Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
-
Unit 2
Adolescence as a Social Category
In this unit (to accompany the SAPIENS podcast S6E1), students will examine the idea of adolescence as a focus of anthropological research. Students will investigate the creation of the social category of adolescence. They will explore Margaret Mead’s ideas and contentions about adolescence that resulted from her work in American Samoa.
Learning Objectives
- Investigate the emergence of “adolescence” as a social category in the 20th century and how anthropologists have studied it
- Assess Mead’s ideas regarding adolescence
Sapiens articles
Margaret Mead Imagined Different Futures
For those anxious about the state of the world, Mead’s celebrated work shows how anthropology can help guide alternative futures.
What Industrial Societies Get Wrong About Childhood
The industrial world’s practice of placing children in classes of similar ages with an adult teacher is not the only way to learn—and it might not be the most effective.
Keywords
View All in Children
![A smiling girl with shoulder-length brown hair in a black T-shirt and gray leggings sits on a wooden table in a grassy park and hugs a stuffed animal wrapped in a pink and white blanket.]()
![A close-up image features two spiders on a stick held horizontally in the hands of a child whose face appears slightly blurred in the background.]()
![A close-up image features a large, dark-gray silver medal embossed with the profile of a crouching naked woman reaching for a child, with another child appearing behind her.]()
![Several adults and children dig in a cleared area of brown soil with rectangular holes. Some dig with shovels and trowels, while others look on. Several buckets lie about.]()
![A close-up image features the profile of a child with long, stringy hair and a brown coat on the left side of the picture with a swan, sandy shoreline, and water in a blurred background.]()
![A photograph features a person with short, wavy hair holding a child near an ocean with a bright line shining from the background, blowing out an otherwise dark image. Matt Hoffman/Unsplash]()
Raising My Children in an Ableist World
In a new book, an anthropologist and father of three, including a daughter with Down syndrome, reflects on the pressures of parenting.
What Spider Games Say About Arachnophobia
Many people around the world fear spiders. But in the Philippines, the tradition of spider wrestling often brings people and arachnids in close proximity.
Post-
An Indigenous poet-anthropologist writes to her daughter of the limits of her motherly protection.
Extraordinary Lessons From a Community-Led Excavation
An archaeologist examines how community members in Cardiff, Wales, collaborated with a research team to make important insights into the Bronze Age.
In the Event of Flooding
An Indigenous poet-anthropologist speaks to the survivance of Native communities in the face of colonialism and genocide.
Born of “All That Good”
An Indigenous poet-anthropologist and new mother interrogates the idea that, overall, historic Indigenous boarding schools brought a lot of “good.”
View All in Education
![In the foreground, four people wear sombreros and ride on horseback. Three of them carry U.S. and Mexican flags while looking up and gesturing toward a helicopter overhead. A crowd of people walk in front of them.]()
![An adult with short hair, a mustache, and glasses, and two young people with long hair held by barrettes—one holding a pen—sit on the floor around a large piece of construction paper, markers, and a camera.]()
![A close-up image features a hand covered with a white latex glove holding a tiny test tube as it catches drops of small clear liquid from a pipette.]()
![An older man sits with a younger man inside on teal patterned rugs, both with their hands cupped before them in prayer.]()
![kalinga institute of social sciences]()
![machine learning anthropology - In March 2016, professional Go player Lee Se-dol only won one match out of five against Google’s AlphaGo program in the ancient Chinese game Go.]()
I Was Penalized for Learning a Language at Home
A researcher explains why the Fulbright-Hays fellowship should change its rules that have kept native and heritage speakers from working where their languages are spoken.
Through Film, Discovering Hope in the Face of Environmental Destruction
In the midst of acute eco-anxiety, can community-based filmmaking help young people imagine a different future?
Will a Nobel Prize Make Paleogenomics More Accountable?
An anthropologist offers possible directions for ancient DNA studies moving forward—especially regarding the field’s complex histories with Indigenous communities and public education.
Nurturing Autism Acceptance in Indonesia
Two new films based on ethnographic research follow autistic Indonesian youth and their families as they seek and create new networks of care and support.
The Travesties of India’s Tribal Boarding Schools
Two researchers argue that India’s large-scale tribal boarding schools revive features of 19th- and 20th-century boarding schools in North America and elsewhere that sought to strip Indigenous peoples of their families, languages, and cultural identities.
What If Machines Could Learn the Way Children Do?
Modern-day machines, such as Siri and Amazon’s Alexa, lack intelligence and empathy. Insights from hunter-gatherer communities could pave the way toward more sophisticated gadgets.
View All in Identity
![In a brick-covered public square surrounded by buildings, a metal statue features two people with flattened fronts and their hands extended sideways facing each other. They stand on opposite sides of a gap in the rounded brick hill they are built on.]()
![Several pink stemless flowers surrounded by white dust and yellow particles float in mid-air against a black background.]()
![Dark gray clouds hang in a pale blue sky. With orange light shining from behind them, these clouds seem to touch dark rolling hills scattered with trees and buildings.]()
![A black silhouette of a person contrasts with an illuminated cobalt-blue background with two bright spotlights shining from behind their head.]()
![A close-up image features the wrinkled hands of a person wearing a cardigan and printed skirt as they mold clay into a bowl shape.]()
![A close-up image features a mostly red, woven piece of cloth with diagonal patterns that incorporate white, black, green, and hot pink accents.]()
Dismantling the Walls in Our Heads
The Berlin Wall fell more than three decades ago—but political, social, and economic divides between East and West Germany continue to reverberate, even among those born after Reunification.
To Wear the Wind
A tribal scholar from the state of Nagaland in India engages with the loss of traditional cultural practices and locates the creation of a new world order where the “natural” is increasingly isolated from the “human.”
Speaking in Tongues
A scholar from Nagaland in India offers visceral, familial insights on language and culture loss in her Indigenous tribal community.
Bringing Nhakpoti, the Kayapó Story of Star Girl, to the Screen
Over years and across long distances, an international filmmaking team collaborated to bring to life the origin story of how agriculture came to Kayapó communities, Indigenous peoples in the Brazilian Amazon.
What Pots Say—and Don’t Say—About People
Archaeologists long abandoned the simple notion that “pots are people”—that people’s identities directly correspond with the pottery they made and used. What, then, can ceramics reveal about past lives?
Feeling What We Are/A’yel jtaleltik
An anthropologist and writer from the Tseltal community speaks back to a colonialist history of suppression—instead claiming his identity, language, and people.
Glossary
Adolescence
-
The phase of biological and social growth and development during which the transition from childhood to adulthood occurs. The age range for this transition is typically 10 through the early 20s.
Coming of Age in Samoa
-
A 1928 book written by American anthropologist Margaret Mead. The book focused on Mead’s research on adolescence in American Samoan culture.
Nature vs. Nurture
-
A debate involving the extent to which particular aspects of behavior are a direct result of inherited biological makeup (sometimes referred to as genetic predisposition) or learned influences.
Sexuality
-
The concept of sexuality refers to the sociocultural identities associated with erotic thoughts and practices, and the complex experiences humans have regarding their bodies and perceptions of gender.
Professor Talking Points
- Adolescence has only been identified as a stage of development separate from childhood since the late 19th/early 20th century. Prior to this period, and in most cultural contexts, people were categorized as either children or adults. Explain how anthropologists have approached the study of adolescence as a social category and the ways in which the anthropological study of adolescence has changed over the last 100 years.
- The era in which Margaret Mead came of age was a time of significant change for women and women’s rights in the United States and beyond. Women in the United States gained the right to vote in 1920, when Mead was 19 years old. Despite these changes, American women were still operating within a political, economic, and social world dominated by men. Lead students in a discussion about how the events and trends of the time may have impacted Mead’s choices and area of study.
- Mead studied under the tutelage of anthropologist Franz Boas and believed that nurture and the environment and culture a person grows up in influences their personality. Present students with this statement: Personality is never a result of nature, rather it results only from nurture, which comes through culture, family, and the environment and culture of a person’s upbringing. Lead students in a discussion on how this claim could be affirmed or negated.
- Mead spent significant time in American Samoa, engaging in the culture and practices. She interviewed adolescent girls as part of her research and went on to write about her findings in her well-known book Coming of Age in Samoa. Lead students in an examination of Mead’s findings in Samoa. Have students compare the observations she made about adolescence in Samoa to the stresses of adolescence they see today, or experienced themselves, in the United States.
- Mead said, “Human nature is almost unbelievably malleable, responding accurately and contrastingly to contrasting cultural conditions.” Give examples to explain how cultural conditions mold human nature and influence personalities. Discuss with students examples Mead saw in her research that may have influenced her views and led to her conclusions about the malleability of human nature. Have students discuss if they believe this statement is true about all stages of life.
Academic Articles
-
Freeman, Derek. 2000. “Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa and Boasian Culturalism.” Politics and the Life Sciences 19 (1): 101–103.
-
Sanday, Peggy Reeves. 1980. “Margaret Mead’s View of Sex Roles in Her Own and Other Societies.” American Anthropologist 82 (2): 340–348.
-
Zorbaugh, Harvey W., and L. Virgil Payne. 1935. “Adolescence: Psychosis or Social Adjustment?” The Journal of Educational Sociology 8 (6): 371–377.
Student Discussion Questions
- Why should adolescence be considered a cultural category of interest in terms of anthropological study?
- Why have few anthropological studies focused on adolescence?
- What are the major contributions Margaret Mead made to the anthropological study of adolescence?
- What elements of biological and emotional development set adolescence apart as a focus of anthropological study?
Activities
- The nature vs. nurture debate centers on whether genetically inherited traits or environmental and cultural influences are more impactful in personality development. Take a side (nature or nurture) and create a case consisting of a claim supported by three points. Then, indicate whether Margaret Mead would agree or disagree with your case and why.
- In a two-page essay, outline Mead’s assumptions, observations, and conclusions about adolescent girls based on her time in American Samoa.
- G. Stanley Hall was one of the first to study and identify adolescence as a physiological stage. He contended that adolescent behavior was related to physiological changes. He described the turbulence of the stage as “sturm und drang” (storm and stress) that would end with the dawn of adulthood. Create a table or other graphic to compare and contrast this view with that of Mead.
Additional Resources
-
Article: Gary Schwartz and Don Merten’s “The Language of Adolescence: An Anthropological Approach to the Youth Culture”
-
Article: Meredith W. Reiches’ “Adolescence as a Biocultural Life History Transition”
-
Article: Suet Lin Hung and Kwok Kin Fung’s “Social Constructionist View of Adolescence”
-
Book: Margaret Mead’s Coming of Age in Samoa
-
Video: Adriana Galván’s “The Adolescent Brain: A Thriving Look”
Unit By
Aimee L. Richards, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
-
Unit 3
Margaret Mead’s Ethnographic Work in Samoa
