HIST 365, winter 2004, Week 4
Reading and Discussion Questions
Margaret Mead, Coming of Age in Samoa
1. What was the purpose of Mead’s research? What was her theory
about the “cause” of adolescent crises? What kind of evidence
did she provide?
2. Why did she call her field work in Samoa an “experiment”
in human development?
3. What was American adolescence like, as Mead saw it in the 1920s? Was
adolescence the same the world over? How did she expect it to differ from
one society to another?
4. Describe Mead’s study. Who did she study? Where? For how long?
With what methods? Be sure to look at all of the tables in the back of
the book. Do you know how old Margaret Mead was when she conducted this
study? Do you think the either her age or her gender was significant in
relation to her study? Would Mead have argued that her results could be
confirmed by any anthropologist conducting the same study?
5. What was the interest every adolescent girl in Samoa had beyond all
others? What were some of their commonest activities? Mead mentioned three
types of formally recognized sex relations, including marriage, and three
types of sexual relations between unmarried people. What was the significance
of the surreptitious rape (moetotolo)? What were the social repercussions
of this kind of interaction for girls/women? What were the repercussions
for boys/men?
6. What is Mead’s argument about the difference between sex for
adolescent Samoan and American girls?
7. Mead explains the implications of her Samoa study for American society
in chapter 13. What were they? What “solutions” did she propose?
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