The Joys of Fieldwork?

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Margaret Mead (1901-1978), seen getting a hug in this picture,  was one of the most widely known anthropologists of her era. Mead, a student of both Ruth Benedict and Franz Boas, published ground breaking work on childhood, adolescence, and gender from the late 1920s through the 1960s. Additionally, she was a media figure and popular columnist in the 1950s and 1960s. Many pithy quotes are attributed (probably incorrectly) to Mead. My favorite is: "Always remember that you are absolutely unique. Just like everyone else." 

Mead was probably most famous for her 1928 book Coming of Age in Samoa, still in print almost 100 years later. Psychoanalytic theorists of the 1920s argued that adolescence was universally a troubled and difficult time of life. Mead argued that this was cultural rather than biological. Importantly, she thought that the key thing that made adolescence difficult for Westerners was Western and specifically American ideas of sexuality. She argued that on Samoa, sex wasn't such a big deal. The Samoan girls that she spoke with had much more sex and treated sex much more casually than American girls, and this led to much less troubled adolescent years. Coming of Age was controversial from the day it first appeared. Many interpreted it (correctly) as an attack on American sexual mores. In the 1980s, after her death, her work was savaged by Derek Freeman (1916-2001), an anthropologist from New Zealand who claimed that Mead's Samoan collaborators weren't serious when they told her about their sexual experiences. Freeman called his second book on the subject The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead. Controversy raged in anthropology for years in the 1980s and into the early 90's. However, in the end most anthropologists have sided with Mead. Her work was far from perfect (and it's good to keep in mind that she was only 25 when she did the fieldwork for the book) but the overall picture she presents has been corroborated repeatedly. And, consider this: Mead was a 25 year old women when she collected data from Samoan girls. Freeman collected the data he used to refute her as a 50 year old man. Who do you think Samoan girls were more likely to be honest with? Who do you think got hoaxed? Now, close to half a century after her death, Mead continues to be attacked by conservative cultural critics. In 2014, the arch conservative Intercollegiate Studies Institute placed Coming of Age as number one on its list of the worst books of the 20th century. Honestly, that might have made Mead happy. What would probably have made her far happier is the fact that her work continues to be read and most anthropologists see her as a founding figure in gender and sexuality studies, an area that has become increasingly important since her death, and continue to read her work of almost a century ago.

You can read a nice essay on Mead, Boas, Freeman, and conservative critics by clicking here.