Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 12
The Influence of Freeman and Mead
In this unit (to accompany SAPIENS podcast S6E6), students go beyond the Mead–Freeman controversy to explore the repercussions of nature versus nurture in U.S. scholarly debates from the 1980s to the 2000s. Students will research how these debates trickled into mass media reporting and affected U.S. society.
Learning Objectives
- Assess how the nature versus nurture debate shaped U.S. society in the 1980s and 1990s.
- Relate how Derek Freeman’s and Margaret Mead’s ideas shaped U.S. views.
Sapiens articles
How Twin Culture Challenges Our Notions of Self
Researchers have long viewed identical twins as mutants, oddballs, and freaks. Bothered by a biased scientific literature, two anthropologists who are also identical twins conduct their own twin ethnographic research.
No, “Racial Genetics” Aren’t Affecting COVID-19 Deaths
The coronavirus pandemic is unequally affecting minority communities in the U.K. and the U.S. Racism, not race, explains the disparity.
Keywords
View All in Disease
![With several people around them, a person wearing an olive green headwrap and white long-sleeved shirt cradles a beige cat who is facing the viewer. They are in a building topped with an ornately decorated gold dome.]()
![Surrounded by an otherwise occupied crowd, a person wearing a white cap and shirt uses gloved hands to work with the finger of a person seated beside them. The second person wears a red-orange dress and holds a baby while a slightly older child stands beside them, looking at the viewer.]()
![Colored in sepia tones, a photo shows a person in a dark headwrap and robes with a walking stick traveling behind a herd of sheep and goats on rocky terrain that rises into a steep hill.]()
![Three people toward the image’s left pull a green net with several lobsters in it from the water while a person wearing a straw hat puts lobsters into a bucket. Two other people look on.]()
![A black-and-white photograph features four people in a discussion, with three casually dressed facing one who has their hair pinned up and wears a white-collared dress. The latter speaks and points to a flyer on the wall.]()
![A photograph features three macaques with red faces and beige fur soaking in hot springs as a person takes their picture with a cellphone.]()
For the Love of Cats in Turkey
On a visit to feline-friendly Turkey, an anthropologist considers what long-standing practices of caring for cats reveal about human societies.
Gene Therapy’s Promise Meets Nigeria’s Sickle Cell Reality
Breakthrough treatments can now cure sickle cell anemia in the U.S. But the pricey therapies will hardly help in Nigeria, where social changes could do more for millions impacted by the disease.
What Ancient Goat Teeth Reveal About Animal Care
Unraveling a mystery around millennia-old goat bones, an archaeologist reflects on the harm people can cause their most cherished animals.
Neighborliness Matters to Your Health
Drawing from cross-cultural research, an anthropologist shows how neighborliness can lessen wealth-based health disparities.
A Native Alaska Community’s Reckoning With Vaccine Hesitancy
An anthropologist’s research with Tlingit communities in Alaska shows they have good reasons to be skeptical about vaccines. They know their history.
Does “Monkeypox” Give Monkeys a Bad Name?
The debate over naming the virus known as monkeypox says a lot about the close—but fraught—relationships between humans and our fellow primates.
View All in Identity
![A photo shows the back of a person in a dark suitcoat standing at a podium and speaking to a large, captive, seated audience. Most onlookers wear red MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts.]()
![A man with long, dark hair tied in a braid holds up a small child to a mirror, which reflects the child’s pensive face.]()
![Amid a rocky landscape, a grove of gnarled olive trees stands under a nearly cloudless blue sky.]()
![A person wearing a long-sleeved black maxi dress and a red headscarf holding a green umbrella walks on a public street with a silver truck and several people in black hats, helmets, and khaki uniforms in the background.]()
![On the left, smoke billows out from the top of several large smokestacks on a long sandy shore that a few people are walking along. On the right, over dark blue water, an orange sunset illuminates a pier in the distance.]()
![A large, brown sculpture depicts a cluster of people looking outward, one cradling a child in their arms. A village and blue sky are visible in a distant horizon.]()
Five Reasons Why Trump Won Again
In an effort to address toxic polarization in the U.S., an anthropologist of the “Trumpiverse” explains MAGA supporters’ thinking in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Finding Our Way Forward—by Remembering
In a personal essay, a mixed-race and Native anthropologist draws strength from his ancestors.
Griko’s Poetic Whisper
In two poems, an anthropologist speaks to the timelessness and constant change of the minority language Griko in the Italian landscape.
08.03.2019
A poet-anthropologist from India recalls a checkpoint encounter in Sri Lanka, just months after the Easter Sunday bombings.
Between the Lines
A poet-anthropologist in Israel looks to his students and their surroundings, calling for “seekers of peace” to create lifelines across social and geopolitical divides.
Poems of Witness and Possibility: Inside Zones of Conflict
Anthropological poems from around the globe speak to people’s creative will, resistance, and resilience—and the significance of our shared humanity.
View All in Genetics
![A gray-haired woman sits on an exam table in a light-filled doctor’s office and looks out a window.]()
![A person wearing a black robe crouches beside a white building to tend to a bed of pea plants.]()
![A large group of people walks down a tree-lined street, with some holding colorful flags.]()
![In a dark and rainy forest, a large Tyrannosaurus rex stares into a green car with its headlights on. The car has a yellow and black graphic on its hood with text that reads, “Jurassic Park.”]()
![Surrounded by an otherwise occupied crowd, a person wearing a white cap and shirt uses gloved hands to work with the finger of a person seated beside them. The second person wears a red-orange dress and holds a baby while a slightly older child stands beside them, looking at the viewer.]()
![A landscape features a grassy complex with a large, tiered structure made of stones that towers upward toward a blue, cloud-filled sky. Mountains taller than the structure are barely visible behind clouds in the distance.]()
Doctors Are Taught to Lie About Race
Decades ago, anthropologists dispelled the myth of biological race. Lagging behind in scientific understandings of human diversity, the medical profession is failing its oath to “do no harm.”
People Are Not Peas—Why Genetics Education Needs an Overhaul
The decades out-of-date genetics taught in most U.S. schools stokes misconceptions about race and human diversity. A biological anthropologist calls for change.
Can Ancient DNA Support Indigenous Histories?
A biological anthropologist reflects on how scientific research can be used to reaffirm or undermine Indigenous land ties in Argentina.
Celebrity Status Almost Ruined Ancient DNA Research
An evolutionary anthropologist draws lessons from paleogenetic’s journey from Jurassic Park fiction to Nobel Prize reality.
Gene Therapy’s Promise Meets Nigeria’s Sickle Cell Reality
Breakthrough treatments can now cure sickle cell anemia in the U.S. But the pricey therapies will hardly help in Nigeria, where social changes could do more for millions impacted by the disease.
Decoding Diversity and Power at Machu Picchu
New DNA analysis has revealed surprising diversity among remains from burial sites in Peru. A genetic anthropologist explains what this suggests about the 15th century Inca palace.
View All in Economics
![A photo shows the back of a person in a dark suitcoat standing at a podium and speaking to a large, captive, seated audience. Most onlookers wear red MAGA hats and Trump T-shirts.]()
![A man in a t-shirt, jacket, and jeans sits comfortably with a leg folded, on a stage. A microphone extends in front of him.]()
![A person wearing a rust-colored hooded coat and a black face mask stands in front of a large facility while holding a red sign that reads: “It’s Been a Long Time Coming but I Know a Change Is Coming!”]()
![People wearing brown and tan coats shop in front of a woman in a pink outfit beneath a neon blue sign that reads SHEIN (pronounced “she-in”).]()
![A person with short black hair looks away from the viewer out of a window on the room’s back wall. Between the person and the window is a narrow bed with blue, pink, and red linens.]()
![Three people stand on a grassy field holding signs with pictures of young people’s faces pasted on them. Also on the signs, in colorful text, are two phrases: “Invest in Us” and “End the War on Drugs” with the word “Drugs” crossed out and the word “Blacks” added before it.]()
Five Reasons Why Trump Won Again
In an effort to address toxic polarization in the U.S., an anthropologist of the “Trumpiverse” explains MAGA supporters’ thinking in the 2024 U.S. presidential election.
Revisiting the Spiritual Violence of BS Jobs
Anthropologist David Graeber’s celebrated theory of “bullshit jobs” continues to provide a critical window into why modern work is often so useless, soul-sucking, and absurd.
Inside Amazon’s Union-Busting Tactics
An anthropologist reports on the impediments to labor organizing—and why it’s still worth trying.
Can “Made in China” Become a Beacon of Sustainability?
In the epicenter of fast fashion, a small cohort of Chinese eco-friendly designers is amplifying the call for a less wasteful and environmentally destructive clothing culture.
What It’s Like to Grow Old on the Margins
In a brief documentary, an anthropologist provides a glimpse into the precarious lives of poor older Peruvians whose experiences mirror those of countless elders around the world.
How Racism Shapes the U.S. Opioid Epidemic
Public health officials say opioid use and related deaths have reached a crisis point in the U.S. An interview with anthropologist and psychiatrist Helena Hansen unpacks the racial disparities in how drug addiction is interpreted, portrayed, and treated.
Professor Talking Points
- Freeman’s 1983 book Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth criticizes Mead’s work and focuses on the nature versus nurture debate, a hot topic in the 1980s. He calls Mead “anti-biological, anti-evolutionary, and anti-scientific” (Shankman 2001, 181). But as Mead’s supporters pointed out, her decades-long work and research in American Samoa demonstrated her consideration of both biological and cultural attributes in her research. Explore this dichotomy with students.
- Freeman’s supporters pinned Mead as an “archaic and misguided cause of cultural determinism” (Shankman 2001). Discuss how this undermined her reputation as an American icon and pioneering figure in anthropology.
- Mead’s supporters accused Freeman of cherry-picking and missing her main arguments. For example, she had spoken at two major associations on the importance of evolution and genetics in anthropological study (the American Anthropological Association in 1961 and the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1976). Discuss with students how Mead was not a staunch cultural determinist despite Freeman’s accusations to the contrary.
- During the 1980s, the nature versus nurture debate spilled into other disciplines. Explore how some used pseudo-scientific claims to support that nature/genetics determines personality and cultural development and how the debate quickly escalated into heated topics about race and sexuality.
- Mead wrote her book for a U.S. audience, and although she believed she portrayed Samoans positively, many Samoans did not agree. After Freeman’s book was published in 1983, Samoans found more public space to criticize Mead. Discuss with students how this created more doubt about the accuracy of Mead’s research.
- Discuss with students how Samoans did not entirely agree with Freeman either, and how many believed he also described their culture incorrectly by portraying it filled with sexual purity, violence, and aggressiveness. In 1987, Freeman and filmmaker Frank Heimans visited Samoa to interview Fa’apua’a, one of Mead’s informants, for the documentary Margaret Mead and Samoa (1988). Freeman attests that Fa’apua’a confessed to hoaxing Mead. But in the on-camera interview, Fa’apua’a appears to have memory problems rather than offer a confession and merely answers questions posed by Galea’i Poumele, a high-ranking Samoan chief who had spoken against Mead in the past.
- In 1999, Freeman published The Fateful Hoaxing of Margaret Mead: A Historical Analysis of Her Samoan Research, which claimed Mead was tricked by an informant. Freeman concluded that Mead had been naive and inexperienced, and so it was not entirely her fault that she had produced inaccurate research.
Academic Articles
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Appell, George N. 1984. “Freeman’s Refutation of Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa: The Implication for Anthropological Inquiry.” Eastern Anthropologist 37: 183–214.
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Doughty, Howard. 2011. “Nature, Nurture, and Story-Telling: Part 1. The Freeman–Mead Controversy.” College Quarterly 14 (2).
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Ortiz, Daniel. 1993. “Creating Controversy: Essentialism and Constructivism and the Politics of Gay Identity.” Virginia Law Review 79 (7): 1833–1857.
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Pinker, Steven. 2004. “Why Nature and Nurture Won’t Go Away.” Daedalus 133 (4): 5–17.
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Shankman, Paul. 2001. Margaret Mead. Berghahn, New York.
Student Discussion Questions
- Compare a scientific article from the 1980s with one from the 2000s on the nature versus nurture debate. How has our understanding of the debate grown? What questions have been answered or arisen?
- Why is it important to understand whether nature or nurture plays a larger role in human development? What solutions or explanations are useful once we pinpoint the reasons why we are the way we are?
- In his article “Nature, Nurture and Story-Telling: Part 1. The Freeman–Mead Controversy,” Howard Doughty states the controversy “stands as one of the more important sources of data on the anthropology of anthropology.” What does he mean by this?
- What kind of ethics come into play when using twins for nature versus nurture studies? Are there other effective ways to study this topic without using twins?
Activities
- In the SAPIENS article, “How Twin Culture Challenges Our Notions of Self,” Dona Davis points out that twins were used in nature versus nurture research for much of history. Find an article using twins to explain a cultural or genetic occurrence. Do you think using twins in the study satisfies the questions posed by researchers or is more work needed?
- Watch the documentary Three Identical Strangers in Additional Resources. Based solely on this example, does nature or nurture play a larger role in human development? Discuss your ideas in a small group.
- Had Mead been alive for Freeman’s criticisms of her work, how would she have responded? Write a response, as Mead, to one of Freeman’s works.
Additional Resources
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Article: Kaveh Majlesi, Paul J. Devereux, Petter Lundborg, and Sandra Black’s “The Role of Nature Versus Nurture in Wealth and Other Economic Outcomes and Behaviours”
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Article: Leah McLaren’s “Does Parenting Even Matter?”
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Article: Robin McKie’s “What Makes Us? Nature or Nurture? The DNA Debate Comes Back to Life”
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Documentary: Tim Wardle’s Three Identical Strangers
Unit By
Catherine Torres, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 13
The Anthropology of Sexuality
