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Little Room for the Anthropologist

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Little Room for the Anthropologist NATURE VOL.302 28 APRIL 1983 759 SPRING BOOKS deeply at variance with the facts of Samoan subject of virginity. He cited intense feeling Iences and contradictions characterize ethnography and history [p.l09]. about virginity on the part of mothers of girls, every society. Conflicting findings are However, the data sources and evidence and extreme preoccupation with the theft of sometimes taken as evidence that anthro­ presented by Mead and Freeman are quite girls in other villages on the part of young men in pological research is both subjective and different. Mead, then 23, worked with western Samoa. In thinking this over, I realized for the first time that the whole of the rivalry bet­ unreliable. And while Freeman presents adolescent and pre-adolescent girls in three ween the young men or the chiefs of different much evidence to contradict Mead's state­ villages in Manu'a. In an appendix she villages, could be expressed in the hope of one ments, he cannot claim to have reproduced presented data sheets for the analysis of group that they could do irreparable, asym­ her conditions of field work with adoles­ girls' age, family and social position, and metrical damage to the other group .... cent girls in Manu'a in 1925. His conten­ behaviour. She described adolescence as Translated into terms of behavior, it accounts tion that she was innocently duped and the best period of a woman's life, without for the continuous wariness and touchiness misled by village girls is unwarranted. stress or conflict, preoccupied with sex and which Samoans display in several contexts ever Why, one wonders, has not Freeman lovemaking. Mead contrasted the gentle alert lest something one would enjoy doing to written a new book on Samoa which incor­ others be done to oneself . .. and carefree adolescence of Samoans with We need much more detailed material on ear­ porates the results of his researches, rather the educational and social pressures upon ly childhood, material which hopefully Derek than a series of chapters devoted to Mead's American youth, urging America to be less Freeman's current fieldwork will provide "errors"? He amply demonstrates his demanding of its young. [p.227]. ability to describe the social, political and Freeman goes to great lengths to dis­ rank system of Samoa in a way that sum­ prove Mead's characterization of Samoan The very nature of ethnographic field marizes his research and that of many other adolescence. To establish that Samoan work, as a local study by a lone an­ scholars into a clear and consistent state­ youths have a similar pattern of violence to thropologist, raises questions about ment. One can only surmise that his was that in other countries, he cites court reliability and generalization. The field personal preference for criticism over con­ records of Western Samoa, for 1967, which worker pursues particular subjects and struction. By this choice, he has prevented show that males in the age-group 14-20 problems, chooses a community, works anthropologists from evaluating the poten­ constitute a high proportion of first closely with only some members of that tial of his biological explanation of offenders. It is as though observations of community, and publishes observations Samoan behaviour. Mead's work will con­ teenagers in a village such as Lower and conclusions based upon the fieldwork tinue to reflect its time and place, but Slaughter in 1925 are disproved by Birm­ and the information available from other Freeman has yet to demonstrate the ingham police records for 1967. Freeman sources. Subsequent research among the correctness of his position. 0 says, same people - in this case an island group Mead, then, was at error in her depiction of the with a population of over 150,000-is like­ Paula Brown Glick is Professor of Anthro­ nature of adolescence in Samoa, just as she was ly to find differences attributable to local pology at the State University of New York, .. in her portrayal of other crucial aspects of Stony Brook. She is author ofHighland Peoples conditions, historical changes, and inter­ of New Guinea (Cambridge University Press, Samoan life. This being so, her assertion in pretation or emphasis. Certainly ambiva- 1978). Coming of Age in Samoa of the absolute sovereignty of culture over biology, on the basis of these erroneous depictions, is clearly invalid, and her much-bruited "negative instance"* is science of anthropology, specially focused seen to have been no negative instance at all. In Little room for the on the relationship between the invidual other words, Mead's presentation of Samoa as and culture and on methods of assessing proving the insignificance of biology in the anthropologist that relationship. Cassidy's account of etiology of adolescent behavior is revealed as a how Boas set the theoretical problems of false case [p.268]. Mary Douglas her fieldwork project does not quite ring true. That towering scholar, geologist, Freeman's critique includes the com­ Margaret Mead: A Voice for the physicist, organizer of great Arctic and plaint that Mead never returned to Samoa, Century. north American expeditions, apparently nor revised her books on the basis of later By Robert Cassidy. first drew her attention to the cultural studies. In response to this, Mead speaks Universe Books: 1982. Pp.l76. $12.50. for herself in the preface to the 1973 edition variation in sexual mores. He is said to have of Coming of Age in Samoa: asked her whether adolescent troubles were MARGARET Mead, born into an academic peculiar to Western culture - how did Some young critics have even asked me when I family in Philadelphia in 1901, died inter­ young girls react to the constraints of am going to revise this book, and look unbeliev­ nationally famous and loaded with custom, was it true that primitive girls were ing and angry when I say that to revise it would be impossible. It must remain, as all anthro­ honours in 1978. Her remarkable life excessively bashful, did they develop pological works must remain, exactly as it deserves to be recorded and reflected upon. crushes and other forms of romantic love? was written, true to what l saw in Samoa, and of She was an anthropologist, a teacher, a It sounds more like what his student told what I was able to convey of what I saw. True to humanitarian, a popular writer, a media him she intended to study and clearly, even the state of our knowledge of human behavior as star and a lay preacher. Her record defies at that youthful age, she was not one to be it was in the mid-1920s, true to our hopes and classification but it invites a more reflective easily diverted from her purposes. fears for the future of the world (p.x]. treatment than is here provided by Robert In 1925 she went to Samoa, chosen by Further, Mead clearly acknowledged the Cassidy. His book suffers the usual limita­ her supervisors as a place where she could importance of the work of others, in­ tions of hagiography, strong in praise of be safe under the watchful eye of the cluding Freeman, in her conclusion to the the deceased and weak in dealing with the United States Department of the Navy. reissued Social Organization of Manu 'a in enigmas and problems of a person living in Mary Slessor and Mary Kingsley, much 1969: a particular place and time. We are left with earlier travellers in West Africa, and Edith hints - apparently fellow ethnologists Durham, travelling in the feuding Balkans, Then, in 1%5,1 met Derek Freeman for the first accorded her only "grudging admiration" would not have made much of the dangers time, and he challenged my material on the very and her success was definitely in the larger she faced in the South Pacific. On her mild Manu'an reactions I had reported on the community, "grandmother to America", return she wrote Coming of Age in Samoa •The "negative instance" is defined by Freeman "citizen of the world" or "voice for the published in 1928, which overnight became as Boas's view of scientific method in which a century". a bestseller. Perhaps the grudgingness of single negative case invalidates a hypothesis. In Her graduate work was in the University colleagues' admiration stemmed from this fact, Freeman dedicates his book to Karl Popper of Columbia, with Franz Boas and Ruth instant popular success, or perhaps it because of Popper's work on scientific method. Benedict. Boas was building up a new confirmed a wilful independence and sense © 1983 Nature Publishing Group -'~------------------------------------SPRINGBOOKS----------------------N_Aru__ ~ __ vo_L_.m __ ~_~ __ ~L___ 1~3 ADVERTISEMENT of power in the young scholar_ She was Cassidy not be sensitive to the import of his offered a post of Assistant Curator in the own remark: "After seven months she and American Museum of Natural History in Fortune had had their fill of the Arapesh". 1926 and declared that once she saw She felt she worked so much faster than through the windows of her attic room in anyone else; like a scientist, she chose a that august establishment she would never limited problem and could quickly tell move out. whether she had collected enough evidence Was it really this resolution that to settle the answer. Margaret Mead often prevented her from accepting any other complained that the British anthro­ academic appointment, as Cassidy im­ pologists were unappreciative of her plies? In 1954 she was made Adjunct Pro­ achievements. This hurry-hurry, single­ fessor in the Anthropology Department at issue style of field work explains a signifi­ Columbia but never improved upon that cant difference between herself and her part-time peripheral post until1968, when Fordham University asked the now ageing superstar to develop their department of Blue butterflies of the anthropology.
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