Margaret Mead's study of coming of age ceremonies in Samoa

Margaret Mead and Coming of Age in Samoa

Different aspects of culture define people over a period of time. It is only human nature that we see differences in culture and ourselves when thrown into a melting pot, a mix of multi-cultures in which we live today. One can only imagine what it must have been like for Margaret Mead as she traveled half way around the world in search of understanding aspects of other cultures, very foreign from our own. In this respect, she was a trail blazer, breaking with convention and expectation of her own role in society by becoming an anthropologist. It is the quest of the anthropologist to observe, discover culture and document aspects of that culture that are unique. With this mind, it is important for one to have a working definition of culture, in order for one to explore rituals embedded within society that define people and their behaviors. Margaret Mead was searching, not for answers to why or how Samoans behave different and create ceremony for different reasons but to find how even primitive culture is very much like our culture. In fact, by studying such rituals like coming of age, she was better able to understand how their way could offer insight to ours.

M.F. Ashley Montagu (1968) defines culture "from the Latin cultura and cultus which means care, cultivation or allowing to grow something" (3). Originally the connotation attributive to "agriculture or cultivation of the soil" (Montagu 3). Only later did the word describe attributes of man and elements of personality within a group of men. From the beginning, the concept of culture was difficult to disseminate. Even today in a world without borders or limits due to telecommunications technology, it is still difficult to grasp the notion of multi-culture. Due its melting pot, we are a culture defined equally by many cultures. Hence, the concept of multiculturalism was born to accept everyone's culture. It can hypothesized that due to an emerging global economy that eventually man will become one as a global cultural in the future.

This paper will take this concept of culture as a framework to examine the ceremony of coming of age, specifically in Samoa as written in Mead's ground breaking book. First this paper will look at how other culture define and celebrate the coming of age passage in a person's life. This will take into account, first the different ways coming of age can be marked and second, what displays are taken to mark the occasion of the person. I think it is surprising in a world of vastly different cultures that this ceremony happens at the same time for many peoples or in other words during adolescence. The impact of what it means to come of age is different for specific cultures but carries the same weight regardless socially. This paper will examine Mead's work by looking at the Samoan coming of age ceremony. It will be noted that while coming of age there may be different than in the western world, their desires for lust, love and family are the same as ours. With that carries a certain amount of accountability and maturity. This paper will also examine the work of Derek Freeman and his views of Mead's work.

Different Types of Coming of Age

Coming of age marks a young person's formal transition from adolescence into adulthood. The age at which this event takes places varies from place to place as does the ritual or ceremony involved. One could argue that today children are far too much in a hurry to grow up and it seems the passage of childhood gets shorter with every generation. It comes down to value systems when a young person reaches that defined moment. It seems in America coming of age is defined differently by the law, accountability and religion. By some cultural standards the American adolescence is prolonged, extending into the early 20's and beyond (Coming of Age par. 2).

One can see the importance of creating ritual and ceremony to define the moment, otherwise, it can be quite confusing and this leads to rebellion and conflict if a person does not know where they stand in society. By providing a ceremony, a society is not only celebrating the event or passage but also allowing that person's identity to transform and create new dimensions of character. By Western standards, one's coming of age can be defined by two aspects of culture: (1) religion and (2) legal accountability. Christian religions define coming of age, the age at which the young person becomes a formal member of the congregation, usually at thirteen years of age. The Jewish faith has a similar passage for both boys and girls also happening about this time. For young men, it is at thirteen that the community recognizes him as a man and therefore of marriageable age. The same goes for a young girl at twelve. Of course in America, the age one is legally able to marry is eighteen (Coming of Age par. 6). This brings up the concept of legal accountability, however, once this passage happens, this does not make the child an adult, although many states are amending that age for the purpose of trying crimes, the legal age child knows right from wrong is twelve. However, most states consider a child legally an adult at eighteen or twenty-one. By this time the child has the same rights to vote, drink and smoke. These are ages that are celebrated with parties and ceremonies throughout the west to mark that a person has grown up (Coming of Age par. 10).

Derek Freeman

Anthropologist and specialist in Pacific culture Derek Freeman disagrees with Margaret Mead's ground breaking work in Samoa. Prior to his own observations of Samoan coming of age ceremonies, he believed in Mead's work. He believes "human behavior is, demonstrably, characterized by the interaction of cultural and biological variables" (New York Times Review of Books 1). In other words, it is a combination of factors that lead one to make decisions. In contrast, Mead believed it was completely in the hands of environment and what a child is exposed to that predicts behavior. In his book, Margaret Mead and the Heretic, he establishes that maybe she made a mistake or made the wrong choice in her analyzing her findings on Samoan coming of age. He explains, "our term heretic is derived from the Greek word for choice, and so refers to someone who chooses to think for himself" (1). He believes that Mead had no business applying her cultural relativity within a scientific open system of understanding. Yet he understands her behavior as many scientists of past re-owned fame have had moments of profound creativity in order to discredit established belief systems. But he also believes as a "heretic" scientist one has a responsibility to get the facts right.

He did not travel to Samoa to discredit Mead's findings but to witness them first hand as a fascinating cultural experience. However, once his presence had been established within his tribe and he was no longer an outsider, what he saw was much different from Mead's experience twenty years before. What makes his experience different is maybe the attention to detail. He learned to speak Samoan and immersed himself as a member of their family. As a result he was exposed to rituals within the inner sanctum of the tribe. Maybe because he was a man, he was given better accessibility to real culture. He remarks, "after attending chiefly courts, I became fully aware of the discordance between Mead's account and the realities I was regularly witnessing" (2). Still going about bring this to the attention of the world and the Mother of the world was no easy task. It was not until after Mead's passing in 1978 that other anthropologists would consider looking at Freeman's refutation and even then it was called unscientific.

It would take decades and access to Mead's personal letter to Boaz to analyze the validity of Mead's findings to coincide with Freeman's. Freeman would later interview two women which Mead questioned about the coming of age rites and sexual behavior amongst teenagers. He would interview then because of information found in Mead's journal as kept careful notes and names of each girl. He was able to discuss the information with the women who appeared rather embarrassed as their behavior towards Mead. They had decided to play a prank on the white lady and told her about their non-existent sexual experiences. Because Mead was short of time and had not witnessed the acts herself she believed the girls' accounts. Had she has more time and been the correct gender, maybe her book would have turned out different cultural findings; one will never know. Of course, there are anthropologists world wide who discredit Freeman's work and opinion. They attribute his findings to differing sub-cultures within Samoan society. Still DNA does not lie. Since its use began, scientists have been able to further construct that Samoan DNA is in deed different from American DNA and therefore, much of behavior is defined by both genetics and environment. Still this does not change the fact that Margaret Mead was ahead of time and brilliant in her observations.

Conclusion

This paper took the concept of culture as a framework to examine the ceremony of coming of age, specifically in Samoa as written in Mead's ground breaking book. First this paper looked at how other cultures define and celebrate the coming of age passage in a person's life. This took into account, first the different ways coming of age can be marked and second, what displays were taken to mark the occasion for the person. It was surprising in a world of vastly different cultures that this ceremony happens at the same time for many peoples or in other words during adolescence. The impact of what it means to come of age is different for specific cultures but carries the same weight regardless socially. This paper examined Mead's work by looking at the Samoan coming of age ceremony. It was noted that while coming of age there may be different than in the western world, their desires for lust, love and family are the same as ours. With that carries a certain amount of accountability and maturity. This paper also examined the work of Derek Freeman and his views of Mead's work.