Tales From The Jungle: Margaret Mead - Part 5 of 6

[bigban1989]

Derek Freeman is a bit of an eccentric and world does not take too kindly to those eccentrics. It's a shame but even in my anthropology courses today, professors are too quick to dismiss him as mentally unstable, bully, nutcase etc. Overall, I think his view was correct and his critiques on Mead (small data, selective data, misrepresentation) is very much valid. However, it does not mean Mead's contribution to the discipline could be ignored. He should've published it earlier when Mead was alive

[SlySoiBee]

In the end, like most things in anthropology, the answer to who was right was: a little bit of both. They each had their faults as well as their accuracies.

[thebirthmuse]

actually Freeman did have mental breakdowns several times in his life, which is well-known. (See even Wikipedia) I think the point is that Freeman and Mead talked to different people. I did ethnographic research in Russia with a particular population. If you asked the same questions of a different group of people in Russia, you would get totally different answers. Culture is not monolithic.

[TehClockwork]

@thebirthmuse

"I think the point is that Freeman and Mead talked to different people."

Oh God, just give it up. Mead would have to have been extremely unlucky to be as wrong as she was. She was a politically motivated fraud. Take your licks and move on.

[ttaylorsmithh]

paused to say that phil donahue is a jerk, and terrible talk show host. Not directed at this film but in other shows I have seen him host.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

(4)

...of course weren't actually living harmoniously and peacefully, since obviously they are equally part of the "aberrant" (Dawkins) human species.

All of this corresponds to skeaming of think tanks for purposes of social engineering.

[suddenlyitsobvious]

(3)

... another very crucial societal narrative from the system's point of view: humankind's INHERENT EVIL. The systemof course has a lot staked on this notion that has flooded society since ages: Original Sin, Freud's Thanatos, the Banality of Evil etc.

So when the time was ripe, and all the foundations of anthropology solidly lain and the field developed, they used another pawn -Freeman- to make sure it was equally understood by the masses that the natives ...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

(2)

... nurture the edge over nature, as society was entering a stage of publicity, PR and massive focus on psychology and social egineering. So the PTB's came up with the Mead scam: promote a beautiful society of natives spiced with sex in order to loosen the rigidity of social norms and structures and launch a massive assault on Western patriarchal Judeo-Christianity.

However, it soon turned out that Mead's narrative conficted with...

[suddenlyitsobvious]

What's so interesting about this is that it again shows what a load of crap science is -as soon as it ventures outside of the technological and engineering departments. All these anthropologists could easily have known that Mead's work was worthless. A 23 year old girl sent off to study the "savages"? Come on! It's even more ridiculous than the bureaucrat Levi-Strauss' "structuralism".

At first sight, it seems that what happened is that the system wanted to give...

[talenia21]

Poor Derek Freeman. I guess the only thing you are missing for them to support you is you have to be an American. Interesting how they mention dishonesty and poisonous like Margret didn't do that.

[talenia21]

Poor Derek Freeman. I guess the only thing you are missing for them to support you is you have to be an american

[talenia21]

If anything would change in the 40 year difference, I think it would be for the worse since that is the trend that the world seems to go.

[ThePULIGI]

Ms Meads is just another example of a white whore who thinks she knows it all.

[manusamoa2009]

wow!alright!i want to solve this made up story!Mead was a science lady,she was in samoa in her 23 yrs old,the stage of biological life thinking about Sex,the question was why was mead focus on Sexuality view?it reflect a romantic,sexy sweet in American nature idea in her mind,if mead right,why,why was samoan people didn't built up any sex industries in samoa compare to western life?mead look with point to weak samoa because samoa famous in the world in good way .

[karmscho]

Hahaha I agree with bbsirup, Mary Catherine Bateson just wont see the evidence against her mum and just hates Freeman 'I think he was a bully all his life' and saying he's mentally unstable...even if she was correct (which she's probably not), he was still right about Samoa! Even when the American Anthropological Association was against him and condemned his book.Pretty much the definition of vindicated.

[bbsirup]

I hate Mary Catherine Bateson!

[PayNoAttentiontoCaes]

Okay, I'm doing research for a school project and this is starting to fucking piss me off. Every time the previous part ends with somebody in the middle of a sentence, the next part just starts with a cut to the next scene. Doesn't make any fucking sense what the fucking hell shitcuntspicfuckinggonorrhea FUCK

[Featheredman2009]

whats the project on

[PayNoAttentiontoCaes]

We have to pretend to be a certain famous anthropologist or psychologist and give a presentation on our findings. I was assigned to be Margaret Mead.

[Featheredman2009]

Oh thats easy just constantly make observations

[StevenShields29]

And I REALLY didn't need to see his CRACK!! 0:24

[StevenShields29]

Oh, I really didn't need the Freeman nudity. I didn't need to see a young Margaret Mead puking in Samoa, either.

[somor98]

Lol! 'You're a nature guy'

[leonerhian]

is that papase'ea sliding rocks? thats on upolu not anywhere in American Samoa

[prettypatty21]

Margaret was wrong, its hard to accept but she was wrong, Mead was on a remote island, if she reported about a remote island in Samoa in the 1920's it would have been fine, but she generalised her work and the way it was reported painted us tainted the worlds view of Samoa for many years to come!

[paveau]

what i love is that these "civilized" anglos have to go to the other side of the world to find what "human nature" is all about...

[5191132]

It goes even further than the unmaking of Margaret Mead's anthropological myth. People actually think that our MotherLand is their Paradise on Earth. That the Samoans are a passive & lenient people. This was the problem during Colonial times. They ( The white people) thought, 'Cool, the Polynesians won't care if we decimate their populations with disease and rape their lands for capital gain. No, they won't trip.' Ssshhhhiiiiiit!