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ANTH 101 Unit 5-6 Notes
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- Queens College
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Unit 5Magaret Mead and Samoa
Nature vs. Nurture
Bronisław Malinowski
● Work in the Trobriand Island
● He established 3 Fieldwork rules
○ long time fieldwork
○ Speak native language
○ Live like natives
● Informants
○ You establish a relationship with the informants
○ They should be reliable
○ Willing to talk to you
Mead and Samoa: Representation of Culture others
● Ethnography
○ Description of local culture
○ Analysis of local culture
● It is about the local people
● Though ethnography you are representing cultural others to the world
Biological determinism
● All teen go through puberty
● It doesn't matter where and in what culture you live in
Cultural constructionism
● It depends on the culture
Nature vs. Nurture
Margaret Mead “Coming of Age in Samoa” film:
● Written in 1928
● Margaret Mead was an anthropologist
○ She was a student of Frank Boar
● What was her research question? What were her findings?
● Is it biological determinism or Cultural constructionism
● “Are the difficulties of adolescent girls due to the physiological changes which take
place at puberty or to the civilization in which they grow up?”
● Her finding was that teenagers are stress-free, they are relaxed and happy
● What kind of fieldwork did Mead conduct?
Fieldwork:
● When? How long?
○ She stated there for 5 month
, ○ didn’t live with Samoa people ( didn’t follow the 3 rules)
● Key difference
○ Friedman dealt with male
○ Mead dealt with females
● Research question?
○ Mead was asking if Samoans teens experience the same thing if it’s universal or
cultural-specific?
○ Friedman was asking General political system?
Mead and Ethnography
Issues of women in ethnography
● 1.Gender bias in ethnography?
○ There is not that much study about women
○ Anthologists saw this after this debate between Mead and Friedman
● 2.In fieldwork methodology?
● Why did anthropology pay little attention to women prior to the 1970s?
○ Women’s and men’s lives segregated
○ Most of the anthropologists were male
○ Male engaged with the law and other social problems and women came together and
engaged in more domestic activities
● Positionality in ethnography:
○ All knowledge is influenced by the observer’s own culture, social position, and gender
Mead beyond ethnography
What was her research question?
● Biological determinism vs. cultural constructionism
● If it Cultural and just wester experience then it is not biological
What did she find?
● Cultural because the teens in Simla are calm and are not stressed like teen in the western
society
● This idea was going against life in American society at that time.
● 7 years after a book “Sex and Temperament” came out based on her findings
○ She researched the link between biological and Cultural looking at 3 different societies
○ She was focusing on gender
■ Ex: for hunting and gathering the gender roles are flexible
■ There is no fixed relationship between men and women
■ Some of them might have biological bases but it is still cultural
■ There are variation it is cultural if it was biological it would have been fixed and
the same
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