an outing together. According to this woman, Mead had believed, as a result of the conversations the three had on that day, that she had discovered a gratis(p) love society where the community did not attempt to manipulate the sexual activity of adolescents. Freeman then summed it all up by saying that this hoax was translated by Mead into a society-wide practice.

Of course, all(prenominal) one (especially our parents and grand parents) know that one of the reasons the Mead book was normal because it dealt with adolescent primitive love, and a lot of readers bought the book believe that they were going to find a sort of pornographic comment of a society they could only imagine.

Cote, J.E. "Much ado about nothing: The 'fateful hoaxing' of Margaret Mead" Skeptical Inquirer Nov-Dec 1998 v22 n6 p29(6)

Howard, J.: "Margaret Mead, 'self-appointed materfamilias to the world'" Washington D.C.: Smithsonian Sept. 1984 v15 p118(18)

As Jane Howard (2001) points out "In this year of the Margaret Mead centennial we may be abler to remember Margaret Mead as
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