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Samoa Fieldwork
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Margaret Mead spent nine months in 1925 and 1926 on the island of Tau in American Samoa, interviewing and observing a sample of adolescent girls to test whether the emotional stress associated with adolescence in the United States was a universal biological fact or a product of American culture. She concluded that Samoan adolescence passed without the turmoil common in the United States, evidence she read as showing that culture, not biology alone, shapes the experience of growing up. Published as Coming of Age in Samoa in 1928, the fieldwork became one of the best selling anthropological works ever written and a foundational text of American cultural anthropology. Derek Freeman's 1983 book challenged Mead's findings and her fieldwork methods; the dispute is recorded on this page's own relationship to Freeman.
Facts
YearSourced to the subject's own account MethodSourced to the subject's own accountOver six to nine months in 1925-1926, Margaret Mead lived among, observed and interviewed 68 young Samoan women aged 9 to 20, having learned some Samoan, studying their daily living, education, social structure and rituals. 1 Key FindingSourced to the subject's own accountMead concluded the passage from childhood to adulthood in Samoa was a smooth transition, not marked by the emotional turmoil American adolescents were assumed to experience, an argument for culture over biology in shaping adolescent development. 1 LocationSourced to the subject's own accountA village of about 600 people on the island of Ta'u, American Samoa. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Conducted By
Critiqued Here
Derek Freeman, Scientists Why this is disputed. Freeman's 1983 book argued Mead's conclusions about untroubled Samoan adolescence were wrong, that she had been misled by informants who later said they had been joking or boasting, and that her nine months of fieldwork at nineteen were too brief and too shaped by Boas's own thesis about culture and biology to be reliable. Mead's defenders, including several anthropologists who carried out later fieldwork in Samoa, responded that Freeman overstated the certainty of his own claims, that Samoan society changed considerably between Mead's 1925 visit and Freeman's own fieldwork decades later, and that Mead's book was more nuanced than either side's popular account of the dispute suggests. The controversy remains unresolved among anthropologists and is treated here as contested rather than settled in either direction.
Sources
1. Coming of Age in Samoa (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia, Coming of Age in Samoa, Fieldwork sectionQuote, Wikipedia, Coming of Age in Samoa, Fieldwork section
a village of 600 people on the island of Ta'u, in which...she studied daily living, education, social structures and dynamics, rituals, etiquette, etc.
1. Coming of Age in Samoa (Wikipedia)
WikipediaWikipedia, Coming of Age in Samoa, Findings sectionQuote, Wikipedia, Coming of Age in Samoa, Findings section
the passage from childhood to adulthood (adolescence) in Samoa was a smooth transition and not marked by the emotional or psychological distress, anxiety, or confusion seen in the United States.
Margaret Mead and Samoa (Wikipedia)
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