Margaret Mead and Samoa

Terms / Concepts

• Great Debates and Controversies in Anthropology
  
  
  • Margaret Mead - Derek Freeman debate

Margaret Mead

Derek Freeman

 

• "nature vs. nurture" debate
  
  
• eugenicists
  • people ("scientists") who think the human race could be improved by selective breeding
    
    
• "recreational lying"
  
  
• "standardization of error"

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Notes

• Great Debates in Anthropology:
  
  
  • Lewis - Redfield Debate
    
    
    • Ideationism vs. Cultural Materialism
      
      
  • Mead Freeman Controversy -- Cara Fraver
    
    
    • Biological Determinism vs. Cultural Constructionism
      ( “nature vs. nurture”)
      ( “learned vs. inherited”)
      
      
    • Individual Agency vs. Structuralism
      ( “free will” vs. “power structures”)
      
      
  • Darkness in El Dorado Controversy (Yanomamó)
    
    
  • creation - evolution

• Girls say they lied to Margaret Mead
  
  
• Margaret Mead went back to Manus but not Taû
  
  
• Derek Freeman thinks that Margaret Mead is talking about her own self
  • about her own problems in the United States

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Cultures / Sites

• Polynesia, American Samoa, Taû
  
  
  • World of Polynesia
  • Samoan Sensation
  • Coming of Age in Samoa, 1928
    
    
• Admirality Islands
  
  
• New Guinea, Manus, Pere Village
  
  
• Growing Up in New Guinea, 1930
  
  
  • her work in Pere Village "stands out from the rest of her work"
    
    
• "Big Man"
• "Big Woman"
  
  
• Major Research: How culture influences the personality of a child
  
  
• New Guinea, Sepik River, Arapesh, Mundugumor, Chambri
  
  
  • Sex and Temperament, 1935

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Individuals

Margaret Mead Derek Freeman Mary Catherine Bateson Franz Boas Ruth Benedict Robin Fox Jane Howard (biographer) Laura Nader Lowell D. Holmes (museum) Richard Goodman

References

• Coming of Age in Samoa -- Margaret Mead

  

• Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth -- Derek Freeman



• Quest for the Real Samoa -- Lowell Holmes