Full blog on "Coming of Age in Samoa"

Title: Coming of Age in Samoa 
Author: Margaret Mead

Summary:
The book starts off by recognizing that there was a problem evolving with the adolescents in America. People couldn't understand if it was a problem were from being adolescent or being adolescent in America. There was no data to back up any reasons that were suggested. Because of this Mead travels to study the culture of adolescents in Samoa. This works better than studying adolescents in America because the Samoans are more primitive and there are less variables to interfere with the study.

The study was done with 3 groups of 68 girls between the ages of 9 and 20. These girls came from three villages on the island of Tau. Ceremonial data was taken from all of the villages. The main methods to gather information was through interaction and interviews. Data for the study was kept on many record sheets. Each girl in the study had a record sheet that recorded various pieces of information. Tables were also kept to keep track of things such as sexual information and family structure. Simple intelligence tests were given to establish a basis of experiences for the girls.

Samoan children have different responsibilities based on their age. An important stage for a young girl is when they have to care for babies. This is influenced by the presence of ranks in the household. It is also worth noting that the children associate within their age groups but girls before puberty do not experience this because of the responsibilities they are given for their age.

The view of sex-relations is broken into three categories that the villages recognize. These are marriage, love affairs between unmarried people, and adultery. These can be broken down further but it is important to note that within this primitive culture these relations are recognized. The village reacts differently to these relations.

With the framework of ranks established it is important to describe things that are not influenced by rank. This is the act of dancing. Dancing is highly individualistic and usually learned from observing older children. This is significant because people are encouraged to dance and there is no rank involved. The main things that should be noticed from the art of dancing is how differently the children are treated and how the threshold of shyness is greatly reduced.

The way Samoans describe emotion is important because it is not based on positive traits of the person. It is based on what they are expected to do and how well they do it. Fiasili is used to describe somebody that is stuck up and is the most undesirable trait in a person of this culture.

The way Samoan children experience things we usually wait to learn about, such as sex and death, are not hidden in this culture. In the families the ideas of sex and death are not hidden. With these experience we can include experiences that come from the household. There are small households, large household, and the pastor's house. In small households children learn responsibility and initiative much quicker than in a large one. Girls living in the pastor's house lived a more orderly life. They usually trust other girls quicker, work better in groups, and were less conscious of their place in the household.

Like every culture there are people that deviate from standard expectations. There are two groups to describe. Those that cause no harm and those that do. The ones that cause no harm are the ones that only reject the environment and reject traditional choices. The ones that cause harm are the delinquents who are involved in constant conflict.

After the author has a good idea and information about how a primitive culture's adolescents function in a society she can start to make comparisons. The difference in sex knowledge will stand out to most people. This is linked to the difference in privacy between the cultures. The way affection is expressed is different as well. Samoan children do not lack the trait but do not express it as much. Education is another big difference. Samoan children have an idea of how they will benefit from society based on the work they do with their parents.

There are many more variables in our society for adolescent girls. There are many more choices and the choices that are made are greatly influenced by the parents. There are many choices that can greatly impact a child's life in our culture where as the Samoan culture is much simpler. It is said that the American theory of endless possibilities clouds the decision making process. There are not as many choices as people think.

The Samoan culture has adopted many things from our society but remain true to their roots. They use many things that make their lives easier such as tools and clothes. Even after using these new items for certain tasks the old ways are preferred. The main point here is that they have taken many things to enhance their lives rather than taking qualities from our society that could be troublesome.

Discussion:
This book was very interesting because of the idea Mead had. It is a great idea to study something much simpler when you want to gain understanding. This can be used in many different ideas. We saw this in our readings with memory experiments when sea slugs were used instead of humans because it was easier to study but the experimenter still gained a lot of knowledge.


Personally, I feel that Mead's results are completely valid because she did studies as well as the best thing one can do to understand a culture, she immersed herself in it. Because she did this for an extended period of time and did not try to change how things worked I don't think her presence changed much. I 100% agree that her presence does change the results from the study but I think the way she did it makes it legitimate. Even if some things are not completely accurate a lot of information can be gathered from these studies and used to form an idea of how the adolescents differ in each society.