Word: samoan
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...rented fire-red mini Moke, an open-sided vehicle that honeymooners use on Caribbean beach tours. He also has a press pass, plenty of Dunhills and unlimited credit at the Red Crab. Just like the old days, only now his faithful companion is not a 300-lb. Samoan attorney, it is V.S. Naipaul...
...believer in the power of environment and thus bound to find evidence supporting that doctrine. Specifically, Boas sent her off to the South Seas to study, in Mead's words, "the relative strength of biological puberty and cultural pattern." There, she carried out most of her research on Samoan female adolescence by regularly seeing, mingling with, and interviewing some 25 girls between the ages of 14 and 20 over a period of several months. Almost entirely from what she learned from these girls, Mead constructed her happy picture of youth in Samoa...
Freeman also portrays himself as " in an exceptionally favorable position to pursue my researchers into the realities of Samoan life" and as infinitely more qualified than Mead was. Indeed, Freeman has spent a total of six years in Samoa since he first went there in 1940 and may well know the culture far between than Mead. ever did. In 1942, a Samoan chief adopted Freeman as his son when his own son died, and Freeman was later given a title which allowed him to attend the chiefly assemblies which were hidden from Mead. Unfortunately, because of this unique exposure, Freeman...
...news that Samoan society is not as peaceful and permissive as once thought is probably inevitable. Anthropologists once thought the! Kung San Bushmen of the Kalahari Desert were a people for whom war and violence were unknown, but recent studies have revealed that they have a crime and suicide rate as high as that of many western countries. Moreover, several previous studies including at least one by an amateur anthropologist had concluded that Mead's picture was a little too rosy...
...ignores the fact that, to some degree, she and Boas were more interested in studying cultural variations themselves than deciding whether such variations meant that men were not bound by their genes. Worse, Freeman portrays Mead as a possessed and ignorant follower of Boas who was duped by her Samoan informants. When he spoke last month, Freeman voiced the opinion that, because of her involvement with Boas, Margaret Mead was "more sinned against that sinning." Freeman's own book, important as it may be, makes his own words all the more true.On location in Samoa...