Coming Of Age in America

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Margaret Mead, unlike many in her field, realized that society was not a predetermined product, but something that was produced through our beliefs and behaviors. Mead became the first Anthropologist to study a foreign society in the field, actually living with the society to better understand them. Her work has become the stepping-stone for Anthropology today and is still studied today. In this paper I will explore Margaret Meads' book Coming of Age in Somoa and why it was a forefront to anthropology, but has become a controversy in modern anthropology.

Margaret Mead revolutionized the way in which a culture is viewed. Before Meads' work, American theorists had observed the beliefs and behaviors of Americans, and from their observations they had developed characteristics, which they claimed were due to the period. From their observations the theorists concluded, "This is a difficult period." Mead questioned these theories, particularly those dealing with adolescents, saying

"One by one, aspects of behavior which we had been accustomed to consider invariable complements of our humanity were found to be merely a result of our civilization, present in the inhabitants of one country, absent in another country, and this without a change of race."

It was arguments like these that lead Margaret Mead to Samoa, a place unknown by many Americans and a place that was drastically different as a civilization.

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In Samoa, Margaret focused her studies to that of adolescent girl, because she felt she could learn more from women, being a woman herself, and because there had been fewer studies of women. She spent nine months gathering detailed facts about the girls; the size of their family, the position and wealth of their parents, the number of their brothers and sisters, and the amount of sex experience they had. With this information, Mead developed a cultural structure that was very different from that of Americans. In the book Coming of Age in Samoa, Mead depicts the Samoan society as idyllic, free from guilt, anger, stress or violence. Of course, this is much different from America, which is filled with guilt, anger, stress and violence. The question then is; was Meads research true to the actual nature of Samoa? An Australian anthropologist, named Derek Freeman, argues that his own travels to Samoa left him with an entirely different perspective.

In 18, Derek Freeman wrote the book Margaret Mead and Samoa The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. In the book, Freeman argues that after three years of living in Samoa he had found elements of Samoan society that were consistent with other cultures, including jealousy, anger and guilt, and concluded that there was an essential human nature that existed regardless of culture. I believe this is likely true and that Margaret Mead was so anxious to show how cultures and societies can differ from that of America, that she made it sound better than it truly was. This no doubtingly helped to convoy her message to the American people. The popularity of the book was likely due to its fairy tale story line, but the result was a more caring relationship for different cultures. Derek Freeman may prove that Margaret Meads' work was not all that genuine the impact the book has had on anthropology can never be taken.

Many of the issues in which Margaret faced in her time are still seen today. However, we are now able to better understand why we have many cultural issues. The people that Mead questioned, we now know as being ethnocentric. These are people who try to judge someone by their own cultural experiences. So, for the Americans in the 10's their only cultural experiences would be the American culture, and anything else would likely be judged as being "wrong." Today, most people are still ethnocentric, due to a lack of knowledge of other cultures. Americans constantly attempt to change cultures to a way they feel is right, without trying to understand what the culture is really about. For example, an American baby food company tried to provide baby food jars to an African tribe in an attempt to show their support for the thousands of babies that were dying. What the company did not realized was that the tribe's culture was illiterate and so when they were given the jar with a baby picture they thought they were being given ground up baby. These types of issues are becoming more frequent as The United States and other large nations try to become more "globalized" without having an understanding of whom they are serving.

Margaret Mead on the other hand can be characterized as being culturally relative. Cultural relativism is the ability to view a culture in a way that is unbiased and to then be able to learn from that experience. Mead was unsure of the Samoan culture, and instead of just saying it was different she attempted to learn how it was different. An American company that has been able to use this effectively is, Hershey. Hershey makes a lot of different candy bars but one of the most popular is the Kit Kat Bar. The Kit Kat Bar is found in over 40 countries in the world, but if you were to taste the Kit Kat in France and the Kit Kat in America you would notice a difference. This is because the Hershey's Corporation realized that the cultural preferences of America and France were very different. This is true for many other things too. Such things as family, work, time, and religion all have different influences on cultures.

Another aspect of Anthropology that Margaret Mead revolutionized is the way in which anthropology was studied. Mead not only traveled outside of her culture but she also studied her culture in the field. Before her, most anthropology was done in an "armchair," or through the use of reading. Anthropologists used the literary works of theorists and explorers to develop characteristics of a culture. Many of these works were bias and unfair. Mead proved that anthropology was best studied from a person's own experience through the use of field analysis. This also brings up the point that the experiences of one anthropologist can be very different from another, in the same culture. Who they talk to and what they may experience can bring different interpretations. Culture may have defining features but it does not have detailed figure. There are many organizations, primarily in the U.S., that have now been designed to develop characteristics of nations. The characteristics these organizations have developed often times contradict one another, and this likely because they have surveyed different groups, who have dissimilar interesting but live under one culture.

Early anthropology was very single-minded study of human behavior, which lead to unfair assumptions. Margaret Mead realized that society was not a predetermined product, but something that was produced through our beliefs and behaviors. She questioned the credibility of her colleagues and changed the way we view anthropology. In the past twenty years much of the world has been rapidly moving towards the idea of globalization, a binding of nations through economic interests. This has in affect brought more ethnocentrism into the world as large nations like the U.S. begin to demand that other smaller nations conform to their ways of life. The result of such these acts has been such things as terrorism. I believe that globalization inevitable, but that it will likely have much resistance from smaller countries where culture beliefs are a way of life. Thomas L. Friedman makes the point "A healthy global society is one that can balance the Lexus and the olive tree all the time…" What Friedman is saying is that success of nations in the future will be dependant on their ability to balance their culture along with their economic interests.

1. Freeman, Derek 18 Margaret Mead and Samoa The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge Harvard University Press.

. Friedman, Thomas The Lexus and the Olive Tree. United States First Anchor Books Edition, April 000

. Mead, Margaret Coming of Age in Samoa

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