Anthropology on Trial: The Mead - Freeman Controversy

Anthropology on Trial: The Mead - Freeman Controversy

A judicious, factual assessment, April 16, 1999
By Hiram Caton (Griffith University, Australia)

Anthropologists have been in damage control since Derek Freeman published Margaret Mead and Samoa (1983). Although Mead had long since ceased to be a research leader, Freeman linked her high standing with anthropology's research paradigm and threw both to the sharks. Anthropologists thus found themselves in the compromised position of defending a study of only historical interest, in order to save face. In the latest episode of the contest, Freeman inflicted a grave wound. Mead got Samoa so wrong, he claims, because she was hoaxed. 'A whole view of the human species was constructed out of the innocent lies of two young women', says Freeman. 'That one of the ruling ideologies of our age should have originated in this way is both comic-and frightening!' Plainly Freeman has fitted the dunce cap on anthropology.
Martin Orans's study gives anthropologists something to cheer about. It removes the dunce cap by presenting what to my mind is a conclusive rebuttal to the duping allegation. But it achieves something more important. Orans shows by example how to get beyond the storm of controversy and personal antagonisms and the mystique of prestige to examine the issues on the evidence. The book is a model of composure heedless of fear or favor. There is no impulse to vanquish, no concern to save or diminish face, no demonization or valorization of paradigms, no flag-waving. Refreshing!

The issue is the reliability of Mead's Samoan ethnography. Orans places this examination on a factual basis by comparing the text of Coming of Age with Mead's field records. The leading questions informants and what are their reliability? how did she evaluate the information she collected? what was her methodology for weaving the extraordinarily intimate portrait of Samoan psychology? does the evidence support her global claim that coming of age in Samoa was unperturbed by adolescent storm and stress, and does this evidence support the conclusion that adolescent psychology and behavior are not materially affected by the biology of sexual maturation?

The contested ethnographic terrain concerns Mead's descriptions of sexual moeurs and of aggression. According to Freeman, she greatly inflated the degree of permissible sexual congress and greatly diminished the degree of competition and aggression. Orans examination of the field record shows that Mead collected substantial evidence of norms and practices restraining adolescent sexuality. Freeman's countervailing evidence adds little to what she knew. Orans writes, Mead 'knew perfectly well' that free love did not prevail in Samoa. There is very little support in the field materials for numerous particular claims about sexual license and no support for generalizations that depicted Samoa as a free love paradise. Mead purported to have obtained the information primarily through interviews with adolescent girls. But the records of these interviews are sparse and do not support her claim. Her principal informant on sexual practices was indeed not a girl but a male of her own age, who did not remotely suggest Mead's sensational reports of stress-free homosexuality and lesbianism among adolescents.

How on earth, then, did Mead arrive at her celebrated conclusions? Orans points out that Mead did in fact report many of the restrictions on adolescent sexuality. The result was a deeply inconsistent text, which she reconciled by repeatedly suggesting that strict norms were winked at in practice. For example, the conspicuous Christian worship of the Samoans she squared with free love by claiming that they did not internalize the teaching on sinfulness of the flesh. In addition, Mead made 'extravagant claims' on the basis of 'exceedingly limited data . . .'. This she did because she was 'not [on] a voyage of discovery' but was 'out to make the strongest possible case for her position'.

The rebuttal to the hoax allegation is straight-forward. Mead did not record the specious information and demonstrably did not credit it because she knew-and stated in her book-that ceremonial virgins were chaste. In addition, by the time the duping occurred, she had already collected testimony that she interpreted as evidence of promiscuity among adolescents of common status. So the prank was not credited and added nothing to what she thought she knew.

This book takes its title from Orans' assessment of Mead's global claims to have proved the independence of cultural practices from biology in this test case, and in particular to have proven that Samoan adolescents are free of stress. These arguments are so vague that they cannot be empirically tested and hence haven't reached the threshold required of scientific claims. 'Not even wrong', Orans advises, is 'the harshest scientific criticism of all'. It strikes both Mead's global claims and Freeman's purported refutation.

In drawing out 'lessons for us all', internal contradictions and grandiose claims to knowledge that she could not possibly have had and is so weakly supported by data, could have survived and formed the foundation for an illustrious career raises substantial doubt regarding improved standards of research'. This statement is highly 'incorrect', viewed from the perspective of controversy, but it is wholesomeness itself judged from the point of view of the rejuvenation needed by anthropology. Orans' book deserves to be studied in every graduate seminar on method and evidence.

It is not a criticism to note that the author has not spoken the last word. While we can now better understand how biases shaped Mead's evaluation of her evidence, there remains the problem of claims made in the complete absence of evidence. These are many, the most sensational being alleged homosexuality and lesbianism. In addition, she endowed herself with omniscience about adolescent experience that only novelists can have.

Did she, then, spin a yarn?

Hiram Caton Griffith University Editor, of America, 1990.

This book is yet another nitpicking attack on Derek Freeman that, as usual, treats disagreements on interpretation and judgment as if they were huge errors in concrete facts that discredited Freeman.

Martin Orans implicitly admits that Samoan society was as Derek Freeman depicts it (puritanical, authoritarian, unequal, and punitive) and was not as Margaret Mead depicted it (relaxed, sexually free, egalitarian, and permissive).

Orans makes it sound as if he had proven Freeman wrong or dishonest on key matters of fact, when the actual substance of his accusation is a mere disagreement with Freeman on motives, purpose, beliefs and intentions, a topic on which neither Orans nor Freeman have any special qualifications.

The substance of Freeman's criticism is that Mead, and the anthropology profession, presented an account of Samoa that was radically false

Orans writes as if showing Freeman wrong on the issue of whether Mead was hoaxed exculpates Mead, and anthropology. It does not. Orans writes as if he is accusing Freeman of important errors of fact and substance, but when we look at the actual details he is merely accusing Freeman of attributing incorrect thoughts and intentions to Mead's actions, issues on which the truth cannot be known, and is difficult to even define, issues on which neither Freeman nor Orans have any special qualifications or ability.

Given that Mead's depiction of Samoa was untrue, and was widely accepted and taught by the anthropological profession, as Orans implicitly admits, we must conclude that Mead, and the anthropological profession, are either fools or liars, and most likely something of both. Deciding where self deception ends, and deliberate deception of others begins, is more a job for a priest than a job for anthropologist, so if Freeman has got it wrong, as Orans argues that he got it wrong, that is both unsurprising and unimportant.

Orans writes as if Freeman's weakness on the question of the extent to which Mead was hoaxed show Freeman as a bad scientist, but rather than condemning Freeman as a bad scientist, the evidence and arguments presented in this book merely condemn him as bad priest, a condemnation that is probably accurate, but hardly surprising.

Orans argues that Margaret Mead, and the entire anthropological profession, was somehow being scientific and responsible in presenting a politically motivated image of Samoa that was clearly false, and that they were well aware it was false, and that Freeman is somehow unscientific and irresponsible in presenting an image of Samoan society that is clearly true.

Freeman argues that the Mead, and the entire anthropological profession, were hoaxed largely due their strong desire to be self deceived. If, as Orans argues, they were not hoaxed, that does not make the falsehoods that they presented about Samoa any less of a hoax, it merely makes them more guilty of wickedness, but less guilty of stupidity.

Neither Orans or Freeman are trained to distinguish between wickedness and stupidity.. It is not their job.

If Orans's position on Mead being hoaxed is correct, and Freeman's position is wrong, then the conclusion we should draw is not that Mead is right, but that she was a liar and not a victim of self deception. The hoax is Freeman's excuse for Mead's behavior, not the substance of his attack on Mead, thus for Orans to attack Freeman on this issue of Mead being hoaxed as if it was the substance of his accusation, as if refuting it exculpated Mead and anthropology, is irrelevant and deceptive, an attempt to manipulate the reader. If Orans is right on this issue, and Freeman is wrong, we should think worse of Mead, and of Anthropology and anthropologists in general, not better.

Chief Malopa’upo Isaia. Coming of Age in American Anthropology: Margaret Mead and Paradise. Universal Publishers, 1999.

This is one hellova blast at Margaret Mead for her ‘slander’ of the Samoan people and culture. When I queried American Samoa’s Congressman Eni F. H. Faleomavaega about Isaia’s book, he told me: ‘I believe there has always been a consensus among Samoans . . . that Mead’s work . . . is definitely an insult on Samoan culture . . . the older generation never seemed bothered by all this because many never had the opportunity for higher education . . . [but] I can attest to you that my generation definitely considers Mead’s work as trash and an insult to the Samoan people’. The Congressman grew up in the Sixties, when Samoan radio talk shows derided Mead’s use of their culture to promote relaxation of sexual morals in her own culture. She visited them, the story goes, as a ‘tourist on a study holiday’, and, although she could scarcely speak the language, she was shown every courtesy. Then she pretended to the white world that she knew all about those South Seas ‘primitives’. When Samoans began to enter white universities, and told anthropology instructors delivering the Mead line that she got it wrong, they were told to shut up because Mead was the expert . In 1984, Isaia heard Freeman lecture on the Samoa controversy at his school in Apia. On the spot, he told me, there was born in him a mission to vindicate Samoan honor. This book is the outcome.

Derek Freeman, The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research. Boulder: Westview Press, 1999.

Freeman shows that Mead’s fieldwork was premised on two strategic deceits. She concealed from her hosts her married status. By passing herself off as a virgin, she was honored by three villages with title of taupou, which conferred a great advantage-she had, as she said, ‘rank to burn’ and could ‘order people about’. She second strategic deceit was perpetrated on her supervisor, Franz Boas and indirectly on her funding sponsor, the National Research Council. Boas and the Council expected her to research the personality of adolescent girls, to determine the extent to which nature (puberty) or culture influenced adolescent conflict. But Mead wasn’t interested in this project. She accepted it because it got her a ticket to the field. Her real interest was ethnography. Unbeknownst to Boas, Mead struck an agreement with the Bishop Museum (Honolulu) to prepare an ethnography of Manu’a. Freeman shows by a meticulous reconstruction of her activities that she spent no more than four or five weeks on the funded project, hardly time enough for a systematic investigation of this complex and demanding subject. This is confirmed by her sparse field notes on the adolescent project. Having little data (judging from her field notes) it seems that she just made it up and pretended, in the appendices of Coming of Age, to have found it.

Mead seems to have enjoyed slipping mickies. She says, for example, that Samoa was untroubled by natural disasters. And this absence of adversity prompted their easy life-style. (Boungainville said the same thing). Yet it’s common knowledge that no island is spared the ravages of storm, flood and occasional tsunamis. In fact, a hurricane devastated Manu’a in January of the year of her visit! Her field notes record the adversity that it caused. Again, she says that Samoan children alternately crawl or walk until the age of ‘three or four’. Yet every caregiver knows that once the child learns to walk, next it runs and never returns to crawling. She seems to have been confident that no one would call her hand on such whoppers. Deception was so habitual that she fibbed gratuitously. Thus she told Boas that she was seasick for six weeks (!!) on her return voyage, while in fact she was romancing a new beau-love sick, not seasick. It’s not surprising that her epistemological mottoes were: ‘The truth isn’t out there, you know’ and ‘If it isn’t [true], it ought to be’.

Freeman’s claim that the hoax ‘effectively solve[s] the enigma of Margaret Mead’s research’ unfortunately follows the fashion of substituting victimhood for active will. He would have us see her as the unwitting pawn of a mythopoetic fate. An alternative interpretation suggests Mead’s conduct in Manu’a fell short of professional standards set by A. C. Hadden and others. It had no logical relation to Boasian anthropology. It was entirely her doing. Having deceived her hosts, telling them that she was single, she compromised the sacrosanct taupou (virgin) title by having affairs. That too was her choice. She went on to invent a free sex Samoa as a preamble to the part of Coming of Age that made her famous–her advocacy of educational, family, and sexual reform in America.

To me Mead’s research presents no enigma. She went to the field to find what she wanted to find-an uplifting story to boost a current social fashion. As for those ‘primitives’ who served as fodder, well, they were expendable in the great struggle to change the world.

Lenora Foerstel and Angela Gilliam. Confronting the Margaret Mead Legacy: Scholarship, Empire, and the South Pacific. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1992.

In the Foreword, English anthropologist Peter Worsley says that ‘critical evaluation of Margaret Mead’s work is long overdue, particularly in the United States, where I have frequently found it difficult to engage in discussion about Mead, since the slightest breath of criticism commonly evokes a passionate-and to my mind quite uncritical-defence of the entire corpus of her very uneven writings and of her life-career’. Worsley should know, for he wrote a review of Mead’s anthropology of the Manus, published as New Lives for Old, which he styled ‘science fiction’. New Lives for Old was a message of hope. It’s about the people of Manus who have formed a mass movement (the Paliau movement) to transform their culture from its pre-war primitiveness to integration with modern life-government, economic, educational, cultural. According to Worsley (also Lenora Foerstel), Mead’s interpretation of the movement got it back to front: it was an indigenous movement against involvement in western owned plantations and business. Mead was furious about Worsley’s review. She would also be furious about this book because it gives those ‘natives’ a platform to talk back to anthropologists.

One indigenous contributor, Nahau Rooney from Manus, notes that anthropologists set up shop without any local consultation. The subjects of ‘research’ were not told what information was being gathered, to what purpose, and what use would be made of it. From the anthropologists’ point of view, this wasn’t relevant because, well, savages are illiterate, aren’t they? But the published depictions had a way of getting back to the natives, and when they did, some got angry. One angry soul is Warilea Iamo, the first Papuan to be awarded an anthropology PhD. In his contribution he blisters Mead for turning his and other Pacific cultures into consumer items for western readers keen to know about the exotics in the imperial domain. This ‘objectification’ (description without any native input or right of correction) is, in his view, yet another manifestation of racist condescension. A number of contributors fault anthropologists as the main source of racist western ideas of the primitive. Mead in particular is blamed for her consistent approval of American imperialism in the Pacific. She never protested nuclear testing in the Pacific and the removal of peoples from their islands to make way for tests. She never participated in anti-war protests (to the puzzlement and consternation of her colleagues). She even denounced US labor unions and others who opposed nuclear testing.

Worsley’s essay is an example of the low opinion that some anthropologists had of Mead’s edifying anthropology, but this collection lacks an essay devoted to that theme. Here are some items that it might reveal. ++Douglas Oliver, a Pacific anthropologist at Harvard, wrote in 1991 that ‘when I took courses in anthropology at Harvard, in the early Thirties, the only use made of Coming of Age was as an example of how not to do field work, and how not to leap to universal conclusion about human behavior’. He goes on to mention that John Whiting, who was once a Mead fan, ‘has come to express something like contempt for Mead (within my hearing, that is)’. ++Mead’s long term collaborator and friend, Lola Romanucci-Ross, said in 1985, ‘It might be worth making the point that many, if not all, of Margaret’s recent public defenders, attacked her brutally and gave her credit for nothing for many years. For many years I was accosted by some of these same defenders who … wanted me to give up some terrible secrets about her ‘incompetence’, or ‘dishonesty’, etc.’ ++Westin LaBarre, a leading anthropologist, stated in 1983: ‘When I was a graduate student in anthropology at Yale in the late ’30’s, Mead’s Sex and Temperament came out. Puzzled that even a big island like New Guinea should have had three tribes waiting to be discovered to prove her point about the non-biological nature of gender, I went to Edward Sapir with my puzzlement. He said laconically, ‘She’s a pathological liar.’ I was startled as much by what he said, as by the fact that an eminent anthropologist and chairman of a department should say this to a mere graduate student. But over the years, I have come to believe that this is literally the case.”

Gathered from Amazon and www.whither-progress.org/pages/hiramkey.php