Book Reading #6: Coming of Age in Samoa

Reference:

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

Title:

Chapter 2: 

Summary:

This chapter catalogues a day in Samoa.  Their day begins at dawn where people go about their chores of fishing or cooking.  The village is a unit, where everyone has great concern and care for one another, a family.  They have contact with neighboring villages.  They have a nap time!  It is warm during the days as people seek to keep cool.  The village has group meals together.  When night falls people gather to do "lighter" activities such as talk and sometimes when the moon is out catch crabs.

Discussion:

I absolutely love the fact that they have a nap time!  It was interesting hearing how close knit they were too.   That makes sense because they are in villages.  It reminds me of how I live with my community of followers of Christ here in College Station.  Many of us live on the same street and often as we can share our time, meals and occasions with one another.

Title:

Appendix II

Summary:

The study took place on three contiguous villages on Samoa studying the things that girls do.  There were only sixty-eight girls within the bounds of ages Mead was studying.  Therefore, the results have a high variability.  The study took place in the native tongue as Mead lived there and acclimated to their culture for the first six months there.  Each person of each house was investigated based upon a number of factors in order to get the full scope of why things were happening the way they were.  Mead administered different tests to the girls, some formal some informal, to get a representation of the variability among them and found it to be low.  She found a sort of control group in a group of girls living in a type of boarding school with a pastor where their actions were meticulously monitored.

Discussion:

It sounds like this appendix is slamming Mead for her methods and lack of relevant data, but it sounds to me like she did all she could with the materials and methods of data collection present.  

Title:

Appendix V

Summary:

This appendix shows the ways in which the girls were tested by Mead.  They were asked hosts of questions in her entire stay, often with their parents present, and all this information was logged in spreadsheets presented in this appendix.  Both qualitative and quantitative data was obtained.  The girls ages are not completely accurate for they do not keep track of age.  Mead also tracked what skills the girls had as well as her own perceptions of how intelligent each girl was.

Discussion:

This appendix was interesting because we were able to see the documentation that Mead collected on her findings.  The questions she asked seem to be most personal, and with the notion that the girls' parents were there makes the findings a bit odd to me.