Chapter 2:
Summary: The second chapter in this book, the first real chapter about the culture of Samoa itself, describes the everyday life of the people in the village Mead is staying in. Each group has their own predefined roles. The men do the jobs requiring physical strength, such as hunting or carpentering, boys spend most of their day fishing, and the women car for the children and do house-keeping and cooking type chores.
Discussion: This chapter did a good job of establishing what a normal day in the village would be like, while still giving some details to what might happen when a person is born or dies, or if a visitor were to arrive.
Summary: In this section, Mead describes her general techniques of studying the women in the Samoan culture. She decided on doing a cross section of the culture, focusing on girls not near puberty, girls about to enter, girls in, and girls recently out of puberty. By using a cross section strategy, she can analyze the different portions of the culture all at once, and make generalities about them and the transitions between them.
Discussion: I'm surprised how much she had to argue her case for the cross section method. Today it seems like a relatively normal thing to do. It's unreasonable to expect someone to study a culture for an entire generation just to see how a group of young women develop.
Appendix V:
Summary: Mead continues describing the various groups she separated the sixty eight women into in this section. One portion which she goes into in particular in this section is the intelligence test she administered. While there were a few standouts, she found that for the most part the girls were all of similar intelligence.
Discussion: I find it very interesting that in a cultural study, she would pay so much attention to their intelligence. Regardless the test's usefulness however, it did act as a good tool to spend time alone wit the children.
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