Book Reading #12 - Coming of Age in Samoa

Title:
Chapter 4: The Samoan Household

Reference:
Mead, Margaret. Coming of Age in Samoa. Harper Perennial, 1928 (1971).

Summary:
The Samoan household is usually one of many members.  The children are able to move from house to house depending on whether or not they get along with the other members of the house.

The chapter discussed that matai who is the male leader of a village and that taupo who is a female of great rank (named around 16 or 17).  There are about three taupo per village.

Rank is very important among the people, but the rank is not necessarily from birth but from entitlement.

Discussion:
This section was extremely dry.  I suppose it was a setup for things coming later in the book, but it was hard to follow because it was pretty much just a catalog of positions within the community and a bit of how they interacted with one another.