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The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy
In 1928 Margaret Mead published Coming of Age in Samoa , a fascinating study of the lives of adolescent girls that transformed Mead herself into an academic celebrity. In 1983 anthropologist Derek Freeman published a scathing critique of Mead’s Samoan research, badly damaging her reputation. Resonating beyond academic circles, his case against Mead tapped into important public concerns of the 1980s, including sexual permissiveness, cultural relativism, and the nature/nurture debate. In venues from the New York Times to the TV show Donahue , Freeman argued that Mead had been “hoaxed” by Samoans whose innocent lies she took at face value.
In The Trashing of Margaret Mead , Paul Shankman explores the many dimensions of the Mead-Freeman controversy as it developed publicly and as it played out privately, including the personal relationships, professional rivalries, and larger-than-life personalities that drove it. Providing a critical perspective on Freeman’s arguments, Shankman reviews key questions about Samoan sexuality, the alleged hoaxing of Mead, and the meaning of the controversy. Why were Freeman’s arguments so readily accepted by pundits outside the field of anthropology? What did Samoans themselves think? Can Mead’s reputation be salvaged from the quicksand of controversy? Written in an engaging, clear style and based on a careful review of the evidence, The Trashing of Margaret Mead illuminates questions of enduring significance to the academy and beyond.
2010 Distinguished Lecturer in Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History
“ The Trashing of Margaret Mead reminds readers of the pitfalls of academia. It urges scholars to avoid personal attacks and to engage in healthy debate. The book redeems Mead while also redeeming the field of anthropology. By showing the uniqueness of the Mead-Freeman case, Shankman places his continued confidence in academia, scholars, and the field of anthropology.”— H-Net Reviews
In The Trashing of Margaret Mead , Paul Shankman explores the many dimensions of the Mead-Freeman controversy as it developed publicly and as it played out privately, including the personal relationships, professional rivalries, and larger-than-life personalities that drove it. Providing a critical perspective on Freeman’s arguments, Shankman reviews key questions about Samoan sexuality, the alleged hoaxing of Mead, and the meaning of the controversy. Why were Freeman’s arguments so readily accepted by pundits outside the field of anthropology? What did Samoans themselves think? Can Mead’s reputation be salvaged from the quicksand of controversy? Written in an engaging, clear style and based on a careful review of the evidence, The Trashing of Margaret Mead illuminates questions of enduring significance to the academy and beyond.
2010 Distinguished Lecturer in Anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History
“ The Trashing of Margaret Mead reminds readers of the pitfalls of academia. It urges scholars to avoid personal attacks and to engage in healthy debate. The book redeems Mead while also redeeming the field of anthropology. By showing the uniqueness of the Mead-Freeman case, Shankman places his continued confidence in academia, scholars, and the field of anthropology.”— H-Net Reviews
299 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
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March 17, 2012
In this book, Paul Shankman reveals how Derek Freeman's notorious attacks on Margaret Mead constituted one of the biggest manufactured scientific controversies of the 20th century. Far from circling the wagons around Mead, though, Shankman gives a level-headed account in which Mead comes in for her share of criticism as well.
The book gives a thorough history of the controversy and its players and then critically reviews the claims made for and against Freeman's work. Shankman does not refute Freeman so much as gives him rope to hang himself with. He demonstrates that Freeman's attacks on Mead in the popular media often contradicted his own scholarly work in Samoa and his knowledge of Mead's work. As the controversy played out, it became apparent that it was not so much academic in nature as a public relations campaign between Freeman and the late Mead as public figures and intellectuals. This was made more apparent by the fact that Freeman had waited until after Mead's death to go public with his accusations. Shankman documents how Freeman became increasingly mentally unhinged during from the 1980s on. While it may sound like an ad hominem, it's incredibly difficult to ignore Freeman's attempts at character assassination on his opponents and threats to ruin their careers and have their doctorates revoked.
Shankman, having been in contact with Mead and Freeman as well as having done his own field work in Samoa, has an insider's view. Drawing on this experience, he critically evaluates the work of both. He finds that Mead downplayed the incidence of rape and punishment for violating sexual norms in her field work. However, he also puts Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation in broader context. The book was directed toward a popular audience and not meant to be a definitive account of Mead's scholarship. While Shankman finds some of the conclusions she drew unsupported by the data collected in Samoa, he also notes how standards of field work have changed and the intellectual climate in which it was released. Coming of Age was in part a reaction to the extreme views of biological determinism that had become commonplace -- eugenics had hit the height of its popularity. (Some of the more hyperbolic claims weren't Mead's, either, but came from a foreword Franz Boas, her mentor, had slapped on the book.)
Freeman's portrayal of Mead's work in the popular media was mythical in nature. He spun Coming of Age as having established a non-existent "Mead paradigm" in anthropology that was allegedly cultural determinist, anti-biological, and unscientific. Coming of Age, however, never had the massive impact on anthropological method and theory that Freeman claimed. Freeman had developed an enormous Galileo complex -- almost always the mark of a crank. His later, even more inflated claims that Mead had been outright "hoaxed" by her informants, simply don't hold up to scrutiny.
Why did one academic's attack on another, dead, academic over the issue of life on a small group of islands in the Pacific become a public issue and a veritable spectator sport? One of the great strengths of Shankman's book is the wider context he places the controversy in. He notes the media's penchant for seeking scandal rather than accuracy and how many had only gotten a second-hand account of the controversy at best and allowed ideology to take over. Freeman's work played into the sociobiology debate and promoters of sociobiological approaches used it as a means to gain a toehold into wider academic debates. It also played into the hands of social conservatives (the Moral Majority crowd being ascendant in the 1980s) who sought to discredit Mead as part of a broader, sexually repressive political agenda.
This is the definitive history of the Mead-Freeman controversy.
The book gives a thorough history of the controversy and its players and then critically reviews the claims made for and against Freeman's work. Shankman does not refute Freeman so much as gives him rope to hang himself with. He demonstrates that Freeman's attacks on Mead in the popular media often contradicted his own scholarly work in Samoa and his knowledge of Mead's work. As the controversy played out, it became apparent that it was not so much academic in nature as a public relations campaign between Freeman and the late Mead as public figures and intellectuals. This was made more apparent by the fact that Freeman had waited until after Mead's death to go public with his accusations. Shankman documents how Freeman became increasingly mentally unhinged during from the 1980s on. While it may sound like an ad hominem, it's incredibly difficult to ignore Freeman's attempts at character assassination on his opponents and threats to ruin their careers and have their doctorates revoked.
Shankman, having been in contact with Mead and Freeman as well as having done his own field work in Samoa, has an insider's view. Drawing on this experience, he critically evaluates the work of both. He finds that Mead downplayed the incidence of rape and punishment for violating sexual norms in her field work. However, he also puts Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilisation in broader context. The book was directed toward a popular audience and not meant to be a definitive account of Mead's scholarship. While Shankman finds some of the conclusions she drew unsupported by the data collected in Samoa, he also notes how standards of field work have changed and the intellectual climate in which it was released. Coming of Age was in part a reaction to the extreme views of biological determinism that had become commonplace -- eugenics had hit the height of its popularity. (Some of the more hyperbolic claims weren't Mead's, either, but came from a foreword Franz Boas, her mentor, had slapped on the book.)
Freeman's portrayal of Mead's work in the popular media was mythical in nature. He spun Coming of Age as having established a non-existent "Mead paradigm" in anthropology that was allegedly cultural determinist, anti-biological, and unscientific. Coming of Age, however, never had the massive impact on anthropological method and theory that Freeman claimed. Freeman had developed an enormous Galileo complex -- almost always the mark of a crank. His later, even more inflated claims that Mead had been outright "hoaxed" by her informants, simply don't hold up to scrutiny.
Why did one academic's attack on another, dead, academic over the issue of life on a small group of islands in the Pacific become a public issue and a veritable spectator sport? One of the great strengths of Shankman's book is the wider context he places the controversy in. He notes the media's penchant for seeking scandal rather than accuracy and how many had only gotten a second-hand account of the controversy at best and allowed ideology to take over. Freeman's work played into the sociobiology debate and promoters of sociobiological approaches used it as a means to gain a toehold into wider academic debates. It also played into the hands of social conservatives (the Moral Majority crowd being ascendant in the 1980s) who sought to discredit Mead as part of a broader, sexually repressive political agenda.
This is the definitive history of the Mead-Freeman controversy.
March 22, 2010
What do Phil Donohue, a New Zealand ethnologist, three anthropologist husbands, and a small handful of Samoan girls all have in common? The answer is: Margaret Mead and their roles in a debate that has rocked cultural anthropology since 1983.
The Trashing of Margaret Mead is a fine, funny, discriminating, and at times quite disturbing book. At the heart of the so-called Mead-Freeman Debate was the veracity, meaning, and political uses of the data that Mead collected in 1925 during the ethnographic research that she conducted in Samoa. Her central finding was that Samoan adolescence did not require the storm-and-stress widely seen as part of adolescence, the volatility that characterizes “teenaged” behavior. Mead’s work framed the “nature/nurture” debate: is nature (e.,g. biology and hormones) ultimately responsible for sexual maturation and behavior, or is it nurture (e.g., gender relations and child-rearing)? Is male dominance hard-wired biologically, or can egalitarianism be taught? Freeman chose the former, Mead the latter.
The Trashing of Margaret Mead consists of fourteen chapters arranged into five parts. It is filled with salacious talk, iconic photos, back-channel communication, and an impressive attention to nuance and detail. The two chapters comprising “The Controversy and the Media” remind the reader of the huge splash made in 1983 in anthropology and wider circles by the publication of Derek Freeman’s book, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Relatively few people actually read the book, but stories about Freeman and Mead, often wildly misunderstanding and misquoting the latter, circulated in the pages of Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and most memorably in the telling by the author, Paul Shankman, on The Phil Donohue Show. Shankman shows with great gusto and clarity that U.S. media and many academics were predisposed to accept Freeman’s claims, however fraudulent.
Part two exposes Derek Freeman the man, but more importantly, the mind. At least once in the early 1960s, while working in Sarawak, Indonesia, Freeman went quite off the rails. In a museum there he once hacked off the phalluses of wooden statues carved by fine Iban craftsmen. Freeman’s instability is near legendary, and Shankman shows this to us with grace and skill by revealing the manic tenor of his writings and the increasingly nasty tone of his correspondence until the very day he died.
The four chapters in part three, “Sex, Lies and Samoans,” cover the life of and influences upon the young Margaret Mead, the conditions of her first fieldwork in Samoa, and the publication in 1928 of Coming of Age in Samoa, which was an extremely popular (and popularizing) book. These chapters read like a scholarly detective story of what the Mead-Freeman debate meant (and continues to mean) to Samoans, and of what Samoan thought, belief, and behavior are like in terms of sexual matters. Special commentary is reserved for the place of the "taupou system" in Samoa by and through which female virginity is valorized and idealized. As in most cultures, Samoan brothers want to have virginal sisters, but Mead, Freeman, and Shankman show that they often want also to get into the pants (or back then, under the grass skirts) of other men’s sisters.
Shankman also revisits the effects of cross-cultural contact with the American military during World War II upon Samoan beliefs and behaviors. Whereas Mead said that Samoans were largely egalitarian, easy-going, and not hung-up about sex, Freeman argued that Mead had gotten it all wrong, that Samoan culture was riddled by status differentials, prone to violence, circumspect with regards to sex, and also “rape-prone.” Freeman contended that Mead was hoaxed during her fieldwork by two Samoan girls who jokingly indicated their usual hunts and haunts for boys. Shankman shows that Freeman was mistaken, concluding that “Freeman not only misrepresented the historical work of others but neglected his own personal experiences in the islands during World War II and his unpublished work on the taupou system.” Shankman shows that Mead got it largely right and that Freeman got it sloppily and willfully wrong on many, many counts.
The Trashing of Margaret Mead should be used in college courses ranging from media studies to cultural anthropology to women’s studies to Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific. Graduate-level seminars could be wrapped around the many significant issues raised here. Shankman’s bulldog-like dedication for many years is as laudable as his prose style is engaging.
Review by Lawrence James Hammar, Ph.D.
The Trashing of Margaret Mead is a fine, funny, discriminating, and at times quite disturbing book. At the heart of the so-called Mead-Freeman Debate was the veracity, meaning, and political uses of the data that Mead collected in 1925 during the ethnographic research that she conducted in Samoa. Her central finding was that Samoan adolescence did not require the storm-and-stress widely seen as part of adolescence, the volatility that characterizes “teenaged” behavior. Mead’s work framed the “nature/nurture” debate: is nature (e.,g. biology and hormones) ultimately responsible for sexual maturation and behavior, or is it nurture (e.g., gender relations and child-rearing)? Is male dominance hard-wired biologically, or can egalitarianism be taught? Freeman chose the former, Mead the latter.
The Trashing of Margaret Mead consists of fourteen chapters arranged into five parts. It is filled with salacious talk, iconic photos, back-channel communication, and an impressive attention to nuance and detail. The two chapters comprising “The Controversy and the Media” remind the reader of the huge splash made in 1983 in anthropology and wider circles by the publication of Derek Freeman’s book, Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Relatively few people actually read the book, but stories about Freeman and Mead, often wildly misunderstanding and misquoting the latter, circulated in the pages of Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, and most memorably in the telling by the author, Paul Shankman, on The Phil Donohue Show. Shankman shows with great gusto and clarity that U.S. media and many academics were predisposed to accept Freeman’s claims, however fraudulent.
Part two exposes Derek Freeman the man, but more importantly, the mind. At least once in the early 1960s, while working in Sarawak, Indonesia, Freeman went quite off the rails. In a museum there he once hacked off the phalluses of wooden statues carved by fine Iban craftsmen. Freeman’s instability is near legendary, and Shankman shows this to us with grace and skill by revealing the manic tenor of his writings and the increasingly nasty tone of his correspondence until the very day he died.
The four chapters in part three, “Sex, Lies and Samoans,” cover the life of and influences upon the young Margaret Mead, the conditions of her first fieldwork in Samoa, and the publication in 1928 of Coming of Age in Samoa, which was an extremely popular (and popularizing) book. These chapters read like a scholarly detective story of what the Mead-Freeman debate meant (and continues to mean) to Samoans, and of what Samoan thought, belief, and behavior are like in terms of sexual matters. Special commentary is reserved for the place of the "taupou system" in Samoa by and through which female virginity is valorized and idealized. As in most cultures, Samoan brothers want to have virginal sisters, but Mead, Freeman, and Shankman show that they often want also to get into the pants (or back then, under the grass skirts) of other men’s sisters.
Shankman also revisits the effects of cross-cultural contact with the American military during World War II upon Samoan beliefs and behaviors. Whereas Mead said that Samoans were largely egalitarian, easy-going, and not hung-up about sex, Freeman argued that Mead had gotten it all wrong, that Samoan culture was riddled by status differentials, prone to violence, circumspect with regards to sex, and also “rape-prone.” Freeman contended that Mead was hoaxed during her fieldwork by two Samoan girls who jokingly indicated their usual hunts and haunts for boys. Shankman shows that Freeman was mistaken, concluding that “Freeman not only misrepresented the historical work of others but neglected his own personal experiences in the islands during World War II and his unpublished work on the taupou system.” Shankman shows that Mead got it largely right and that Freeman got it sloppily and willfully wrong on many, many counts.
The Trashing of Margaret Mead should be used in college courses ranging from media studies to cultural anthropology to women’s studies to Peoples and Cultures of the Pacific. Graduate-level seminars could be wrapped around the many significant issues raised here. Shankman’s bulldog-like dedication for many years is as laudable as his prose style is engaging.
Review by Lawrence James Hammar, Ph.D.
November 15, 2021
This entertaining academic book (I know, not a common phrase, but it fits here, I was enthralled) looks at, as the name indicates, the trashing of the reputation of Margaret Mead, one of the most famous women of the last century, probably the most prominent female public intellectual in America to this day, yet whose reputation was destroyed and has resisted rehabilitation by a right-wing establishment content to use her dishonest discrediting to their advantage.
Derek Freeman was the man most responsible for this, since he wrote the books presenting for a popular audience his allegations, mostly fraudulent or decontextualized, including that she had been hoaxed in Samoa in 1926 by a couple of girls telling joking fibs about their sex life. He had been nursing his grudge against her for 40 years, waiting for her death before finally publishing his allegations, which were mostly accepted at face value by a media too lazy to fact check them.
Mead was never held in the highest regard by her fellow anthropologists, yet ironically they seem to have embraced her more following her trashing than beforehand, while the public went from being enthralled by her to essentially forgetting about her thanks to Freeman's claims.
At the end of the day, I think Freeman misunderstood culture and the difference between culture and daily life. He was immersed in the male side of Samoan society, especially high ranking men, for whom virginity was a very highly valued state. He thus came to believe that Mead had lied or been lied to about the sexual behavior of young women.
Mead, on the other hand, was immersed in the world of young women, so she saw a side of things that Freeman never had access to from his corner of Samoan society. And, contrary to Freeman, her Samoan informants numbered dozens more than the two he claimed were responsible for all her conclusions about Samoan adolescent sex life.
Another issue I see is the inability to recognize popular from academic works. Many condemned her Coming of Age in Samoa because it had a popular rather than scholarly tone, yet she wrote an academic monograph on her time in Samoa, as well, which was as academic as it could be expected to be. Failure to distinguish between who were the intended audiences of her books seems to have bred some of the professional animosity against her.
When it comes to this book specifically, I can't shake the nagging feeling that Shankman was a little too successful in creating a villain of Derek Freeman and a little too reticent in airing the grievances of the anthropological community against Mead's work not related to the controversy. I, however, haven't enough information to believe this feeling, so it'll continue to nag but probably never flower into a deeper awareness. Freeman's shown to have mental issues, a history of latching onto people and tearing them to shreds for the slightest perceived slight, which certainly expands one's perspective on the causes of this manufactured controversy. Still, I wonder if a more charitable presentation of Freeman's life could have been offered.
I'm certainly convinced of the thesis. Mead was unfairly mischaracterized and the media has been too lazy to bother to correct the record, despite it being the media that ran with the accusations that had been made in what may have remained a little-known title published by Harvard University Press and sensationalized it until the general public had forgotten just about anything about Mead besides that she was "that dumb girl who believed a hoax in Samoa and ruined society because of it," especially with the blame some people who should definitely know better have ascribed to her for being the intellectual godmother of the craziness of the '60s counterculture movement.
Derek Freeman was the man most responsible for this, since he wrote the books presenting for a popular audience his allegations, mostly fraudulent or decontextualized, including that she had been hoaxed in Samoa in 1926 by a couple of girls telling joking fibs about their sex life. He had been nursing his grudge against her for 40 years, waiting for her death before finally publishing his allegations, which were mostly accepted at face value by a media too lazy to fact check them.
Mead was never held in the highest regard by her fellow anthropologists, yet ironically they seem to have embraced her more following her trashing than beforehand, while the public went from being enthralled by her to essentially forgetting about her thanks to Freeman's claims.
At the end of the day, I think Freeman misunderstood culture and the difference between culture and daily life. He was immersed in the male side of Samoan society, especially high ranking men, for whom virginity was a very highly valued state. He thus came to believe that Mead had lied or been lied to about the sexual behavior of young women.
Mead, on the other hand, was immersed in the world of young women, so she saw a side of things that Freeman never had access to from his corner of Samoan society. And, contrary to Freeman, her Samoan informants numbered dozens more than the two he claimed were responsible for all her conclusions about Samoan adolescent sex life.
Another issue I see is the inability to recognize popular from academic works. Many condemned her Coming of Age in Samoa because it had a popular rather than scholarly tone, yet she wrote an academic monograph on her time in Samoa, as well, which was as academic as it could be expected to be. Failure to distinguish between who were the intended audiences of her books seems to have bred some of the professional animosity against her.
When it comes to this book specifically, I can't shake the nagging feeling that Shankman was a little too successful in creating a villain of Derek Freeman and a little too reticent in airing the grievances of the anthropological community against Mead's work not related to the controversy. I, however, haven't enough information to believe this feeling, so it'll continue to nag but probably never flower into a deeper awareness. Freeman's shown to have mental issues, a history of latching onto people and tearing them to shreds for the slightest perceived slight, which certainly expands one's perspective on the causes of this manufactured controversy. Still, I wonder if a more charitable presentation of Freeman's life could have been offered.
I'm certainly convinced of the thesis. Mead was unfairly mischaracterized and the media has been too lazy to bother to correct the record, despite it being the media that ran with the accusations that had been made in what may have remained a little-known title published by Harvard University Press and sensationalized it until the general public had forgotten just about anything about Mead besides that she was "that dumb girl who believed a hoax in Samoa and ruined society because of it," especially with the blame some people who should definitely know better have ascribed to her for being the intellectual godmother of the craziness of the '60s counterculture movement.
February 21, 2016
I thought I'd skim a few pages of this book to learn a little about the claims that Margaret Mead had been hoaxed while doing field work in Samoa, but the book was so riveting that I read the whole thing! The Trashing of Margaret Mead is a careful analysis of the controversy that examines the role of all those involved -- Derek Freeman, Margaret Mead, the media, the American public, the Samoans, anthropologists. It's fascinating stuff! Everything is well organized and footnoted, but the prose is so readable and the tale so incredible that it's appropriate for the lay public (like me).
August 4, 2017
I read "Coming of Age in Samoa" as an undergrad & found it clear & compelling. I never wavered in my respect for Margaret Mead, despite the fact that I'm a human behavioral ecologist like Derek Freedman, agree with much of his thinking outside of his indictment of Mead, & respect the writing of a lot of other folks who piled onto her. This book validates my take & instincts &, frankly, my experience working in American Samoa. The biggest shame about this book is not that it vilified Mead's reputation in the U.S. or world but that it did it in Samoa. I think Freedman convinced Samoans that Mead was, by Shankman's account, a crazy fucking bastard with a serious inferiority complex that he tilted squarely at Mead over half a lifetime. Pretty sad.
June 4, 2024
A CRITIQUE OF BOTH DEREK FREEMAN, AND HIS CONTROVERSIAL BOOKS
Paul Shankman is a cultural anthropologist who teaches at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He wrote in the Introduction to this 2008 book, “Freeman’s [first] book was in part about how Samoa was puritanical and sexually restrictive rather than sexually permissive, as Mead described it. According to Freeman, Samoa… was a repressive culture riddled with conflict, aggression, and rape. In contrast to Mead’s portrayal of a relatively conflict-free adolescence, Freeman contended that Samoan adolescence was a time of storm and stress. Freeman’s book was also about the nature-nurture debate and whether Mead’s emphasis on culture, as opposed to biology, was warranted…
“If Mead was fundamentally wrong about Samoa, then her reputation would suffer. Freeman’s critique had the potential to tarnish if not severely damage Mead, and not merely as an anthropologist but as a public figure, a feminist, and a liberal… Mead had died five years earlier… There would be no debate between Margaret Mead and Derek Freeman. However, [Freeman’s book] … was an attempt to unmake one of anthropology’s almost mythical figures---Mead herself… [This was] the opening salvo in the longest and most acrimonious controversy in the history of cultural anthropology.” (Pg. 5-8)
He notes, “Perhaps the most significant flaw in Freeman’s critique was his caricature of Mead and the influence of ‘Coming of Age.’ While her book did have great popular appeal, it was not considered an important ethnographic or theoretical contribution within anthropology. There was, in fact, no ‘Mead paradigm’ that anthropologists worshiped and against which Freeman could tilt… Freeman was able to advance his argument only by very selective use of information… and the strategic omission of relevant data at crucial junctures in his argument… Freeman constructed a ‘just so’ story about Mead and a parallel story about himself… Freeman could not see his critique of Mead as a modest contribution to our knowledge of another culture. In his eyes his work was both revelatory and revolutionary… [But by Freeman’s death in 2001], Freeman’s own assessment of his contribution wearing thin with his colleagues. His attempt to tarnish Mead’s reputation no longer enhanced his own.” (Pg. 12)
He explains, “This book is the story of the controversy as it was conducted publicly and as it developed privately---the story of the assault on Mead’s reputation… My argument is certainly more sympathetic to Mead than to Freeman. Yet one of the misconceptions about the controversy is that there are only two sides to it… There are shades of gray. There are unanswered questions… Margaret Mead was a highly visible and easily recognizable target. At first glance, Freeman’s critique seemed formidable and authoritative… a number of intelligent individuals… were readily persuaded of the validity of Freeman’s critique of Mead and did not look further… Many academics and most American anthropologists remained skeptical of Freeman’s critique… both the media and professional anthropologists have been … reluctant to consider Freeman’s motives and personality. Nevertheless, they are important to the controversy… Ultimately, this book tries to extricate Mead’s reputation from the quicksand of controversy… Freeman, although intellectually gifted… was no hero… he seriously compromised this effort by attempting to trash Mead’s reputation.” (Pg. 17-19)
He recounts, “Freeman’s most important network television appearance came on March 18, 1983, on NBC’s ‘Donahue’ show… Freeman’s appearance gave a broad American audience a look at the person at the center of the controversy… Freeman’s voice and his use of body language … provided a dimension to understanding the man that had been missing in the print media…” (Pg. 32) He continues, “While the show did not teach the audience very much about Mead, Samoa, anthropology, or the nature-nurture debate, it did showcase Freeman’s personality. By the end of the hour Freeman’s self-admitted difficult manner was apparent not only to Donahue but to millions of others… including his sponsors at Harvard University Press.” (Pg. 38)
He suggests, “Freeman’s involvement with Mad and Samoa was partially academic, but it also included a complex interaction of his personal history, intellectual development, and proclivity for controversy. While the substance of his two books on Mead appeared to be academic, the background that contributed to their writing, exposition, and style was personal.” (Pg. 69)
He notes, “Although he originally questioned Mead’s language ability in his first book on Mead, to his credit Freeman continued his research on her fieldwork … In ‘The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead,’ he gave her solid marks for her language competency and provided a detailed record of how she learned Samoan.” (Pg. 97-98)
He states, “Historically, Samoa was less restrictive than Freeman allowed, and there were more variability and permissiveness in some areas of Samoan sexual conduct than he discerned… Could there be a problem with the sources Freeman used?... he neglected passages in source after source that did not conform to his argument. These problems were noted in an article I published in 1996… Freeman was outraged by the article… Yet Freeman did not refute any of the article’s major arguments … Why not?” (Pg. 187-188)
Of Freeman’s 1987, 1988 and 1993 interviews with one of Mead’s original interviewees, “IN his second book on Mead, Freman cited these two additional interviews as support for the hoaxing hypothesis… However, these interviews … were not published and did not become available until after Freeman’s death in 2001. What they demonstrate is that her testimony was sometimes contradictory or unclear and that it is inconsistent with Freeman’s argument on key issues. [Her] memory may not have been as reliable as Freeman believed…” (Pg. 197-198)
He summarizes, “The ‘hoaxing’ argument is implausible because the evidence that Freeman used did not support his hypothesis. It is also unnecessary, for Mead’s portrayal of Samoa as a sexually permissive society was not based on her conversations … but rather on the data that she collected from Samoan adolescent girls and from Samoan men and women… the hoaxing hypothesis was constructed retrospectively by Freeman to answer the question of how he believed Mead got Samoa wrong…. It was an ingenious argument. It was also an intellectual house of cards.” (Pg. 204-205)
He concludes, “Anthropologists concerned about the diminishing influence of their professional scholarship in the public sphere have been revisiting the legacy of Mead and other intellectual ancestors who did so much to bridge the chasm. Earlier doubts about Mead and her ethnographic work are now tempered by recognition of what she accomplished in the public arena…. The desire for a greater presence by anthropologists in the public arena is understandable, and this is why Margaret Mead is missed.” (Pg. 236)
This book (along with Freeman’s two books) will be “must reading” for anyone interested in this controversy.
Paul Shankman is a cultural anthropologist who teaches at the University of Colorado-Boulder. He wrote in the Introduction to this 2008 book, “Freeman’s [first] book was in part about how Samoa was puritanical and sexually restrictive rather than sexually permissive, as Mead described it. According to Freeman, Samoa… was a repressive culture riddled with conflict, aggression, and rape. In contrast to Mead’s portrayal of a relatively conflict-free adolescence, Freeman contended that Samoan adolescence was a time of storm and stress. Freeman’s book was also about the nature-nurture debate and whether Mead’s emphasis on culture, as opposed to biology, was warranted…
“If Mead was fundamentally wrong about Samoa, then her reputation would suffer. Freeman’s critique had the potential to tarnish if not severely damage Mead, and not merely as an anthropologist but as a public figure, a feminist, and a liberal… Mead had died five years earlier… There would be no debate between Margaret Mead and Derek Freeman. However, [Freeman’s book] … was an attempt to unmake one of anthropology’s almost mythical figures---Mead herself… [This was] the opening salvo in the longest and most acrimonious controversy in the history of cultural anthropology.” (Pg. 5-8)
He notes, “Perhaps the most significant flaw in Freeman’s critique was his caricature of Mead and the influence of ‘Coming of Age.’ While her book did have great popular appeal, it was not considered an important ethnographic or theoretical contribution within anthropology. There was, in fact, no ‘Mead paradigm’ that anthropologists worshiped and against which Freeman could tilt… Freeman was able to advance his argument only by very selective use of information… and the strategic omission of relevant data at crucial junctures in his argument… Freeman constructed a ‘just so’ story about Mead and a parallel story about himself… Freeman could not see his critique of Mead as a modest contribution to our knowledge of another culture. In his eyes his work was both revelatory and revolutionary… [But by Freeman’s death in 2001], Freeman’s own assessment of his contribution wearing thin with his colleagues. His attempt to tarnish Mead’s reputation no longer enhanced his own.” (Pg. 12)
He explains, “This book is the story of the controversy as it was conducted publicly and as it developed privately---the story of the assault on Mead’s reputation… My argument is certainly more sympathetic to Mead than to Freeman. Yet one of the misconceptions about the controversy is that there are only two sides to it… There are shades of gray. There are unanswered questions… Margaret Mead was a highly visible and easily recognizable target. At first glance, Freeman’s critique seemed formidable and authoritative… a number of intelligent individuals… were readily persuaded of the validity of Freeman’s critique of Mead and did not look further… Many academics and most American anthropologists remained skeptical of Freeman’s critique… both the media and professional anthropologists have been … reluctant to consider Freeman’s motives and personality. Nevertheless, they are important to the controversy… Ultimately, this book tries to extricate Mead’s reputation from the quicksand of controversy… Freeman, although intellectually gifted… was no hero… he seriously compromised this effort by attempting to trash Mead’s reputation.” (Pg. 17-19)
He recounts, “Freeman’s most important network television appearance came on March 18, 1983, on NBC’s ‘Donahue’ show… Freeman’s appearance gave a broad American audience a look at the person at the center of the controversy… Freeman’s voice and his use of body language … provided a dimension to understanding the man that had been missing in the print media…” (Pg. 32) He continues, “While the show did not teach the audience very much about Mead, Samoa, anthropology, or the nature-nurture debate, it did showcase Freeman’s personality. By the end of the hour Freeman’s self-admitted difficult manner was apparent not only to Donahue but to millions of others… including his sponsors at Harvard University Press.” (Pg. 38)
He suggests, “Freeman’s involvement with Mad and Samoa was partially academic, but it also included a complex interaction of his personal history, intellectual development, and proclivity for controversy. While the substance of his two books on Mead appeared to be academic, the background that contributed to their writing, exposition, and style was personal.” (Pg. 69)
He notes, “Although he originally questioned Mead’s language ability in his first book on Mead, to his credit Freeman continued his research on her fieldwork … In ‘The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead,’ he gave her solid marks for her language competency and provided a detailed record of how she learned Samoan.” (Pg. 97-98)
He states, “Historically, Samoa was less restrictive than Freeman allowed, and there were more variability and permissiveness in some areas of Samoan sexual conduct than he discerned… Could there be a problem with the sources Freeman used?... he neglected passages in source after source that did not conform to his argument. These problems were noted in an article I published in 1996… Freeman was outraged by the article… Yet Freeman did not refute any of the article’s major arguments … Why not?” (Pg. 187-188)
Of Freeman’s 1987, 1988 and 1993 interviews with one of Mead’s original interviewees, “IN his second book on Mead, Freman cited these two additional interviews as support for the hoaxing hypothesis… However, these interviews … were not published and did not become available until after Freeman’s death in 2001. What they demonstrate is that her testimony was sometimes contradictory or unclear and that it is inconsistent with Freeman’s argument on key issues. [Her] memory may not have been as reliable as Freeman believed…” (Pg. 197-198)
He summarizes, “The ‘hoaxing’ argument is implausible because the evidence that Freeman used did not support his hypothesis. It is also unnecessary, for Mead’s portrayal of Samoa as a sexually permissive society was not based on her conversations … but rather on the data that she collected from Samoan adolescent girls and from Samoan men and women… the hoaxing hypothesis was constructed retrospectively by Freeman to answer the question of how he believed Mead got Samoa wrong…. It was an ingenious argument. It was also an intellectual house of cards.” (Pg. 204-205)
He concludes, “Anthropologists concerned about the diminishing influence of their professional scholarship in the public sphere have been revisiting the legacy of Mead and other intellectual ancestors who did so much to bridge the chasm. Earlier doubts about Mead and her ethnographic work are now tempered by recognition of what she accomplished in the public arena…. The desire for a greater presence by anthropologists in the public arena is understandable, and this is why Margaret Mead is missed.” (Pg. 236)
This book (along with Freeman’s two books) will be “must reading” for anyone interested in this controversy.
December 3, 2018
very useful, if perhaps a bit exhaustive/exhausting
January 19, 2016
Well written description of a scientific controversy. The author was a participant, by publishing analyses of the various publications. Something I became interested in from reading Alice Dreger's book, Galileo's Middle Finger.
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