Margaret Mead and Samoa

by Derek Freeman

“In 1928 Margaret Mead announced her stunning discovery of a culture in which the storm and stress of adolescence do not exist. COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA has since become a classic - and the bestselling anthropology book of all time. Within me 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 MARGARET MEAD AND SAMOA, Professor Freeman 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 on of Samoan society and adolescence point for point. Far from the relaxed transition to adulthood that Mead ascribed to permissive childrearing and tolerant sexual attitudes, Samoan adolescence, Freeman demonstrates, is a time of frequent stress in an authoritarian society with punitive methods of childrearing and restrictive regulations again