UNIT 7: C

 OMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

–MARGARET MEAD*
Structure
7.0 Objectives
7.1 Introduction
7.1.1 About the Author
7.2 Background of the Ethnographic Research in American Samoa
7.3 Key issues in Coming of Age in Samoa
7.4 Theoretical Perceptions in Reading Coming of Age in Samoa
7.5 Reception and Legacy of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa
7.6 Let Us Sum Up
7.7 References
7.8 Answer to Check Your Progress

7.0 OBJECTIVES
After going through this unit, you should be able to:
●● gain an understanding of the socio-cultural milieu at the time of the
research and publication of the Coming of Age in Samoa.
●● recognize the methodology of practicing Ethnography (classical to
contemporary times).
●● identify the theoretical ideas and critical issues of the text.
●● demonstrate an understanding of the techniques employed by the
Anthropologist.

7.1 INTRODUCTION
Coming of Age in Samoa – A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for
Western Civilization by Margaret Mead has made a significant impact in
the reading of ethnographies. One of the seminal texts that paves the path
for various theoretical ideas, for instance the nature vs. nurture or culture
vs. biology debate, theories of personality, social conditioning, feminist
anthropology, and several more. Even in contemporary times, Coming of
Age in Samoa remains an influential and pioneering work that has generated
interest among scholars with regard to the ethnographic enterprise and has
also given rise to several controversies and debates over Mead’s techniques
of data collection and the validity of her arguments.
Margaret Mead travelled to South Pacific Polynesian Islands of American
Samoa in 1925 to study the lives of adolescent Samoans and understand
if adolescence was universally similar in terms of trauma and stress that
had become an identifying characteristic of this phase of personality
development. In her attempts to achieve an understanding about this

* Dr. Kalindi Sharma, Assistant Professor, Amity Institute of Anthropology

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Ethnographic Cases phase, Mead also had an additional objective of finding whether the
turmoil experienced by individuals during the period of adolescence was
biologically determined or it was culturally cultivated by the community. To
achieve these objectives Margaret Mead administered psychological tests
among the Samoan community.
Coming of Age in Samoa was published in 1928 as Margaret Mead’s
doctoral dissertation. However, when Mead published the thesis as a book,
it had been edited by her to include chapters that primarily dealt with the
association these ethnographic findings had with child rearing practices and
the period of adolescence in United States of America (Library of Congress,
2021). With the publication of her doctoral research Mead had gained a
‘national reputation’ of being an expert on ‘primitive cultures’ and came
to be recognized as a sought-after Anthropologist by the common public.
Moreover, Margaret Mead’s reputation was not limited to the university and
the academic circuits, instead she became a regular contributor to columns
in popular magazines like Vogue, Good Housekeeping, Seventeen, and the
New York Times Magazine. Her columns and articles focused on domestic
concerns and issues related to an average American family life (Newman,
1996).
7.1.1 About the Author
Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia on December 16, 1901. She was
born in a family of educators and academics and during the course of her
childhood Margaret Mead was taught to be a keen observer and remain
cognizant of the social issues that concerned the early 20th century American
Society. Mead was home-schooled by her grandmother who was opposed
to the idea of intensive classroom deskwork. During her early years, she
was trained in to the process of journaling and documenting details about
her surrounding which included details about her neighbors, her family’s
medical records, and also descriptions about her locality. Mead was majoring
in Psychology at Barnard College, New York, when she became influenced
by Anthropologists Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict. It was then that Mead
decided to pursue her doctoral research as an Anthropologist while she
continued to pursue and supplement her dissertation work with her early
training in psychology.

7.2 BACKGROUND OF THE ETHNOGRAPHIC

RESEARCH IN AMERICAN SAMOA
At the time of Mead’s research America was under the grip of World War
I which had affected families by displacing them and leading to their
breakdown in some cases. As an emerging discipline, anthropology was
engaged in an ongoing debate about nature vs. nurture with regard to
the behavioral traits of individuals and the importance of biological pre-
disposition. The discourses primarily focused on the contestation between
biology and culture in shaping human personality. (Library of Congress,
2021). Consequently, the debate had significant impact on the contemporary
social problems in a world war I affected America. This was also the time
when the theories of Psychoanalyst Sigmund Freud were gaining popularity
among the scholars. Freud had proposed the existence of ‘Oedipus complex’
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among adolescent boys to explain their relationship with their parents and Coming of Age in Samoa
the general trends of gender socialization for both girls and boys (CEC, -M. Mead
2019).
The dislocation of families caused immense trauma to people and many
members in the American academia became invested in looking at the
impact of ruptured family ties on the personality of children. Around 1920s
there were rising concerns about teenagers being in regular conflict with
their parents. Scholars began questioning the parenting styles and practice of
bringing up children in communities around the world in order to understand
how parents overcame the trauma of adolescence faced by their children
(CEC, 2019). When Mead left for American Samoa, her mentor Franz Boas
instructed her to examine “the psychological attitude of the individual under
the pressure of the general pattern of culture” and compare the attitude
of Samoan adolescent women with that of American adolescents in terms
of rebellious spirit that was often witnessed by the parents in America.
Boas also advised her to refrain from an overall ethnographic study of the
Samoans as the pressing issue in America was adolescent turmoil which
required Mead’s attention in terms of a cross cultural examination (Library
of Congress, 2021). Furthermore, Margaret Mead was of the opinion that
all the studies that focused on the adolescent behavior had been conducted
by psychologists who did not document the natural surroundings and social
phenomenon like an Anthropologist would as they had a tendency to focus on
ideal lab like conditions while testing their theories. Consequently, Margaret
Mead opined that an Anthropological assessment of adolescent behavior
utilizing ethnographic techniques was needed. Coming of Age in Samoa is
a seminal text of Anthropological studies because it marks the beginning of
the paradigmatic shift from a strictly quantitative data collection techniques
to qualitative assessment without the loss of empiricism (CEC, 2019).
Check your progress I
1. What was the objective of Margaret Mead’s study in American
Samoa?
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2. Explain Franz Boas’s instructions to Margaret Mead while she
proceeded for her fieldwork.
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3. Write a brief description of Margaret Mead.
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Ethnographic Cases ………………………………………………………………………
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4. Explain the methodological shift witnessed during the 1920s by social
scientists.
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5. Describe the social and cultural condition of America when Margaret
Mead began her research.
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7.3 KEY ISSUES IN COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA

Based on her research in Samoa, Margaret Mead published two books,
Coming of Age in Samoa – A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for
Western Civilization that was written in popular short book style that was not
limited to readers from academic circles only. A more serious ethnographic
account of the Samoans was published as A Social Organization of Manu’a
in 1930 by Bishop Museum Press. At the behest of her publishers at William
Morrow, Mead added a chapter in Coming of Age that was primarily focused
on the outcome of her study in Samoa and its impact on the educationists in
America (Kuper, 1989). Mead was known to write her daily accounts on her
observations about the Samoans to Ruth Benedict and as a result she did not
keep a field diary in Samoa. Most of her journal records are in the form of
letters to Ruth Benedict and field bulletins for family and friends. As per the
letters in Library of Congress archives, Mead’s Samoan name was Makelita
(Library of Congress, 2021).
Mead spent close to nine months in Samoa during which she studied 68
girls in several villages of the island communities. She reported that unlike
an American teenager, Samoan adolescent girls did not experience turmoil
and angst of teenage years and were capable of sexual adjustment. As a
result, the transition from adolescence to adulthood was not marked with
a period of stress or trauma. Adult Samoans were of a pleasing demeanor,
devoid of aggression, and violence in their emotions (Kuper, 1989; Library
of Congress, 2021). Thus, Mead concluded that the behaviour of American
teenagers was culturally specific and did not have a physiological basis to
it. She also believed that Samoan girls did not face the trauma of making
difficult social choices in terms of peer groups and partners owing to the
homogenous nature of the society. She urged American educationists to
focus on a system of education that prepared the American adolescent
population to make right choices in a heterogenous society like America
that offered an array of options to the youth. Mead found the period of
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transition among the Samoans, extremely comfortable as it was free from Coming of Age in Samoa
the ‘strum and dang’ of the teen years in the western societies. The Samoan -M. Mead
youth were recognized for their economic and domestic roles only when
they attained the age of 15 or 16 years. In order to explain it further, Mead
exemplified the lack of strict parental control among the Samoans especially
with respect to the sexual behavior of the youth. As opposed to this liberal
style of parenting, the American youth had to undergo strict regulations set
up by the parents which was responsible for conflicts between the parents
and the children (Mead, 1928).
From a methodological point of view, ‘some critics of Mead’s Samoan field
study have objected to her choice of housing on the island of Ta’u, where
she conducted her study of adolescent girls. She chose to live in the naval
dispensary with an American family rather than in a Samoan household.
In this previously unavailable letter to Ruth Benedict, Mead explains her
decision and expresses concern that she may be “coddling” herself by not
living in a Samoan household’ (Library of Congress, 2021).

7.4 THEORETICAL PERSPECTIVES IN

READING COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
The text popularized the method of participant observation while conducting
Anthropological fieldwork. Shortly before Margaret Mead began her study
among the Samoans, Anthropology had witnessed a major shift in its
methodology of studying ‘native communities’. Bronislaw Malinowski,
during his stay at Melanesia, introduced the modern technique of ‘doing
Anthropology’ through participant observation which required the researcher
to learn the ‘native language’ in order to understand the ‘native’s point of
view’. Mead found Anthropology to be much better in terms of pursuing the
cause of ‘simple societies’ that did not have complex documented historical
accounts recorded for them.
The ethnographic method employed by Margaret Mead included dialogues
and discussions with her informants, which was a significant departure
from the strictly scientific outlook of the researchers at the time. Moreover,
instead of opting for a longitudinal study, Margaret Mead favored a more
cross-sectional approach owing to paucity of time and resources. As a result,
she interacted with girls of different age groups in order to understand their
worldview and their behavior in the Samoan society. Mead intended to
argue that the causes of adolescent trauma could be solely found in the
social environment of the youth and genetics played limited or no role
in determining the discord they felt during those years. Needless to say,
Mead’s observations yielded support for her cultural deterministic notions
and she went on to theorize about the culture personality interrelationship.
Mead notes that ‘The Samoan background which makes growing up so
easy, so simple a matter, is the general casualness of the whole society.
For Samoa is a place where no one plays for very high stakes, no one pays
very heavy prices, no one suffers for his convictions or fights to the death
for special ends. Disagreements between parent and child are settled by
the child’s moving across the street, between a man and his village by the
man’s removal to the next village, between a husband and his wife’s seducer
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Ethnographic Cases by a few fine mats… In this casual attitude towards life, in this avoidance
of conflict, of poignant situations, Samoa contrasts strongly not only with
America but also with most primitive civilisations. And however much we
may deplore such an attitude and feel that important personalities and great
art are not born in so shallow a society, we must recognise that here is a
strong factor in the painless development from childhood to womanhood.
For where no one feels very strongly, the adolescent will not be tortured
by poignant situations” (Mead, 1928; pp. 209-210). Admittedly, this was a
comparative analysis of the Samoan society by Margaret Mead vis-à-vis the
American society and despite the comparative nature of the research Mead
still managed to remain a cultural relativist(Cultural relativism is the ability
to understand a culture on its own terms and not to make judgments using the
standards of one’s own culture). She was of the opinion that the American
society needed to overcome the feeling of cultural superiority over these
communities. Mead is acknowledged for strengthening the idea of cultural
relativism in a discipline fraught with comparative studies as a result of
deeply embedded ethnocentrism among the practitioners of not just science
but of social science owing to an evolutionary outlook towards the society.
According to Newman (1996) Margaret Mead is also significant in shaping
the discourse on race in western ‘white’ liberal feminism. Newman
considers Mead as an instrumental scholar who challenged the Victorian
notion of sexual restraint among the ‘civilized’ white women and the black
man’s ‘bestiality’ in order to discourage any alliance between the two. Thus,
making Margaret Mead an ‘anti-racist’ and an opponent of ethnocentrism.
However, this did not restructure the western liberal feminist thought which
was still racially biased but it did begin a conversation on the ‘cultural bases’
of differences among people and their behavior. Margaret Mead’s research
helped in challenging the notion of cultural superiority and the evolutionary
racism of the American society. But, the research also reasserted the
superiority of a white woman over her ‘primitive’ counterparts as she was
still on a mission to civilize the ‘savages’ as a Anthropologist and explorer.

7.5 RECEPTION AND LEGACY OF MARGARET

MEAD’S COMING OF AGE IN SAMOA
Despite such significant contributions to the academic discourses in
Anthropology and other associated disciplines Margaret Mead’s research of
the Samoan adolescents has often been brought under scrutiny. One of the
most frequent remarks being her tendency to romanticize with the Samoans.
Furthermore, Mead had been criticized for her ‘ahistorical’ approach i.e.,
a systematic overlooking of the context in which Samoan adolescent girls
behaved the way they did. It seemed preposterous to many scholars, that in the
absence of a sound methodological framework, Margaret Mead went ahead
and suggested changes in the lives of American teenagers and the parenting
styles of American parents. Several Anthropologists and sociologists that
followed her research, have questioned the validity and reliability of the
data she collected and the techniques employed by her in doing so. In
1954, Lowell Holmes proceeded to the American Samoa, specifically the
Ta’u islands to conduct a ‘methodological restudy’ of Margaret Mead’s
research. Holmes stated that despite the novelty of ethnographic techniques
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like participant observation, Margaret Mead’s research was quite reliable Coming of Age in Samoa
(Holmes, 1987). -M. Mead

The constant and regular debates surrounding Margaret Mead’s research

have instigated academic discourses on the subject of ethnographic
techniques, reflexive methodology in ethnography, observer bias, feminist
discourses and so on. According to psychology professor Alison Gopnik
‘Mead’s work was attacked, in a way that now seems transparently sexist
and ideologically motivated, and the unfair charge that she fabricated her
data still lingers in the public imagination. Her methods, as she herself
recognized, were not as careful and rigorous as later anthropologists’ – she
and the other pioneers were more or less making them up as they went along
– but there is no doubt that her observations of Samoa were genuine and
accurate’ (Gopnik, 2019).
Dreger (2013) agrees that Mead had a political and theoretical agenda
guiding her research and in drawing the conclusions following her research
and comparing it with that of the American lifestyle, Mead fulfilled her own
motives of sexual freedom and liberal values. In many ways, this progressive
outlook of Margaret Mead challenged the morality of the American society
and made her findings seemed slightly controversial and ahead of time
despite the diverse and broad readership of the text.
Some of the most scathing criticism received by Margaret Mead’s Coming of
Age in Samoa, came from Derek Freeman who, among other things gained
prominence for re-evaluating the research and claims of Franz Boas and
his students. In 1987, Freeman published his book refuting the research by
Margaret Mead in Samoa entitled Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making
and unmaking of an anthropological myth. This book was a culmination of
Freeman’s fieldwork in Samoan islands in 1940 where, as per his claims,
he found many methodological gaps in the research conducted by Mead.
Freeman learned to speak Samoan and stayed on the island for two years in
order to empirically conclude his research. Freeman returned to the islands
in 1965 with his family in order to carry out a more systematic study of the
islands. He eventually travelled to the T’au islands to record the interviews
of informants that had once interacted with Mead or who had been around
when Mead was conducting her research. Freeman claims that even after
four decades, some of the Samoans vividly remembered the kind of society
American Samoa was at the time of Mead’s arrival. Freeman ended up
making several visits to the Islands and challenging the ethnographic research
of Margaret Mead. He claimed that Mead had overlooked the problematic
aspects of sexual aggression and violence among the Samoans and had
‘generalized’ her findings without proper validation (Freeman, 1987).
In his historical analysis of Mead’s research, Freeman has termed Margaret
Mead and Franz Boas’s denial of the role of genetics in determining
personality as an ‘egregious anthropological error’ in the light of the evidences
presented by the Human Genome Project. Freeman also believed that the
findings of Margaret Mead in Samoa were completely unscientific and in
fact were nothing less than ‘anthropological fiction’ (Freeman, 2017; p.121).
It is noteworthy that following the criticism by Derek Freeman, several
Anthropologists have come in support of Margaret Mead’s research as they
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Ethnographic Cases believe that even Freeman could not be spared from observer bias and his
own research was solely guided by the intent of finding gaps in Mead’s
ethnographic techniques, and methodology in general. Paul Shankman
(2009 & 2013) who obtained access to Freeman’s interviews with the
Samoan Islanders, claimed that the political climate, and the conditions
of Samoan islands had changed drastically in the four decades. Shankman
believes that Freeman’s ‘trashing’ of Mead’s research in Samoa has led to
irreparable damage to her reputation. Shankman noted that Freeman’s data
was obtained under completely different circumstances. For instance, he
takes the example of Fa’apua’a, a significant informant of Margaret Mead,
who was a devout Christian and ceremonial virgin when she was interviewed
by Derek Freeman, called Mead a ‘liar’ because she was offended by
Mead’s perception of her sexuality. In general, a trend appeared among the
educated Samoans that Margaret Mead had somehow misrepresented their
community. According to Shankman, Derek Freeman seems to have banked
on such beliefs of the Samoans, and saw himself as a brave “heretic,” a man
saving true science from Mead’s mere ideology (Dreger, 2013).
Dreger (2013) further cites the book of Martin Orans ‘Not Even Wrong:
Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman and the Samoans’ published in 1996 to
assert that Freeman may have reduced the efforts of Margaret Mead a little
too much in claiming that she was misled by a bunch of adolescents merely
joking about their sexual lives and teasing Mead about it by making casual
references. According to Orans, Mead had collected data from 68 adolescent
girls and not just Fa’apua’a, so her conclusions may not be considered as
mere extensions of a joke. They were empirical in their own regard given
the novelty of ethnographic techniques.
Check your progress II
Q6. Explain the ethnographic approach of Margaret Mead’s research in
American Samoa.
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Q7. Discuss the modern techniques of ‘doing Anthropology’ as propounded
by Malinowski and Mead.
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Q8. Write a note on Derek Freeman’s opinion of Mead’s research and
highlight other salient criticisms of Coming of Age in Samoa.
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Q9. Briefly discuss the contributions of the text Coming of Age in Samoa
to the discipline of Anthropology.
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 ……………………………………………………………………… Coming of Age in Samoa
-M. Mead
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Q10. Discuss the key features of the text Coming of Age in Samoa.
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7.6 SUMMARY
In this unit, the reader is familiarized with the ethnographic text Coming
of Age in Samoa – A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western
Civilization published by Margaret Mead in 1928. The text is based on
Margaret Mead’s research in the American Samoan islands and is a significant
chapter in the history and development of Ethnographic methodology in
the discipline of Anthropology. The unit includes a description of the text,
the socio-cultural context in which the ethnographic text was written and
published, and the methods and techniques employed by Margaret Mead.
Since, Coming of Age in Samoa is dedicated to understanding the adolescent
life of Samoan islanders especially their notion of sexual freedom and
teenage turmoil, the text has been embroiled in several controversies and
debates since its publication. Despite its inherent academic shortcomings
due to the novelty of methods employed by Margaret Mead, Coming of Age
in Samoa is a landmark text in the area of the study of simple societies and
has contributed immensely towards knowledge building. As a result, the
unit includes key theoretical ideas propounded by Margaret Mead, and her
mentor Franz Boas.

7.7 REFERENCES
Freeman, D. (1972). Social organization of Manu’a (1930 and 1969), by
Margaret Mead: Some errata. The Journal of the Polynesian Society, 81(1),
70-78.
Freeman, D. (1983). Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and unmaking
of an anthropological myth. Australian National University Press.
Freeman, D. (2017). Dilthey’s Dream: Essays on human nature and culture.
ANU Press.
Holmes, L. D. (1987). Quest for the Real Samoa: The Mead/ Freeman
controversy & beyond. Bergin & Garvey.
Krek, J. (2020). Understanding the discourse of early childhood education
in coming of age in Samoa. SAGE Open, 10(1), 2158244020902083.
Kuper, A. (1989). Coming of age in anthropology? Nature, 338(6215), 453-
455.
Mead, M. (1961). Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of
Primitive Youth for Western Civilization. 1928. New York: Morrow.
Mead, M. (1995, February). Selection from coming of age in Samoa. In
Child and Youth Care Forum (Vol. 24, No. 1, pp. 67-76). Kluwer Academic
Publishers-Human Sciences Press.
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Ethnographic Cases Newman, L. M. (1996). Coming of age, but not in Samoa: Reflections on
Margaret Mead’s legacy for western liberal feminism. American Quarterly,
48(2), 233-272.
Shankman, P. (2009). The trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an
anthropological controversy. University of Wisconsin Press.
Shankman, P. (2013). The “fateful hoaxing” of Margaret Mead: A cautionary
tale. Current Anthropology, 54(1), 51-70.
Weiner, A. B. (1983). Ethnographic determinism: Samoa and the Margaret
Mead controversy. American Anthropologist, 85(4), 909-919.
Electronic Sources –
CEC. (2019, December 3). Margaret Mead - Coming of Age in Samoa.
Retrieved from Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LTSI_
ueqNqQ&t=341s
Dreger, A. (2013, February 15). Sex, Lies, and Separating Science From
Ideology. Retrieved from The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/
archive/2013/02/sex-lies-and-separating-science-from-ideology/273169/
Gopnik, A. (2019, August). The Students of Sex and Culture. Retrieved from
The Atlantic : https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2019/08/
zora-neale-hurston-margaret-mead/592783/
Library of Congress. (2021, November 8). Margaret Mead: Human Nature
and the Power of Culture. Retrieved from loc.gov: https://www.loc.gov/
exhibits/mead/field-samoa.html

7.8 ANSWERS TO CHECK YOUR PROGRESS

Check Your Progress 1
1. Refer to paragraph 1& 2 in the section 7.1
2. Refer to paragraph 2 in the section 7.2
3. Refer to paragraph 1 in the section 7.1.1
4. Refer to paragraph 1 & 2 in the section 7.2
5. Refer to paragraph 1 & 2 in the section 7.2
Check Your Progress 2
6. Refer to paragraph 1 & 2 in the section 7.4
7. Refer to paragraph 1 in the section 7.4
8. Refer to paragraphs 4 to 7 in the section 7.5
9. Refer to paragraphs 1 to 3 in the section 7.4
10. Refer to paragraphs 1 to 3 in the section 7.3

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