z54\doc\web\2001\12\whitmead.txt About Mead, here is a brief excerpt from a paper entitled "How psychology lost Darwin" that is currently under review. Enjoy. glayde ---------------- What Watson did for psychology in general, another disciple of Boas's did for sex. Margaret Mead (1901-1978), a bi-sexual graduate student of Franz Boas, for her doctoral dissertation, went off to Samoa. She returned and published her claims in a book entitled "Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization" (Mead, 1928). The sub-title should have been a warning. The gist was that the sexual constraints of traditional Western Christian civilization caused the emotional difficulties of puberty and led to wars, prejudice, bigotry and suppression of women. Mead claimed that Samoan adolescents were allowed, in fact encouraged, to engage in free, casual, promiscuous sex. The outcomes were happy, well adjusted, peaceful, open, kind people. Here we have the basis for the slogan "Make Love, Not War" and an impetus for the later "sexual revolution". Cultural anthropologists loved it and it became one of the most-read and most-often assigned works in all of anthropology. Too bad the whole thing is a pack of lies (Freeman, 1983; O'Keefe, 1983). In the year 2000, The Intercollegiate Studies Institute of Wilmington, Del. named Mead's 1928 treatise the worst nonfiction book of the past 100 years. They should have named it the worst book of fiction. On this there is broad scholarly consensus. The main remaining question is who was the worst liar: was it Mead herself, or was she misled by her young native informants (Freeman, 1998)? But never mind, some anthropologists maintain that the importance and goodness of the message overrides the detail of its veracity (Barkan, 1992; Foerstel & Gilliam, 1992; Lamb, 1994). "Mead's first husband, Luther Cressman, later recalled Mead's characteristic response upon being shown that a conclusion of hers was not true: 'If it isn't, it ought to be,' she would say." (Price, 1999, p. A17) Among Mead's many influential works, another classic of creative writing was Sex and Temperament in Three Primitive Societies (1935). Here Mead tried to show that the male chauvinism of Western Civilization was a cultural outcome with no basis in human biology. She claimed that in other cultures with other traditions, the relations among the sexes come out different. In one group the women were the sexually aggressive ones while the males played coy. The women ran things politically and the men tended the home. In another both men and women were peaceful and lady-like, while in a third both were nasty strivers like white males. With three new cultures plus Western Civilization, she had all possible combinations of female-male dominance relationships. Clearly sex differences in our society must be due to the evils of traditional western European Christian civilization. ========================================== ----- Original Message ----- From: To: Sent: Monday, December 17, 2001 3:13 PM Subject: Re: [h-bd] On Mead (and Boas) > < > WASHINGTON (AP) - She [Margaret Mead] shocked Americans of the 1920s by > suggesting > that teen-agers would be better off with the early experience of > life, including sex, that was normal for youngsters on a South > Seas island. Even now, as the Library of Congress (news - web > sites) > commemorates what would have been her 100th birthday on Sunday > with an exhibit, social scientist Margaret Mead's ideas can be > startling.>> > > Isn't this remarkable? Here is the Library of Congress and the AP together > celebrating the all-around wonderfulness of one of the most notorious > scientific frauds of the 20th century - Mead's Samoan book. > > > In her own life, she had what her biographer, Jane Howard, called > > ``three marriages, several intense liaisons and scores of close > > and complicated friendships.'' Howard notes a love poem written > > for Mead by fellow anthropologist Ruth Benedict. > > The more I learn, the more it seems to me that Mead's writings were largely a > rationalization for her remarkable sex life. For instance, her main informant > in Samoa was the 18 year old Samoan boy she had an adulterous affair with. > > Steve > > How to contribute to H-Bd: 1. To reply privately to just the sender of this message, click the "Reply" button on your email package. 2. To reply publicly to the entire H-Bd list, click the "Reply All" (or equivalent) button on your email package. 3. To start a thread, email your message to h-bd@yahoogroups.com . To unsubscribe, send a blank email to h-bd-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com > > Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/ > How to contribute to H-Bd: 1. To reply privately to just the sender of this message, click the "Reply" button on your email package. 2. To reply publicly to the entire H-Bd list, click the "Reply All" (or equivalent) button on your email package. 3. To start a thread, email your message to h-bd@yahoogroups.com . To unsubscribe, send a blank email to h-bd-unsubscribe@yahoogroups.com Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/