Author: Margaret MeadBook: Coming of Age in Samoa
Summary
In this book, the author starts by giving us the historical and sociological context of her work. She then states the general state of the american youth in the United States in the post first World War era. She evokes the overall sense of unease, and the difficulty of youth in their transition through adolescence. Attempting to understand the origins of the problems, she offeres us her anthropological background, and the anthropological method which is the study of another less complex civilization to extrapolate an explanation. The civilization she decides to study are the Samoan people. In particular the samoan adolescent girl.
In this book, the author starts by giving us the historical and sociological context of her work. She then states the general state of the american youth in the United States in the post first World War era. She evokes the overall sense of unease, and the difficulty of youth in their transition through adolescence. Attempting to understand the origins of the problems, she offeres us her anthropological background, and the anthropological method which is the study of another less complex civilization to extrapolate an explanation. The civilization she decides to study are the Samoan people. In particular the samoan adolescent girl.
She proposes to explore two main questions:
- Are the disturbances which vex our adolescents due to the nature of adolescence itself or to the civilization?
- Under differenct conditions does adolescence present a different picture?
From then, she gives a detailed description, about her experience in Samoa, and what conclusions she draws from that experience.
The summaries of the chapters of the book can be found in my previous blog entries. At end, she answers the questions she posed at the beginning, and we can draw from her answers, that adolescence does differ based on location, culture, and morals.
The summaries of the chapters of the book can be found in my previous blog entries. At end, she answers the questions she posed at the beginning, and we can draw from her answers, that adolescence does differ based on location, culture, and morals.
Discussion
I felt this was good exposure to an ethnographic work. When reading Mead's book, one clearly sees that she put a lot of thought into her methodology, and study approach. This reflects in the amount of detail that can be found in the book when it comes to the Samoan people. I admit I'm usually for less description with books, but given that it's part of an ethnography, I can understand the need to do a thorough study. The only thing I did not appreciate, nor understand, was the need to go into details with Samoan sex practices. That's a little invasive in my opinion. Apart from that, I'm not sure why this book invited a lot of criticism. In the context of HCI, the only thing I think Mead teaches us, is that as program designers, we sometimes need to take a step back and consider another perspective in order to understand the way we do things.
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