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THE FATEFUL HOAXING OF MARGARET MEAD: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research. By Derek Freeman. Boulder (Colorado): Westview Press. 1999. xi, 279 pp. (B&W photos.) US$24.00, cloth. ISBN 08133-35604.
THIS LATEST ENTRY into the "Mead-Freeman controversy" marks a decade and a half in Derek Freeman's quest to convince the world that Margaret Mead committed egregious errors in her pioneering study published in 1928 as Coming of Age in Samoa. Now, in addition to simply being "wrong," Freeman contends that Mead was caught up in five "fateful" circumstances that included her being hoaxed about Samoan sexual mores, from which he says she falsely portrayed Samoa as a free-love society. His story about these circumstances takes the reader on ajourney through Mead's early schooling, her graduate work with Franz Boas and Ruth Benedict, and then into her Samoan research -- location by location from New York to Honolulu, through Samoa, to Europe, and back to New York. The book ends with Freeman's reflections on the "mythic process" he believes surrounded Mead's research, along with a chapter presenting his reflections on the controversy he generated. Although rich in detail, this journey sometimes feels like being shown through the henhouse by the fox.
The book provides for novices to Mead's work a helpful context in which to understand her book. For example, Freeman argues that Mead took on too...