Margaret Mead’s
Coming of Age in Samoa is one of the most well-known books of anthropology ever written. Mead was in her 20s when she took the audacious trip to Samoa, and then on to the smaller island of Taʻū to live with the Samoan community there. Her account of the lives of the people there, and her focus on the lives of young women was extremely unusual for the time. First published in 1930 the book carries with it some contemporary prejudices, though it must be said that at the same time the book is remarkably progressive for the time – simply taking issues such as female sexuality and gender issues seriously was radical.
The book was written explicitly as a popular work, and is devoid of the complex anthropological classifications and relationship diagrams that bedevil other, similar works. The book is also written as a polemic, aimed at a Western audience (primarily in the United States), about education and development of young people. As Mead writes in her original introduction,
this tale of another way of life is mainly concerned with education, with the process by which the baby, arrived cultureless upon the human scene, becomes a full-fledged adult member of his or her society. The strongest light will fall upon the ways in which Samoan education, in its broadest sense, differs from our own. And from this contrast we may be able to turn, made newly and vividly self-conscious and self-critical, to judge anew and perhaps fashion differently the education we give to our children.
The opening chapter describes daily life in Samoa, a mix of work, play and rest, centred on the production of food (through fishing and agriculture) and the various roles that people play. While Samoa is not a pre-class society, in fact it is heavily hierarchical on a regional and very local scale, it is a society where class differences matter much less than in capitalist society. Chiefs and heads of households have more of a role in terms of managing and organising, at least at the time that Mead visited, village life. The collection of a surplus allows more for the functioning of ceremonial, religious and celebratory life, than the maintenance of a position of power and wealth.
There are strict gender roles as well. However gendered labour is also shaped by differences related to age. Women, and girls, primarily focus on the home, though some girls and women also fish and collect food and some boys work in the home cooking. Age also plays a role in determining hierarchy in a way that is far more than just who is more important than others. For instance, children, including very small children often look after younger children. But all children understand that older people have authority to order them about. This means children are central to Samoan production, but they are also more collectively looked after and developed. They are also freer, at least as they become teenagers, to change households and move about. Meads explorations of the way age, class and gender inter-relate and sympathetic and detailed and make for real insights into a society very different from ours. Indeed this forms the very basis for her points about shining a light on our own education systems.
One important aspect to Samoan culture however was its close nature. Children were much more exposed to the realities of human life – death, birth and sex – than Westerners, especially in Mead’s era. As such children where not sheltered from sex, death and birth. Sex in particular is part of getting older. Children clearly experimented more in Samoan culture, and were prepared and protected. There is also a curious difference between the sexuality of young people before marriage and that after. Young people seemed to have frequently sexual encounters, both hetro and homosexual, and it seems that their first sex was usually with an older person. This latter part feels uncomfortable and it is not clear to me from Mead’s writing exactly how this works unless it is abusive. Some of the sexual realities of Samoan society are, however, much more progressive than our own. The acceptance of homosexuality as a natural part of life for younger people is very different, though again Mead does recount a case of “deviance”, to use her word, where an older male Samoan who might be considered transsexual and/or homosexual is treated with disdain by the community and, indeed the author. Despite Mead’s own possible bisexuality, her comments about homosexuality in Samoan society imply it is merely a childhood distraction, or “deviance”. with hindsight this seems either naïve, a mistake or perhaps Mead recognising that Western society would not accept a truthful account.
Mead also shows that rape, in a particular form, seems to have been relatively common. She writes:
Between the unmarried there are three forms of relationship: the clandestine encounter, “under the pam trees,” the published elopement, Avaga, and the ceremonious courtship in which a boy “sits before the girl”; and on the edge of these, the curious form of surreptitious rape, called moetotolo, sleep crawling, resorted to by youths who find favour in no maiden’s eyes.
These relationships and realities belay the idea that Samoan society in this period was a Utopia. While there were clearly more open and relaxed attitudes to sex, and young people did seem to enjoy and have freedom to explore their sexuality before marriage, it is also true that there were some violent and unpleasant traditions and beliefs. The focus, within the community on "deflowering" of young women and the moetotolo that is related to this, imply a structural problem within Samoan society's approach to women. It demonstrates that for all its positives in its approach to sexuality, Samoan culture had, at the time, an unequal setup between men and women, and consequent unequal power relations.
Nonetheless Mead's work does remind us that societies can be organised very differently. For instance, Mead reports that her Samoan friends laughed at the story of Romeo and Juliet, believing the idea of lifelong romantic monogamy hilarious. This was not because marriage and love did not happen, or that lifelong love between partners did not occur, but because the idea of a couple only having sex with one another for their whole lives was impossible to understand.
Indeed adultery and consequent punishment did happen. But it punishment was usually about the offended party being paid a fine, such as some well-made mats.
Mead’s discussion of the economic life of Samoan people tells us much about different approaches to life. She tackles questions that remain extremely relevant – how does a differently organised society change approaches to things like Mental Distress, loneliness and love. One interesting point is that the role of the immediately family is much less significant to Samoan people. Mead says:
It is interesting to note that a larger family community, in which there are several adult men and women, seems to ensure the child against the development of the crippling attitudes which have been labelled Oedipus complexes, Electra complexes and so on.
The Samoan picture shows that it is not necessary to channel so deeply the affection of a child for its parents and suggests that while we would reject that part of the Samoan scheme which holds no rewards for us, the segregation of the sexes before puberty, we may learn from a picture in which the home does not dominate and distort the life of the child.
These are interesting points. The central role of the “bourgeois” family in Western society is remarkably constraining. Leaving aside Mead’s dated psychiatric comments and her framing from her own, much more segregated society, the point that an extended family allows much wider child development still stands.
There are, of course, problems. Mead’s work is often shaped by her own times and as such some of the language and analysis absolutely jars. She also knows that she is seeing Samoan society in a period of rapid change, as US influence is changing things dramatically. She notes, for instance, that the recent compulsory attendance of children at school by the authorities is quickly destroying traditional society which relies heavily on child labour to care for the youngest children and prepare food. This would only be exacerbated in the decades after the period when Mead was writing.
It is also clear that Mead’s approach to certain key questions relies too heavily on a belief that adult behaviour develops just from conditioning in childhood. Yes the differences between Samoan and Western societies are important and the different approach to education is tremendously important. But the organisation of the “economic base” in Western society shapes these factors, rather than simply a desire to educate differently.
These problems aside this is a tremendously influential and significant work. The attacks on Mead’s work by later anthropologists seem, in no small part, to stem from a belief that young women were not, and could not, be the independent, sexual and confident people that Mead described. It is also likely that dismissal of Mead herself, due perhaps to her gender, lay at their root. Mead’s youth, sexuality and liberal politics, no doubt made her a more insightful scientist than many of her peers. The book she wrote reminds us that humans have constantly found new and varied ways to organise their lives. While we should not pretend that Samoan society in the 1920s was a perfect utopia for all, Mead's account should give those of us trying to change the world renewed confidence that things do not need to be like they are.
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