I. Margaret Mead (1901-1978) and the Adolescent Stress Hypothesis

A. G. Stanley Hall: Adolescence (pub. 1904)

1. Adolescent stress hypothesis
2. Time of storm and stress
3. Adolescent stress is human universal
4. Nature more important than nurture

B. Mead and Coming of Age in Samoa (pub. 1928)

1. Goal: disprove Hall

 

II. Mead's Samoa: Negative Instance and Anthropological Veto

A. Negative Instance: one case where universal doesn't work
B. Anthropological veto: one group that does things differently
C. Mead's fieldwork

1. Nine months, 1925-6
2. Mead was in her early 20s

 

III. Mead and Experimental anthropology

A. Anthropology as natural science, descriptive
B. Mead: experimental science

1. Fieldwork as laboratory of culture
2. Results: verifiable, can be re-tested
3. Clearly defined orienting question
4. Research too narrow?

 

IV. Culture and Personality

A. Mead and cultural relativism
B. Culture shapes expression of biology into appropriate personality types
C. Ruth Benedict (1887-1948)

1. "Culture is personality writ large."
2. Patterns of Culture, 1934.
3. "A culture, like an individual, is a more or less consistent pattern of thought and action. Within each culture there come into being characteristic purposes not necessarily shared by other types of society. In obedience to these purposes, each people further and further consolidates its experience, and in proportion to the urgency of these drives the heterogeneous items of behavior take more and more congruous shape" (Patterns of Culture, 33).
4. Individuals are producers and products of culture
5. Deviants

D. Mead and Samoan deviants

1. Deviants want different life choices
2. Few deviants in Samoa because of the way in which the culture successfully patterns personality traits

 

V. Anthropology as Cultural Critique

A. Reasons for little adolescent strife in Samoa

1. "...general casualness of the whole society" (98)
2. Stable environment
3. Children exposed to facts of life
4. Relaxed nuclear family relations
5. Fewer individual choices
6. No gap between child and adult worlds

B. Critique of American society

1. Study others to broaden our perspective, reform our society
2. American adolescents: too much choice, stakes too high
3. Teach how to think, not what to think
4. Respect diversity, no one choice is "right"
5. Prepare children to make choices

a. Expose to facts of life
b. Allow sexual experimentation

C. Does Mead think Samoa is better?

1. Samoa = simple, less intelligent
2. America = complex, diverse, specialization of talents has led to progress
3. Make US process of enculturation and education consistent with diversity and emphasis on individual choice

 

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