Paul Shankman

The “Fateful Hoaxing” of Margaret Mead

In the Mead-Freeman controversy, Derek Freeman’s historical reconstruction of the alleged hoaxing of Margaret Mead in 1926 relied on three interviews with Fa’apua’a Fa’amū, Mead’s “principal informant,” who stated that she and another Samoan woman had innocently joked with Mead about their private lives. In turn, Freeman argued that Mead believed these jokes as the truth and that they were the basis for her interpretation of adolescent sex in Coming of Age in Samoa. The unpublished interviews with Fa’apua’a became the centerpiece of Freeman’s second book on the controversy, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead (1999). Yet an analysis of Mead’s relationship with Fa’apua’a demonstrates that she was not an informant for Mead on adolescent sex, and an examination of the three interviews used by Freeman does not support his interpretation of them. In fact, responding to direct questioning during the interviews, Fa’apua’a stated that Mead did not ask her questions about her own sexual conduct or about adolescent sexual conduct. Nor did she provide Mead with information on this subject. Crucial passages from these interviews were omitted by Freeman in his publications on the alleged hoaxing. Based on the interviews themselves, there is no compelling evidence that Mead was hoaxed.

Culture, Biology, and Evolution: The Mead-Freeman Controversy Revisited

Derek Freeman argues that the central issue in the Mead–Freeman controversy is evolution. He views Margaret Meads Coming of Age in Samoa as not only misleading about Samoa but as a “sacred text” that promoted an antievolutionary paradigm among American cultural anthropologists. A review of Meads writing on culture, biology, and evolution demonstrates that contrary to Freemans claim, Mead favored an evolutionary approach throughout her career. Moreover, while Meads book was a popular text and a bestseller, it was not a “sacred text” among anthropologists. Freemans misrepresentation of the historical record concerning Meads views and the place of Coming of Age in anthropology raises major questions about his scholarship.

The Public Anthropology of Margaret Mead: Redbook, Women’s Issues, and the 1960s

Margaret Mead was anthropology’s most significant public voice during the twentieth century. Her monthly columns in Redbook magazine (1962–1978), which had a subscription base of more than 3 million women in the 1960s, were perhaps her most important public forum. These columns, coauthored with Rhoda Métraux, were sometimes in brief question-and-answer format but more often were lengthy thought pieces. An analysis of these longer columns on women’s issues from 1962 through 1970 reveals Mead’s thinking about women’s roles during this era of change. Mead was an advocate of abortion rights and no-fault divorce, yet on other issues she was not an opinion leader, supporting public norms on premarital sex, motherhood, and marriage while criticizing feminists of the period. She was also reluctant to discuss discrimination against women as a group until 1970. To understand Mead’s views, her Redbook columns can be read in tandem with the broader history of public opinion during this period and her own personal career. This article concludes with a discussion of Mead’s success as a public intellectual in this forum and why her kind of public anthropology is unlikely to be replicated by anthropologists today.

Ecology, warfare, and politics in the New Guinea highlands

Mervyn Meggitt. Blood Is Their Argument: Warfare Among the Mae Enga Tribesmen of the New Guinea Highlands. Palo Alto: Mayfield, 1977. xii + 223 pp. Tables, figures, glossary, and index.

In search of Derek Freeman

4.95, paper.

The Mead–Freeman Controversy Continues: A Reply to Ian Jarvie:

Abstract Truth’s Fool is a sympathetic biography of Derek Freeman, the anthropologist best known for his scathing critique of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa. Hempenstall, a historian, chronicles Freeman’s life and work, including an appraisal of the Mead–Freeman controversy. Hempenstall is interested in Freeman’s ideas, motives, and intentions as well as his personal struggles. He argues that Freeman has been misunderstood, maligned, and vilified in an uncivil “war” among cultural anthropologists. This review examines Hempenstall’s interpretation of Freeman’s personal struggles and his perspective on Freeman’s two books on Mead and Samoa.

On Geertz's Theoretical Program: A Reply to Davis

In the Mead–Freeman controversy, Ian Jarvie has supported much of Derek Freeman’s critique of Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa, arguing that Samoan society was sexually repressive rather than sexually permissive, that Mead was “hoaxed” about Samoan sexual conduct, that Mead was an “absolute” cultural determinist, that Samoa was a definitive case refuting Mead’s “absolute” cultural determinism, that Mead’s book changed the direction of cultural anthropology, and that Freeman’s personal conduct during the controversy was thoroughly professional. This article calls into question these empirical and theoretical arguments, often using Freeman’s own field research and publications.

A journalistic odyssey through the third world

TURNER, CHRISTY G., II. 1967. The dentition of Arctic peoples Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wis. . 1969. Microevolutionary interpretations from the dentition American Journal of Physical Anthropology 30:421-26. . 1984. Advances in the dental search for Native Americar origins. Acta Anthropogenetica 8:23-78. TURNER, CHRISTY G., II, and J. CADIEN. 1969. Dental chipping in Aleuts, Eskimos, and Indians. American Journal of Physical Anthropology 31:303-10. TURNER, CHRISTY G., II, and JACQUELINE TURNER. 1974. Progress report on evolutionary anthropological study of Akun Strait district, eastern Aleutians, Alaska. Anthropological Papers of the University of Alaska 16:27-57.

The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz

Richard Critchfield. Villages. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1981. x + 388 pp. Postscript, notes, and index.

The Thick and the Thin: On the Interpretive Theoretical Program of Clifford Geertz [and Comments and Reply]

17.95