The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead

An investigation of the anthropologist Margaret Mead's research into the sexual practices of Samoan girls. The author provides evidence to suggest that one of the most important anthropological studies of the 20th century was, in reality, based on an innocent joke by informants.

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For most of the twentieth century, Margaret Meads renowned book Coming of Age in Samoa has validated an antievolutionary anthropological paradigm that assumes that culture is the overwhelming determinant of human behavior. Her account of female adolescent sexuality in Samoa initiated a career that led to Margaret Mead becoming indisputably the most publicly celebrated scientist in America. But what if her study wasnt all it appeared to be? What if, having neglected the problem she had been sent to investigate, she relied at the last moment on the tales of two traveling companions who jokingly misled her about the sexual behavior of Samoan girls? What if her famous study was based on a hoax?In The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead, Derek Freeman addresses these issues in a detailed historical analysis of Margaret Meads Samoan researches and of her training in New York by Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict.
By examining hitherto unpublished correspondence between Mead, her mentor Franz Boas and othersas well as the sworn testimony of Faapuaa Faam, one of Meads traveling companions of 1926Freeman provides compelling evidence that one of the most influential anthropological studies of the twentieth century was unwittingly based on the mischievous joking of the investigators informants. But The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead goes beyond a historical account of how the hoax took place; it is an examination of how Meads Boasian training set her up to be hoaxedand set others up to accept her conclusions. The book is more than a correction of scientific error: It is a crucial step toward rethinking the foundations of social science and the overly relativistic worldview of much of the modern world.