Coming of Age in Samoa
Margaret Mead
William Morrow & Company, USA, 1928
Summary
This book is an ethnographic study of youth, especially girls, conducted in 1920s Samoa by Dr. Margaret Mead in the hopes of finding a population of that age range that wasn't caught up in the "noise" of Western society. She spends fourteen chapters discussing the results of her study, then follows it up with a statistical appendix.
Samoa is described as a very laid back culture, with the worst of the previous primitive culture having been eliminated by Western contact without having having yet acquired the hectic state of the modern West. Dr. Mead's report is summarized in chapters 13 and 14, with 13 being more a real summary and 14 being a soapbox speech on its applicability to the US of the 1920s.
Discussion
The significance of this book hardly needs to be expounded upon, as it is considered the classic of the genre. The two things I really didn't like about were 1. there was far more information in some sections than I wanted, as I'm sure can be recalled from my commentary on the appropriate chapters, and 2. I strongly disagree with the final chapter. Dr. Mead's ideas on child rearing are anathema to me. For future work, at this point I could just pull up some materials on modern Samoa.
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