Editing Margaret Mead (section)

==Work==
===''Coming of Age in Samoa'' (1928)===
{{Main|Coming of Age in Samoa}}
[[File:Samoan taupou girl 1896.jpg|thumb|Samoan girl, {{circa}} 1896]]
Mead's first ethnographic work described the life of Samoan girls and women on the island of Tau in the Manu'a Archipelago in 1926.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Mead |first=Margaret |url=https://www.worldcat.org/oclc/44550546 |title=Coming of age in Samoa : a psychological study of primitive youth for western civilisation |date=2001 |publisher=Perennial Classics |isbn=0-688-05033-6 |edition=First Perennial Classics |location=New York |oclc=44550546}}</ref> The book includes analyses of how children were raised and educated, sex relations, dance, development of personality, conflict, and how women matured into old age. Mead explicitly sought to contrast adolescence in Samoa with that in America, which she characterized as difficult, constrained, and awkward. In the foreword to ''Coming of Age in Samoa'', Mead's advisor, [[Franz Boas]], wrote of the book's significance:<ref>Franz Boas, "Preface" in Margaret Mead, ''Coming of Age in Samoa''</ref>

<blockquote>Courtesy, modesty, good manners, conformity to definite ethical standards are universal, but what constitutes courtesy, modesty, very good manners, and definite ethical standards is not universal. It is instructive to know that standards differ in the most unexpected ways.</blockquote>

In this way, the book tackled the question of nature versus nurture, whether adolescence and its associated developments were a difficult biological transition for all humans or whether they were cultural processes shaped in particular societies. Mead believed childhood, adolescence, gender, and sex relations were largely driven by cultural practices and expressions.

Mead's findings suggested that the community ignores both boys and girls until they are about 15 or 16. Before then, children have little social standing within the community. Mead also found that marriage is regarded as a social and economic arrangement in which wealth, rank, and job skills of the husband and wife are taken into consideration. Aside from marriage, Mead identified two types of sex relations: love affairs and adultery. The exceptions to these practices include women married to chiefs and young women who hold the title of taupo, a ceremonial princess, whose virginity was required. Mead described Samoan youth as often having free, experimental, and open sexual relationships, including homosexual relationships, which was at odds with mainstream American norms around sexuality.

In 1970, [[National Educational Television]] produced a documentary in commemoration of the 40th anniversary Mead's first expedition to New Guinea. Through the eyes of Mead on her final visit to the village of Peri, the film records how the role of the anthropologist has changed in the forty years since 1928.<ref>{{Citation|title=NET Festival; 49; Margaret Mead's New Guinea Journal. Part 1|url=http://americanarchive.org/catalog/cpb-aacip-75-77sn0b0r|language=en|access-date=December 16, 2020}}</ref>
[[File:Margaret Mead NYWTS.jpg|thumb|Mead, {{circa}} 1950]]

====Criticism by Derek Freeman====
After her death, Mead's Samoan research was criticized by the anthropologist [[Derek Freeman]], who published a book arguing against many of Mead's conclusions in ''[[Coming of Age in Samoa]]''.<ref>[[Derek Freeman]] (1983). ''Margaret Mead and Samoa''. Cambridge, London: Harvard University Press. {{ISBN|978-0-674-54830-5}}.</ref> Freeman argued that Mead had misunderstood Samoan culture when she argued that Samoan culture did not place many restrictions on youths' sexual explorations. Freeman argued instead that Samoan culture prized female chastity and virginity and that Mead had been misled by her female Samoan informants. Freeman found that the Samoan islanders whom Mead had depicted in such utopian terms were intensely competitive and had murder and rape rates higher than those in the United States. Furthermore, the men were intensely sexually jealous, which contrasted sharply with Mead's depiction of "free love" among the Samoans.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Buss |first=David M. |title=Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind |date=2019 |publisher=Routledge |isbn=978-1-138-08861-0 |pages=26}}</ref>

Freeman's book was controversial in its turn and was met with considerable backlash and harsh criticism from the anthropology community, but it was received enthusiastically by communities of scientists who believed that sexual mores were more or less universal across cultures.<ref>{{cite video | title = Margaret Mead and Samoa| year = 1987| author = Frank Heimans| time = 20:25| quote=Roger Fox, Professor of Anthropology, Rutgers: '[What Freeman did was to] attack the goddess... she couldn't be wrong because if she was wrong then the doctrine was wrong and the whole liberal humanitarian scheme was wrong.'| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOCYhmnx6o8}}</ref><ref>{{cite video| title = Margaret Mead and Samoa| year = 1987| author = Frank Heimans| time = 21:20| quote = Marc Swartz, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, San Diego: "one of the leading anthropologists came out immediately after Derek's book was out and said I haven't read the book but I know he's wrong."| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOCYhmnx6o8}}</ref> Later in 1983, a special session of Mead's supporters in the [[American Anthropological Association]] (to which Freeman was not invited) declared it to be "poorly written, unscientific, irresponsible and misleading."<ref name="shawnyt">{{cite news |author=John Shaw |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2001/08/05/world/derek-freeman-who-challenged-margaret-mead-on-samoa-dies-at-84.html |title='Derek Freeman, Who Challenged Margaret Mead on Samoa, Dies at 84,' |work=[[The New York Times]] |date=August 5, 2001}}</ref> Some anthropologists who studied Samoan culture argued in favor of Freeman's findings and contradicted those of Mead, but others argued that Freeman's work did not invalidate Mead's work because Samoan culture had been changed by the integration of Christianity in the decades between Mead's and Freeman's fieldwork periods.<ref>{{cite video | title = Margaret Mead and Samoa| year = 1987| author= Frank Heimans| time = 26:125| quote = Anthropologists Richard Goodman and Tim Omera talk about their work in Samoa and how it supports Freeman's findings| url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOCYhmnx6o8}}</ref>

[[Eleanor Leacock]] traveled to Samoa in 1985 and undertook research among the youth living in [[urban area]]s. The research results indicate that the assertions of [[Derek Freeman]] were seriously flawed. Leacock pointed out that Mead's famous Samoan fieldwork was undertaken on an outer island that had not been colonialized. Freeman, meanwhile, had undertaken fieldwork in an urban slum plagued by drug abuse, structural unemployment, and [[gang]] violence.<ref>{{cite book | editor1=Andrew Lyons | editor2=Harriet Lyons | editor3=Robert J. Gordon |title=Fifty Key Anthropologists |publisher= Taylor & Francis |year=2010 |page=124 |isbn=9781136880124 }}</ref>

Mead was careful to shield the identity of all her subjects for confidentiality, but Freeman found and interviewed one of her original participants, and Freeman reported that she admitted to having willfully misled Mead. She said that she and her friends were having fun with Mead and telling her stories.<ref>{{cite video | title = Margaret Mead and Samoa| year = 1987| author= Frank Heimans| time = 41:20| quote = We girls would pinch each other and tell her we were out with the boys. We were only joking but she took it seriously. As you know, Samoan girls are terrific liars and love making fun of people, but Margaret thought it was all true. | url = https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GOCYhmnx6o8}}</ref>

In 1996, the author [[Martin Orans]] examined Mead's notes preserved at the Library of Congress and credits her for leaving all of her recorded data available to the general public. Orans points out that Freeman's basic criticisms, that Mead was duped by ceremonial virgin Fa'apua'a Fa'amu, who later swore to Freeman that she had played a joke on Mead, were equivocal for several reasons. Mead was well aware of the forms and frequency of Samoan joking, she provided a careful account of the sexual restrictions on ceremonial virgins that corresponds to Fa'apua'a Fa'auma'a's account to Freeman, and Mead's notes make clear that she had reached her conclusions about Samoan sexuality before meeting Fa'apua'a Fa'amu. Orans points out that Mead's data support several different conclusions and that Mead's conclusions hinge on an [[Symbolic anthropology|interpretive]], rather than [[positivism|positivist]], approach to culture. Orans went on to point out concerning Mead's work elsewhere that her own notes do not support her published conclusive claims. Evaluating Mead's work in Samoa from a positivist stance, Orans's assessment of the controversy was that Mead did not formulate her research agenda in scientific terms and that "her work may properly be damned with the harshest scientific criticism of all, that it is '[[not even wrong]]'."<ref name="orans">Orans, Martin (1996), ''Not Even Wrong: Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman, and the Samoans''.</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2022}}

On the whole, anthropologists have rejected the notion that Mead's conclusions rested on the validity of a single interview with a single person and find instead that Mead based her conclusions on the sum of her observations and interviews during her time in Samoa and that the status of the single interview did not falsify her work.<ref>{{cite book |last1=Shankman |first1=Paul |title=The Trashing of Margaret Mead |publisher=The University of Wisconsin Press |isbn=978-0-299-23454-6 |page=113|date=December 3, 2009 }}</ref> Others such as Orans maintained that even though Freeman's critique was invalid, Mead's study was not sufficiently scientifically rigorous to support the conclusions she drew.<ref name="orans" />{{page needed|date=September 2022}}

In 1999, Freeman published another book, ''The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research'', including previously unavailable material. In his obituary in ''The New York Times'', John Shaw stated that Freeman's thesis, though upsetting many, had by the time of his death generally gained widespread acceptance.<ref name="shawnyt" /> Recent work has nonetheless challenged Freeman's critique.<ref>Paul Shankman,[''The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy,''] University of Wisconsin Press, 2009 esp. pp. 47–71.</ref> A frequent criticism of Freeman is that he regularly misrepresented Mead's research and views.<ref name="ReferenceA">Shankman, Paul 2009 ''The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy''.  Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2022}}<ref>See Appell 1984, Brady 1991, Feinberg 1988, Leacock 1988, Levy 1984, Marshall 1993, Nardi 1984, Patience and Smith 1986, Paxman 1988, Scheper-Hughes 1984, Shankman 1996, Young and Juan 1985</ref> In a 2009 evaluation of the debate, anthropologist Paul Shankman concluded:<ref name="ReferenceA"/>

<blockquote>There is now a large body of criticism of Freeman's work from a number of perspectives in which Mead, Samoa, and anthropology appear in a very different light than they do in Freeman's work. Indeed, the immense significance that Freeman gave his critique looks like 'much ado about nothing' to many of his critics.</blockquote>

While nurture-oriented anthropologists are more inclined to agree with Mead's conclusions, some non-anthropologists who take a nature-oriented approach follow Freeman's lead, such as Harvard psychologist [[Steven Pinker]], biologist [[Richard Dawkins]], evolutionary psychologist [[David Buss]], science writer [[Matt Ridley]], classicist [[Mary Lefkowitz]]<ref>{{cite web|url=http://www.unl.edu/rhames/courses/current/readings/Shankman-Trashing%20of%20Margaret%20Mead.pdf |title=The Trashing of Margaret Mead – How Derek Freeman Fooled us all on an Alleged Hoax |access-date=November 2, 2013}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2022}}.

In her 2015 book ''[[Galileo's Middle Finger]]'', [[Alice Dreger]] argues that Freeman's accusations were unfounded and misleading. A detailed review of the controversy by Paul Shankman, published by the University of Wisconsin Press in 2009, supports the contention that Mead's research was essentially correct and concludes that Freeman cherry-picked his data and misrepresented both Mead and Samoan culture.<ref>{{cite book | title=The Trashing of Margaret Mead: Anatomy of an Anthropological Controversy| author=Shankman, Paul | year=2009 | publisher=University of Wisconsin Press | isbn=978-0-299-23454-6}}</ref>{{page needed|date=September 2022}}<ref>{{cite journal|doi=10.1126/science.1189202|author=Robert A. Levine|title=Cutting a Controversy Down to Size|journal=Science|pages=1108|volume=328|date=May 28, 2010|issue=5982|s2cid=162343521}}</ref><ref>{{cite web|title=The Trashing of Margaret Mead|url=https://savageminds.org/2010/10/13/the-trashing-of-margaret-mead/|website=Savage Minds|access-date=August 4, 2017|date=October 13, 2010}}</ref>

A survey of 301 anthropology faculty in the United States in 2016 had two thirds agreeing with a statement that Mead "romanticizes the sexual freedom of Samoan adolescents" and half agreeing that it was ideologically motivated.<ref>{{cite journal| last1=Horowitz| first1=Mark| last2=Yaworsky| first2=William| last3=Kickham| first3=Kenneth| date=October 2019| title=Anthropology's Science Wars: Insights from a New Survey| journal=[[Current Anthropology]]| volume=60| issue=5| pages=674–698| doi = 10.1086/705409| s2cid = 203051445}}</ref>

==={{Vanchor|Sex and Temperament|text=''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies'' (1935)}}===
Mead's ''Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies''<ref name="Mead 2003">{{cite book|last=Mead|first=Margaret|title=Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies|year=2003|publisher=Perennial an impr. of HarperCollins Publ.|location=New York|isbn=978-0-06-093495-8|edition= 1st Perennial}}</ref> became influential within the [[feminist movement]] since it claimed that females are dominant in the Tchambuli (now spelled [[Chambri people|Chambri]]) Lake region of the Sepik basin of [[Papua New Guinea]] (in the western Pacific) without causing any special problems. The lack of male dominance may have been the result of the Australian administration's outlawing of warfare. According to contemporary research, males are dominant throughout [[Melanesia]]. Others have argued that there is still much cultural variation throughout Melanesia, especially in the large island of [[New Guinea]]. Moreover, anthropologists often overlook the significance of networks of political influence among females. The formal male-dominated institutions typical of some areas of high population density were not, for example, present in the same way in [[Oksapmin]], [[West Sepik Province]], a more sparsely-populated area. Cultural patterns there were different from, say, [[Mount Hagen]]. They were closer to those described by Mead.

Mead stated that the [[Arapesh languages|Arapesh people]], also in the Sepik, were [[pacifist]]s, but she noted that they on occasion engage in warfare. Her observations about the sharing of garden plots among the Arapesh, the [[egalitarian]] emphasis in child rearing, and her documentation of predominantly peaceful relations among relatives are very different from the "big man" displays of dominance that were documented in more stratified New Guinea cultures, such as by [[Andrew Strathern]]. They are a different cultural pattern.

In brief, her comparative study revealed a full range of contrasting gender roles:
* "Among the Arapesh, both men and women were peaceful in temperament and neither men nor women made war.
* "Among the [[Mundugumor people|Mundugumor]], the opposite was true: both men and women were warlike in temperament.
* "And the Tchambuli were different from both. The men 'primped' and spent their time decorating themselves while the women worked and were the practical ones—the opposite of how it seemed in early 20th century America."<ref>{{cite book |last1=Mead |first1=Margaret |title=Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies |publisher=HarperCollins Publ. |isbn=978-0-06-093495-8|edition= 1st Perennial |url=https://courses.lumenlearning.com/culturalanthropology/chapter/margaret-meads-gender-studies/ |access-date=June 16, 2019|date=May 22, 2001 }}</ref>

[[Deborah Gewertz]] (1981) studied the Chambri (called [[Tchambuli]] by Mead) in 1974–1975 and found no evidence of such gender roles. Gewertz states that as far back in history as there is evidence (1850s), Chambri men dominated the women, controlled their produce, and made all important political decisions. In later years, there has been a diligent search for societies in which women dominate men or for signs of such past societies, but none has been found (Bamberger 1974).<ref>[https://books.google.com/books?id=vE85zkFdURQC&pg=PA263 Bamberger, Joan, ''The Myth of Matriarchy: Why Men Rule in primitive society'', in M. Rosaldo & L. Lamphere, ''Women, Culture, and Society'' (Stanford, Calif.: Stanford Univ. Press, 1974)], p.&nbsp;263.</ref> [[Jessie Bernard]] criticised Mead's interpretations of her findings and argued that Mead's descriptions were subjective. Bernard argues that Mead claimed the Mundugumor women were temperamentally identical to men, but her reports indicate that there were in fact sex differences; Mundugumor women hazed each other less than men hazed each other and made efforts to make themselves physically desirable to others, married women had fewer affairs than married men, women were not taught to use weapons, women were used less as hostages and Mundugumor men engaged in physical fights more often than women. In contrast, the Arapesh were also described as equal in temperament, but Bernard states that Mead's own writings indicate that men physically fought over women, yet women did not fight over men. The Arapesh also seemed to have some conception of sex differences in temperament, as they would sometimes describe a woman as acting like a particularly quarrelsome man. Bernard also questioned if the behaviour of men and women in those societies differed as much from Western behaviour as Mead claimed. Bernard argued that some of her descriptions could be equally descriptive of a Western context.<ref>Kaplan, David, and Robert Alan Manners. Culture theory. Prentice Hall, 1972, pp. 175–180</ref>

Despite its feminist roots, Mead's work on women and men was also criticized by [[Betty Friedan]] on the basis that it contributes to infantilizing women.<ref name="friedan">{{cite book|last=Friedan|first=Betty|author-link=Betty Friedan|title=The Feminine Mystique|year=1963|publisher=W.W.Norton|isbn=978-0-393-32257-6|chapter=The Functional Freeze, The Feminine Protest, and Margaret Mead}}</ref>

===Other research areas===
In 1926, there was much debate about [[race and intelligence]]. Mead felt the methodologies involved in the experimental psychology research supporting arguments of racial superiority in intelligence were substantially flawed. In "The Methodology of Racial Testing: Its Significance for Sociology," Mead proposes that there are three problems with testing for racial differences in intelligence. First, there are concerns with the ability to validly equate one's test score with what Mead refers to as ''racial admixture'' or how much ''Negro or Indian blood'' an individual possesses. She also considers whether that information is relevant when interpreting IQ scores. Mead remarks that a genealogical method could be considered valid if it could be "subjected to extensive verification." In addition, the experiment would need a steady control group to establish whether racial admixture was actually affecting intelligence scores. Next, Mead argues that it is difficult to measure the effect that social status has on the results of a person's intelligence test. She meant that environment (family structure, socioeconomic status, and exposure to language, etc.) has too much influence on an individual to attribute inferior scores solely to a physical characteristic such as race. Then, Mead adds that language barriers sometimes create the biggest problem of all. Similarly, Stephen J. Gould finds three main problems with intelligence testing in his 1981 book ''[[The Mismeasure of Man]]'' that relate to Mead's view of the problem of determining whether there are racial differences in intelligence.<ref>Mead, Margaret, "The Methodology of Racial Testing: Its Significance for Sociology" ''American Journal of Sociology'' 31, no. 5 (March 1926): 657–667.</ref><ref>Gould, Stephen J. ''The Mismeasure of Man'', New York City: W. W. Norton & Company, 1981.</ref>

In 1929, Mead and Fortune visited [[Manus Island|Manus]], now the northernmost province of Papua New Guinea, and traveled there by boat from [[Rabaul]]. She amply describes her stay there in her autobiography, and it is mentioned in her 1984 biography by [[Jane Howard (journalist)|Jane Howard]].  On Manus, she studied the Manus people of the south coast village of Peri. "Over the next five decades Mead would come back oftener to Peri than to any other field site of her career.'<ref name="Howard" /><ref> [[Jane Howard (journalist)|Jane Howard]], ''Margaret Mead: A Life'' (1984), New York: Simon and Schuster.</ref>{{rp|117}}

Mead has been credited with persuading the [[American Jewish Committee]] to sponsor a project to study European Jewish villages, ''[[shtetl]]s'', in which a team of researchers would conduct mass interviews with Jewish immigrants living in New York City. The resulting book, widely cited for decades, allegedly created the [[Jewish mother stereotype]], a mother intensely loving but controlling to the point of smothering and engendering guilt in her children through the suffering she professed to undertake for their sakes.<ref>"[http://www.slate.com/id/2167961/slideshow/2167764/entry/2167761/fs/0/ The Jewish Mother] {{Webarchive|url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110821014159/http://www.slate.com/id/2167961/slideshow/2167764/entry/2167761/fs/0/ |date=August 21, 2011 }}", ''Slate'', June 13, 2007, p. 3</ref>

Mead worked for the [[RAND Corporation]], a US Air Force military-funded private research organization, from 1948 to 1950 to study Russian culture and attitudes toward authority.<ref>{{cite book|url=https://archive.org/details/margaretmeadmaki0000lutk |url-access=registration |page=[https://archive.org/details/margaretmeadmaki0000lutk/page/321 321] |quote=margaret mead RAND corporation. |title=Margaret Mead: The Making of an American Icon|publisher=Princeton University Press |author= Nancy Lutkehaus|isbn=978-0-691-00941-4|year=2008}}</ref>
[[File:Trance and Dance in Bali.webm|thumb|thumbtime=34|''[[Trance and Dance in Bali]]'', a 1951 documentary by [[Gregory Bateson]] and Margaret Mead]]
As an [[Anglican]] Christian, Mead played a considerable part in the drafting of the 1979 American [[Episcopal Church (United States)|Episcopal]] [[Book of Common Prayer]].<ref name="Howard"/>{{rp|347–348}}