Margaret Mead

and the Mead-Freeman Controversy

Margaret Mead1901-1978

Student of Franz Boas at Cambridge, and later became a professor

Academic anthropologist and ethnographer

Popular writer for Redbook and other magazines ,

popularizing the field of anthropology

Anthropology demands the open-mindedness with which one must look and listen, record in

astonishment and wonder that which one would not have been able to guess.

Margaret Mead

Boasian Thought

Committed student of Franz Boas

Had a personal and academic relationship

with Ruth Benedict

Strong views of cultural determinism

Learned a scientific approach and

methodology in ethnographies

Boas proposed the ultimate question:

Is culture responsible for shaping an individual,

or is nature?

Mead believed the answers would be in

studying the behavior of children and adolescents, but already had a biased

opinion.

American Samoa 1925-

1926

Studied the sexual behaviors and attitudes of adolescent girls

Found them to be sexually promiscuous and free

Noted that teenagers could move freely between homes of relatives when

conflict aroseChildren gradually acquire

responsibilities of adulthood, making transition easy.

Cultural Relativism?

Mead extrapolated the attitudes among Samoan

teenagers to say:

Teenage behaviors such as rebellion and

promiscuity are entirely culturally derived, and therefore not innate in

humans.

Supported Boasian cultural determinism.

Fueled the American sexual revolution of the

60s and 70s

In retrospect:Cultural relativism?

Detachment?Preconceived bias?

Accuracy?

The way to do fieldwork is never to

come up for air until it is all over.

-Mead

Mead-Freeman Controversy

Derek Freeman’s restudy of Samoan

culture

Found Mead’s work entirely in error

Believed Samoans were violent and did not view sex and growing up as Mead believed they did

Said Mead generalized and stretched the truth

to prove Boasian theories and her own preconceived notions

I was brought up to believe that the only thing worth doing was to add to the sum of accurate information in the world.

-Mead

Nature vs. Nurture Debate

Mead: Culture shapes a person – traits are NOT biologically determined

Freeman: The nature of a person is biological, but

culture can change things

The Conclusion?