Title: Coming of Age in Samoa
Author: Margaret Mead
Editors: Williams Morrow and Company (1928)
Summary: Coming of Age in Samoa is Margaret Mead's ethnography about the women in Samoan culture, with an emphasis on the younger women and girls. Throughout her novel, Mead discusses the various trials and tribulations a Samoan woman must go through, while linking her findings back to Western Culture.
One of the areas Mead emphasizes the contrast between Samoan and Western culture the most is their treatment of young children and their exposure to various types of information, such as birth and death. Unlike Western cultures, no attempt is made to hide Samoan children from these cycles of life. Samoan women are also given responsibilities and taught how to do household chores as early as the age of five. Mead points out that, unlike children in Western cultures, the Samoan children can see a direct connection between what they are learning, and how it can help them in their everyday life, so they are much more motivated then the children in our Western society.
After a lengthy discussion on relationships and domestic life, Mead spends a portion of her ethnography describing Samoans who fit outside of the social norms, such as delinquent and the musu. Musu is Samoan for "Unwilling, or Abstaining", and describes a person who refuses to perform a specific task. Unlike Western culture, where this could be seen as a negative, the Samoans deeply respect the musu. Finally, Mead closes her novel with several appenxies, which attempt to give some quantitative information the qualatiative information found in the main portion of the book.
Discussion: Mead's ethnography was highly enlightening. The differences between American children and Samoan children always struck me at how dissimilar they were. I still have a hard time believing that the children were intrusted with the care taking of others at such a young age. It was nice getting to read the "definitive" ethnography, but it's a shame that we didn't have an opportunity to read a computer or design related ethnography.
Thanks for sharing this.Coming of Age in Samoa is a book by American anthropologist Margaret Mead based upon her research and study of youth on the island of Ta'u in the Samoa Islands which primarily focused on adolescent girls. Mead was 23 years old when she carried out her field work in Samoa. First published in 1928, the book launched Mead as a pioneering researcher and the most famous anthropologist in the world.
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