The Samoa Reader: Anthropologists Take Stock - Hardcover

Caton, Hiram

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0819177202 ISBN 13: 9780819177209

Publisher: University Press of America, 1990

Synopsis

The Samoa Reader is a source book on the most extensive controversy in the history of anthropology, touched off by the publication of Derek Freeman's Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth. Freeman's book purported to refute the most famous writing of the world's most honored and celebrated anthropologist. This book seemed to many to be an attack on liberal values; anthropologists believed that it was a concerted assault on the reliability and conceptual structure of cultural anthropology in the name of "sociobiology." The Reader canvasses these and other issues by assembling, in readable form, the most cogent writings to come out of the controversy. This book is based on the study of unpublished sources, some of which are included.

About this title

Review:

...an extremely important and valuable book. It brings together all the critical articles, letters, book reviews, letters to editors and articles, as well as unpublished letters and documents that deal with the controversy....This is required reading for anyone interested in the Mead-Freeman...--George N. Appell, Brandeis University

A wonderful collection of intellectual arguments and positions. The role of biological factors in the realization of human action must be the liveliest topic in anthropology today.--V. Reynolds, Oxford University

About this edition

• Publisher: University Press of America
• Publication date: 1990
• ISBN 10: 0819177202
• ISBN 13: 9780819177209
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 366