[PREV - TRASHING_MEAD] [TOP]
TRASHING_DEEPER
August 23, 2017
A review of "The Trashing of Margaret Mead"
by Paul Shankman
This is a very good book, thoroughly delving into
an intellectual controversy of recent decades that
has a number of fun angles to it, if you like that
sort of thing.
This is about an attack on Margaret Mead
by a Derek Freeman, who argued that her
original anthropological work-- discussed
in the bestseller "Coming of Age in
Samoa"-- was deeply flawed. Derek Freeman
spun this critique into a politically
charged cause celbre, portraying Margaret
Mead as a key source of the sexual
revolution, and a proponent of a radical When Shankman mentions that
environmental determinism-- both subjects Stephen Pinker adopted Derek
our conservative friends like to pretend Freeman in his war on "The
that they care about deeply. Blank Slate", I probably did
not groan audibly, but might
I personally found this an interesting book as well have.
because I was taken in by Derek Freeman's
attack-- I didn't look into it deeply, but
it seemed like an all too familiar story,
much like the problem with Freud.
THE_FREUD_SYNDROME
And actually, there is some justice to the
critique of Mead: she did some reasonably
solid ethnographic work, but in her popular
book on the subject, she indulged in
editorializing about the superiority of this
more sexually liberal island culture over
that of the repressed west. Now, that was
not at all a stupid argument to make-- Margaret Mead herself was
remember, the United States that Margaret quite the modern woman,
Mead grew up in really was pretty tightly juggling multiple male and
locked-down, and there is some evidence female lovers concurrent
(rates of out-of-wedlock pregnancy) that with a succession of
indicate Samoa was more sexually liberal in several marriages. It
those days -- but Mead really did idealize seemed plausible she was
Samoan culture in places, e.g. asserting projecting what she wanted
that Samoan teenage girls were completely to see on Samoa, and it
without neuroticism. remains plausible to me
after reading Shankman.
Shankman makes no pretense of being objective or
un-biased, but he does seem to be striving to be fair.
He stays with the evidence throughout. There were some
points at the outset that aroused my suspicions-- I
initially had the feeling the author was focusing on
attacking Derek Freeman, and seemed to be neglecting the
actual case for or against Margaret Mead's work-- but by
the end of the book I think he covers the full range of
what needs to be covered.
There are many angles to cover on this controversy,
presuming you care to dig in:
We tend to assume that anthropogists are studying
an unspoiled native culture that's ancient and
unchanging, but actually cultural change is not
something that the West has a monopoly on, and in
any case "unspoiled" cultures (i.e. ones without
contact with the West) are few and far between, and
Samoa certainly doesn't qualify -- it was the site
of missionaries, American navy bases and so on.
One of the things that shoots
down some of Derek Freeman's
extreme claims for Samoan
chastity is there was a history And it's pretty clearly
of complaints about prostitution something Freeman must've
surrounding the navy bases. known about, though he
acted like he didn't.
In general there's no particular reason to assume that
the sexual behavior of 1920s Samoa is at all identical
to that of present day. Certainly, promiscuous behavior
has waxed and waned in the West during that period...
Another issue is that things are different for the
upper classes, which had a tradition of ceremonial
virgins and a public, ritual defloration...
Yes, virginity was highly valued, in a sense, but
the young women Margaret Mead was in contact were
not members of that class.
Then there's a difference between public
and private behavior... if you asked the
President of Barnard college about
lesbian behavior back when Mead was Derek Freeman's side had a
there, you would probably not have heard nice gotcha: one surviving
much about her circle of friends and member of the group of women
lovers (they called themselves "The Ash Mead talked to had repudiated
Can Cats"). Similarly, most of the vocal what she'd said to Mead,
objections to Mead's thesis come from the claiming she was just kidding,
respectable elders... and Mead didn't get it.
Shankman found one Samoan who A lot of how you feel about
took the trouble to study what this depends on whether you
Freeman was actually saying about trust what this woman said
Samoan culture, and this Samonan when old and respectable
was somewhat taken aback to find about what she said when she
it was not as flattering as some was young. And also, your
Samoans assume: Derek Freeman judgment about how well
painted a portrait of a tightly young Margaret Mead could
repressed, violent culture where judge what people were saying
rape is common. to her in a recently acquired
language-- but it isn't like
she didn't understand
that Samoan teenagers joke
around.
One gets the sense that younger
Samoans just think this dispute
is kind of funny... Shankman
quotes some dialog between young
women discussing the issue that
runs something like:
"You see there was this white woman who said
we do it all the time, and there's this white
guy who says we don't do it at all."
"But... how did she know that we do it all
the time?"
"No, no, you do it all the time, we don't."
--------
[NEXT - THE_FREUD_SYNDROME]