Individual and Society - Essay Example

Running Head: Individual and Society Individual and Society Name Institute Date Introduction Margaret Mead was an anthropologist who wrote of a society where free love was imminent and where crime was covered by giving of mats. In 1928, she published her book ‘Coming of Age in Samoa’ which is based mainly on American Youths. Her aim was to find out whether the problems faced by adolescents were caused by the nature of adolescence itself or civilization and whether adolescence presents a different picture under different conditions. Her study population consisted of 600 Samoans in which the interviewed 68 young women aged between 9 and 20. She came up with the conclusion that the course from childhood to adulthood in Samoa was a smooth transition and that it was not characterized by emotional or psychological distress, anxiety or confusion seen in the United State. She observed that young women in Samoa delayed from getting married, however, they got involved casual sex during this time (Mead 1928: 12) Derek Freeman was an Australian Anthropologist, who conducted his study five years after Mead presented her findings. In 1983, he came up with the book ‘Margaret Mead and Samoa: The making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth’, which he mainly criticized the main findings of Mead. Mead argued that Samoans girls can and do lie about their virginity status by use of chicken blood. However, freeman disputed these allegations of Mead as the virginity of the bride was highly valued and was vital to the status of the groom that they performed specific rituals in which the bribe’s hymen was manually ruptured in public, either by the groom himself or by the chief. This leaves us wondering how it was possible for the bride to use chicken blood to prove her virginity (Freeman 1983: 102) Mead’s findings were right in so far as the time in which she did her research is taken into consideration. However, her findings may not be true in today’s world due to the great changes that have occurred. We find out that adolescent in the modern world experiences more problems and have even recorded the highest rates of suicide as compared to ancient times. Their transition to adulthood is not as smooth as in the early times. At the time Mead was carrying out her study, it was strongly believed adolescence was linked with a period of turmoil caused by biological instability stirred up during one’s teenage years. This formed the foundation of the nature-nurture debate as regards human behavior. From this perspective, adolescence is seen as a problem which is inevitable and is not influenced by our social or cultural circumstances. Freeman further argued that despite the opportunities available to adolescents and the experiences they go through, they all go through a period of anxiety and stress Freeman 1983: 243). According to Freeman, traditional values of the Samoan System of institutionalized virginity, referred to us taupou system in ancient Samoa, were maintained and reinforced throughout the colonial era. However, a closer look at historical sources which Freeman claimed to have used to support his finding, written by Newton Rowe and Augustin Kramer, indicate that the taupou system, values and practices linked with it, were on decline during this period. It is interesting that Freeman’s own postgraduate diploma thesis supported this interpretation which was highly favored by Margaret Mead (Holmes 1993).  In "Coming of Age in Samoa" Mead depicts Samoan youths as being highly immoral as they engage in sex before marriage at an early age of 14 years. When referring to Samoan girls, Mead says, "She thrusts virtuosity away from her as she thrusts away from her every other sort of responsibility with the invariable comment, "Laititi a'u" ("I am but young"). “All of her interest is expended on clandestine sex adventures..." (Mead 1928: 33). According to Freeman, premarital sex was not common in Samoa as Mead had proposed. He talks of the ‘virginity cult’ of the Samoan where the girl was supposed to be a virgin at marriage. Mead reacts to this by saying that if all girls were expected to be virgin when getting married, why then did they have a special type of a fine mat (Mead 1928: 218).   Mead found out that even Christian youths in Samoa engaged in sex and that they went to church as a routine without following the biblical teachings as regards fornication. Freeman argued that Mead not only distorted the information she collected, but also misjudged the attitudes held by Samoans concerning sex and church. Freeman also asserts that mead was misguided by two girls who became friends with her and took her around Samoa. As per Freeman, the two girls became the key informant of Mead and therefore it was possible that they give her ‘stories’ they had constructed in their own heads as regards teenage sexual practices (Freeman 1983: 104).                The records of interviews that Mead conducted are few and do not support her assertions. Freeman also argued that her key informant on sexual practices was indeed a male of her own age and not a girl as she had claimed. He did not at all talk of the stress-free homosexuality and lesbianism among teenagers. This leaves us wondering how Mead arrived at her famous conclusions. It is interesting that Mead talk of the restrictions on teenage sex in and at the same time talk of immoral adolescents in Samoa. She says that the Christian youths did not internalize the teaching regarding fornication (Mead 1928). Freeman believes that Mead’s fieldwork was not successful because it was based on two premeditated deceits. First, she did not reveal to her informants and hosts that she was married and hence by displaying herself as a virgin, she was credited by three villages elder with the title of taupou which give her a great advantage. Secondly, though mead was not interested in the project that her supervisor Franz Boas and her sponsor, the National Research council which required her to find out whether nature or nurture influenced adolescent behaviors, she agreed because this was the only way she could have gotten the ticket to the field. Mead interest was ethnography. Freeman demonstrates by carefully reconstructing Mead’s activities that she completed her project in roughly four to five weeks. This period is too short to carry out an efficient investigation on a complex and challenging subject like the one she was dealing with. As a result, she came up with very little data as evident from her sparse field note, which led to her faulty conclusions (Freeman 1983: 256). Mead’s behavior in Manu’s undermined the scientific professional standards. By concealing that she was married and subsequently being honored with the taupou title, she compromised the sacred taupou title. Mead’s research also failed in one of the scientific ethics which requires that the informant be informed or has consent as regards why the research is being carried out and how the information gained would be used before interviewing them. Freeman asserted that there is one Samoan reality and there are no difficulties involved when trying to identify people’s perceptions, social relations and negotiations. By taking this stand, Freeman ignores a principle which is essential to ethnographic research. Ethnography research involves analysis and interpretation of data collected from the field at a particular place and time. For him, the Samoan all share the same culture over the years and regardless of which side of Samoa they live. By assuming this, Freeman is refuting the any possibility of change in culture. This is of course irrational of him as there is no any culture that have withstand the social, economic and political transformations that have occurred in the society. We can comfortably argue that Freeman’s book do not pass as a history, ethnography and as a systematic research. Freeman believes that he was more suited to carry out the research as he had a clear understanding of the Samoan culture and language having lived in Samoa since birth. On the other hand, Mead only spent nine months in Samoa and could not speak the language. Freeman’s criticism of Mead’s work may not be correct as he based them on his four years field experience in Samoa and on just the few remaining informants of Mead who could also have possibly not revealed their earlier life of sexual misconduct as they had either grown old or had been converted to Christianity. It is also possible that after the widespread missionary work in Samoa, women could not frankly talk about their sexual life with easy. It is also likely that the Samoan women were not comfortable taking to an elderly man about their sexual behavior as they were with Mead, a woman of about their age (Holmes 1957). Freeman could also have used wrong methods of data collection and analysis. The fact that the Samoan women admitted in public that it was important to preserver their virginity, they however engaged in sex before marriage and could discuss and even boost about it among themselves. It is even remarkable in freeman’s own data that there existed premarital sexual behavior in Samoa. For example, Freeman’s documented in his study that 20% of 15-year-olds, 30% of 16-year-olds, and 40% of 17-year-olds had engaged in sex before marriage in Western Samoa. We can therefore conclude that Freeman’s work was poorly written, unempirical, irresponsible and deceptive (Freeman 1983: 247). Just like Mead’s work, Freeman’s finding has also been criticized as being ideologically obsessed with maintaining his own hypothetical viewpoint as well as conveying a higher degree of biasness on Mead’s work. Freeman's repudiation of Samoan sexual customs has been disputed being founded on public statements of sexual principles rather than on concrete sexual practices in the Samoan society at the time Mead was carrying out her research. Freeman argues that Samoans all have the same culture regardless of whether they live in Western Samoa or America. He therefore felt free to use his findings from the island of Upolu, Western Samoa, where he did his study to criticize Mead’s work on Ta’u an island located at the extreme end of the eastern end of the Samoan, approximately 256 km from the island of Upolu. Despite the fact that all islands share the same culture, Samoan behavior is not exactly the same in all areas. Western Samoa has experienced a long oppressive history of colonialism where as Manu’a has not. Cash cropping has been greatly practiced in Western Samoa than in America Samoa. By assuming that the Samoan culture had not changed from the time Mead conducted his study and the time he conducted his study, freeman is not realistic as that could not be possible with the Samoan long history of contact with explorers, bureaucrats, western military, whalers, missionaries, western educators, colonial administrators and anthropologists (Levy 1984: 156). Freeman upholds that chastity is "The ideal for all women before marriage" and the ideal of virginity "strongly influenced the actual behavior of adolescent girls" (p. 239). Freeman does not tell us how he determined whether the girls were virgins or not. By applying the phrase "cult of virginity" to explain Samoan culture and practices enclosing the premarital sex among teenage girls, Freeman underpinned the importance of the customary Samoan marriage and sexuality. The authenticity of Mead’s and Freeman’s finding still attracts considerable controversy remains. After Lowell Holmes completed his study, he observed, "Mead was better able to identify with, and therefore establish rapport with, adolescents and young adults on issues of sexuality than either I (at age 29, married with a wife and child) or Freeman, ten years my senior". Conclusion The whole issue underlying the controversy between Freeman and Mead stems from the reliability of Samoans ethnography. The freeman-Mead controversy had it root on the nature-nurture debate as regards human behavior. Mead for the idea that culture shapes our behavior (cultural determinism) where Freeman believes that some biological variables determine our behavior (biological determinism). It is difficult to determine who between mead and Freeman was right as both Freeman and Mead could have been right or wrong as far as their life experiences, the time in which they were conducting their research and their unique backgrounds (Annette 1983: 912). It is important for ethnographer researchers to be very cautious while dealing with such sensitive issues as sexuality in order to avoid bias. It is possible and worthwhile for researcher to strive for objectivity in research. Objectivity in research methods is necessary so that to reduce the possibilities of biasness in research. Objectivity in research can be attained by use of control groups. References Annette B. (1983) Behavioral Determinism: Samoa and the Margaret Mead Debate. Blackwell, New York, Vol. 85, pp. 909-919. Freeman, D. (1983) Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University Press. Holmes D. (1957) The Restudy of Manu'an Culture: A Setbacks in Method of Investigation. Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University. Holmes D. (1993) The Story of Two Studies. Blackwell, United States pp 929-935 Levy R. (1984) Mead, Freeman, and Samoa: The Dilemma of Perceiving Things as they are. Blackwell: San Diego, Vol. 12, No. 1, pp. 85-92. Mead, M. (1929) Coming of Age in Samoa. New York: New American Library. Read More