Freeman's Margaret Mead Myth: the ideological virginity of anthropologists

Abstract

Derek Freeman's new book on Margaret Mead represents the first thorough public airing of anthropological criticism of Margaret Mead's Samoan ethnography. But it is more than that, Freeman turns it into an argument about the nature of anthropology itself and, indeed, about human nature. In doing so, Freeman gets well out of his depth. He depicts anthropologists as foolish virgins uncritically accepting any tale told them and presents his view of the nature/nurture debate as if it were a new direction for anthropology rather than a rehashing of the common orthodoxy of the 1950s. Freeman's Mead story is a Mead myth although it still seems something of a popular hit.