Coming of Age in Somoa
Margaret Mead’s “Coming of Age in Samoa”, which was actually her doctoral dissertation, was compiled in a period of six months starting in 1925.
Through it, people were given a look at a society not affected by the problems of 20th century industrial America. She illustrated a picture of a society where love was available for the asking and crime was dealt with by exchanging a few mats. This book helps one to realize the large role played by social environment. One of Mead’s biggest challenges was probably the fact that her fieldwork was done entirely in the Samoan language. In Samoa, few, if any natives spoke English.
To get information, Mead spent her time talking to approximately 25 Samoan women. However, she spent much of her focus on two young Samoan women, Fa’apua’a
Fa’amu and Fofoa. It is said that one Samoan woman’s life is very much like the next. At the time of her visit to Samoa, Mead, a graduate student was only 23 years old. She was barely older than the girls she interviewed and lovingly called her “merry companions”. The vision recieved while reading “Coming of Age in Samoa” is that it is a place of nearly stress free living. The children pass through adolescence without the many pressures put upon teenagers in an industrial America: ...adolescence represented no period of crisis or stress,but was instead an orderly developing of a set of slowly maturing interests and activities (95).
According to Mead, families are large, taboos and restrictions are few, and disagreements are settled by the giving of mats. The stresses encountered by American teenagers are unknown to their Samoan counterparts. Mead refers to premarital sex as the “pastime par excellence” for Samoan youth. She writes that Samoa is a virtual paradise of free love, as the young people from 14 years of age until they are married have nothing on their minds except sex. Of Samoan girls Mead says:
She thrusts virtuosity away from her as she thrusts away
from her every other sort of responsibility with the invariable
comment, “Laitit a’u” (“I am but young”). All of her interest
is expanded on clandestine sex adventures (33).
She explains that growing up can be free, easy and uncomplicated. Romantic love in Samoa is not bound with ideas of monogamy, exclusiveness, jealousy and fidelity as it is in America. Evidently, due to the lack of priva...
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...ons. After a girl is eight or nine years old she has learned not to approach a group of older boys. However, when it comes to younger boys, they are taught to antagonize them. The boys are considered “older” after they have been circumcised. When a girl is looking for her first lover, she looks to an older man, most often a widower or a divorcee. There are two types of sexual relations other than marriage that are recognized by Samoans. These include love affairs between unmarried young people, and also adultery. Although virginity is not expected in girls, Mead claims that it defiantly adds to their attractiveness. Essentially, having sex with a virgin is much more of a feat for a man than sex with a girl who is not. Marriage in Samoa is regarded as a social and economic arrangement in which relative wealth, rank and the skill of both husband and wife must be considered. In conclusion, Margaret Mead’s dissertation on Samoa is still interesting after 75 years. The customs of Samoans, especially those regarding sex are very interesting to people of other cultures. This society rests most of their regard on love and happiness and seem to have been successful in achieving that
Other cultures are interesting because they are different and we don’t usually understand the things that they do and why they do them. Learning about other people’s traditions from all over the world shows the diversity in people’s beliefs, habits and routine occurrences in everyday lives.
The first chapter begins with an exploration of love and marriage in many ancient and current cultures. Surprisingly many cultures either avoid the discussion of love in marriage or spit on the idea completely. China and other societies believed that love was simply a product of marriage and shouldn’t get too out of hand, while a few Greek and Roman philosophers shunned excessive
For centuries, society has placed a remarkably large emphasis on protecting the young from the many perceived errors of growing up. Effective sex education is resisted in many locations across the country in favor of somewhat comical biblical suggestions for abstinence until marriage even while the majority of those targeted teens are viewing the world as a more and more sexual place. So many views are weaving in and out of teenagers' newly formed adolescent minds that any effective argument for responsible attitudes or analysis of sexual behavior in teens should be expressed with a certain minimal degree of clarity. Unfortunately, this essential lucidity of advice is missing in the short story “Where are You Going, Where Have You Been,” in which the misguided Joyce Carol Oates creates the character of Arthur Friend as a cliché personification of the inner demon of uncontrollably budding sexuality. Instead, the murky characterization of the antagonist presents nothing more than a confused and ambiguous view of the meaning of the story.
Minot describes the girls sex acts with each individual boy in a short detail way. “You’d go on walks to get off campus. It was raining like hell, my sweater as sopped as a wet sheep. Tim pinned me to a tree, the woods light brown and dark brown, a white house half hidden with lights already on. The water was as loud as a crowd hissing. He made certain comments about my forehead, about my cheeks.” (Minot 333). Minot continues to describe the teenage girl lust for multiple boys through out the story. It was normal to have sex after you did it for the first time. Her parents didn’t even seem to care or notice what their daughter was doing. “My parents had no idea. Parents never really know what’s going on, especially when you’re away at school most of the time. If she met them, my mother might say, “Oliver seems nice” or “I like that one” without much of an opinion. If she didn’t like them, “He’s a funny fellow, isn’t he?” or “Johnny’s perfectly nice but a drink of water.” My father was too shy to talk to them at all unless they played sports and he’d ask them about that.” (Minot 334). Her mother couldn’t even recognize the change through her daughter’s eyes as sex began to her effect her. She was blind to see that her daughter was slowly fading away. Her father was too timid to put the fear in those boys minds so they won’t put a hand on his daughter, but respect her because he knows the mind set of a teenage boy. During the young girl sex escapades, she begins to loose herself as she realizes that she no longer existed to the boys after she opened her legs and gave them everything they wanted. “After sex, you curl up like a shrimp, something deep inside you ruined, slammed in a place that sickens at slamming, and slowly you fill up with an overwhelming sadness, and elusive gaping worry. You don’t try to explain it, filled with the knowledge that it’s nothing after all, everything
...tions and other important parts of our lives. These two cultures are very unique and I believe they are two of the most influential cultures around the American continent. Overall the process of learning to communicate and share our cultural background with others is an important tool to live improved and fruitful lives.
To conclude, I would say that these two cultures are somewhat alike, but each has its own uniqueness and this it what makes the world interesting for us. Being able to learn about different cultures in this class is a good opportunity to open our eyes for what we have been missing out during this entire time.
Culture often means an appreciation of the finer things in life; however, culture brings members of a society together. We have a sense of belonging because we share similar beliefs, values, and attitudes about what’s right and wrong. As a result, culture changes as people adapt to their surroundings. According to Bishop Donald, “let it begin with me and my children and grandchildren” (211). Among other things, culture influences what you eat; how you were raised and will raise your own children? If, when, and whom you will marry; how you make and spend money. Truth is culture is adaptive and always changing over time because
Margaret Mead was a great scientist, explorer, writer, and teacher, who educated the human race in many different ways. In the next few paragraphs I will discuss the different ways Margaret Mead, Anthropologist, effected our society. Margaret Mead was born in Philadelphia on December 16, 1901, and was educated at Barnard College and at Columbia University. In 1926 she became assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City, and she served as associate curator and as curator. She was director of research in contemporary cultures at Columbia University from 1948 to 1950 and professor of anthropology there after 1954. Participating in several field expeditions, Mead conducted notable research in New Guinea, Samoa, and Bali. Much of her work was devoted to a study of patterns of child rearing in various cultures. She also analyzed many problems in contemporary American society, particularly those affecting young people. Her interests were varied, including childcare, adolescence, sexual behavior, and American character and culture. Margaret Mead taught generations of Americans about looking carefully and openly at other cultures to understand the complexities of being human. Margaret Mead brought the serious work of anthropology to public consciousness. Mead studied at Barnard College, where she met the great anthropologist Franz Boas. Franz Boas became her mentor and her advisor when she attended graduate school at Columbia University. Mead's work is largely responsible for the treasures on view in the Museum's Hall of Pacific Peoples. In addition to her work at the Museum, Margaret Mead taught, and wrote more best selling books. She contributed a regular column to Redbook magazine. She was also lectured, and was frequently interviewed on radio and television.
Because there was a well-established mission on the island, some of the girls spoke in English and several of them became close friends which helped to build up a detailed portrait of Soma adolescence. Those girls that Mead studied now are the elders of the island. It was their answer to her question about life and love infidelity that had such an impact on the people back home. Mead’s findings were published in her first book, Coming of Age in Samoa, but there are some problems with her accountant of life in Samoa in the 1920s. Critics have claimed that she missed certain important aspects of Samoan life. She spent only six months on the island and most of the time living with an American family rather than amongst the Samoa people. This had made people wander whether she could have really grasped the full complexity of cement culture and whether for that matter she could’ve fully mastered the unusually difficult Samoan time. Asking people about personal and intimate areas of their lives is not easy even in your own language. What can be said is that Mead was suddenly struck by the differences between adolescents in Samoa and
Experiencing a society of multi-cultures is beneficial through a variety of concepts to epitomize each individual identity. A person may vary in the degree to which he or she identifies with, morals, or...
Margaret Mead is one of the most influential anthropologists to modern society due to her anthropological research and her outspoken demeanor on any topic. Mead’s research was groundbreaking in an era where places like Samoa were still seen as the paradise away from the civilized world. Her efforts to transform the unknown societies of the Samoans into visual imagery for the Western world were successful and resulted in the book, Coming of Age in Samoa: A Psychological Study of Primitive Youth for Western Civilization, originally published in 1928. This book made the exotic and misunderstood cultures of the Samoans tangible for the general population. Mead’s special effort to debunk the myth of unavoidable childish adolescence was paramount in her work in Samoa, specifically adolescent females. Margaret Mead established in her work, Coming of Age in Samoa, that adolescence does not need to be the unwieldy and uncomfortable period in life that Western culture portrayed as “stormily” (Mead 5).
Sexuality has become one of the key determining factors in one’s gender. While many want to initially say that gender is solely based on sexual orientation fail to take in to account many cultural practices, which not only influence gender, but create certain gender roles. The initial creation of Mexican gender roles, as Gloria Gonzalez-Lopez suggests, is the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church “over the course of almost five hundred years,” created beliefs that virgins are desirable and that a non-virgin is of a lower moral class (38). From this Mexican women began maintaining their virginity, not because of the moral implications, but because of social mobility. Virginity has been created to be something beautif...
There has recently been an increase in casual sex and promiscuity throughout millennials. Although millennials have fewer partners, they are having more casual hookups. Today, “a large generation gap in both attitudes toward premarital sex and number of sexual partners” is greatly affecting our society (Kaplan). Promiscuity is increasing and close relationships are fading. Many are worried the world of dating will soon disappear. This promiscuity “creates a sense that hooking up has replaced traditional dating as the primary means of developing and maintaining relationships among young people, especially college students” (“Is Casual Sex on The Rise in America”). People are not marrying until later in life. They spend much of their younger years single, but not alone. They jump around from person to person, such as in Huxley’s dystopia. Although, unlike Huxley’s dystopia, relationships still exist. Many eventually find their partner and become married later on in
If I were to choose one place in the whole world which would be the best setting to learn the lessons of life, it would be at home with my family. I am from the islands of Samoa located in the Pacific. I grew up in a family of five people in a society of strong culture and religious atmosphere. I love being with my family because they play a vital role in my life. Most of my time was spent on helping out with the family chores, going to school and fulfilling my church callings. In this essay I will discuss how my culture, my family and my church has changed and molded my character for the better.
In the end, what we learn from this article is very realistic and logical. Furthermore, it is supported with real-life examples. Culture is ordinary, each individual has it, and it is both individual and common. It’s a result of both traditional values and an individual effort. Therefore, trying to fit it into certain sharp-edged models would be wrong.