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August 23, 2017
December 7, 2017
From reading...
"The Trashing of Margaret Mead"
by Paul Shankman
I conclude that Margaret Mead's early work
of anthropology, studying teenage girls in
Samoa, was both an impressive piece of
work for it's time, but also flawed by
polemicism-- in particular in her popular Some conservative critics
bestseller, "Coming of Age in Samoa". She circa the 1990s also
overplayed her case somewhat, projecting overplayed their case,
what she wanted to see on Samoan people... smearing her reputation
at least to some extent. and (probably) exaggerating
the influence of her mistakes.
Determing just how bad the problem
was is actually remarkably difficult...
Mead made claims that the Samoans
were more relaxed about
sexuality, and hence Saoman
teenagers were entirely free of
the neuroticism that dominated
the lives of American girls...
There's evidence that she was correct
that they were more relaxed, certainly
compared to the United States of the
1920s-- but neither was Saoma some
sort of free love paradise.
Samoans later objected to the way she
characterized them (or the way they
think she characterized them).
Sorting out the details of all this
gets into very murky waters, however: TRASHING_DEEPER
and there are many potential sources
of confusion...
Then there's the difficulty that Mead's primary critic,
Derek Freeman, while not at all ignorant of Samoan native
culture, was also arguably clinically insane, and given to a
messianic complex in his war on Mead's legacy.
Then there's the fact that this was picked up as an
aspect of the conservative culture wars on all things
liberal, a politicized atmosphere not exactly conducive
to nuanced judgement...
Now, the book in more detail:
TRASHING_DEEPER
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