Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation

Dr. Meade truly was one of the most well-known American Anthropologists in the 20th Century. Her appeal to the common person through her writings in popular magazines sparked the interest on Anthropological studies for many people from all walks of life. This book was her first masterpiece. This book is a requirement for any student of Anthropology or anyone else who wishes to learn how to take data from interviews and other observations and put them on paper.

Famous books in any academic discipline draw a lot of attention (thus making them famous). When negative, most such attention arises from personal jealously about the success of others, and given that Mead is a woman, she draws additional scorn from male academics (and their female supplicants). As a result, many myths develop and circulate around academic departments, and even worse, people rely on textbook (mis)representations in place of their own reading. I encourage anyone with serious interest in traditional Samoa and/or anthropology to read this book for themselves, consider Mead's evidence and analysis, and develop your own assessment. Clearly, most of the reviewers here have not read the book. By the way, I give the book four stars because it does have flaws, but read it and decide for yourself.

Freeman's nonsense aside, which seems to be taken as gospel by one or two reviewers below (apparently, Mead's Samoa is ladden with cultural intentions, but Freeman's work is not with his sociobiological intentions), this is a good book. I think Freeman is dishonest, and the fact that he couldn't attack Mead until after she was DEAD, speaks to me of a cowardly academic disgrace. For shame that he has any followers at all.Mead is not my favorite author: her writing is discontinous, but this book is a good work. Seeing as how many people haven't even realized just how conservative this book is, they believe that the author has had a clear social agenda. The agenda is there folks, but it is not the one you think.Mead's Samoa is probably more correct than Freeman's for a variety of reasons, but to go into various details would require several books. For those with access to JSTOR, I would strongly urge to look at some critical reviews of Mead and Freeman. For those that have access to HRAF, I would suggest looking at short ethnographies of the area. Now, which sounds more accurate? Neither will be completely, but Freeman's work is the REAL emperor without cloths, and its followers should take a closer look at the world ethnographies before they advance either Freeman, or downright simplistic (and insulting) sociobiological nonsense that was already buried some 20 years ago.

This is a classic example both of an anthropologist attempting to sift through hundreds of cultural indicators, and of her peers becoming incredibly uncomfortable both with her results, her success in the field, and the implications therein. (Mead had more than thirty interviewees on the subject of sex, and for a more complete understanding of why her detractors say otherwise, see her published series of letters with a respected mentor.) Was she impeccably unbiased? No. Could she tell a recreational liar from an honest confidante? Yes. In fact, Mead treats all of her research subjects with some skepticism and makes her own attempt to reconcile the extreme traditional prohibitions on extramarital sex, with the fact that it was indeed occurring, and frequently at that. As was typical of the times, however, she did not appear to see the Samoans in the proper light of a fully developed culture, but rather in the manner of a Tarzan novel. Is this offensive? Yes. Does it reveal a good deal of insular cultural ignorance? Yes. Does that mean that all parties interested in the history of anthropology, should avoid the book? No.

I am not an anthropologist, and I am not qualified to judge the claims of either Mead's detractors or defenders. Clearly, she was writing as the product of her time-- and in fact noted in the preface to the 1952 edition that this kind of book would provide more evidence about the time and place the author was from than about the culture being studied.It is certainly a pleasurable book to read. She paints a picture of an approach to childhood that sets ours off in a not-too-flattering light-- it successfully questions the values of her own culture regardless of how well it captures Samoan culture. I can understand why people from Samoa might find that "regardless" offensive, but I find it (again) a rather hopeless thing to try and judge. I do not find this book less valuable because I question its truth-- I do not know any scholarly book from the 1920s whose veracity would not be tested-- and at this point in time I think everyone who reads it is not accepting it as an authoritative view.File it under history of our cultural thought or under Utopian philosophy if you'd rather not file it under anthropology-- but I'd still recommend that you read it and file it somewhere.