Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 11
Unpacking the Mead-Freeman Controversy
In this unit (to accompany the SAPIENS podcast S6E6), students will revisit the Mead-Freeman controversy in depth. They will reassess how Freeman critiqued and refuted Mead, then study the resulting controversy within the field of anthropology. Finally, they will apply lessons from the Mead-Freeman controversy to current research and theories.
Learning Objectives
- Summarize the timeline of the Mead-Freeman controversy.
- Review the key points of the critique and controversy.
Sapiens articles
Could Group-Organized Violence Be Rooted in Empathy?
The evolution of empathy may have conferred both the advantage of mercy and the tradeoffs of killing.
Compassion Sets Humans Apart
Much attention has focused on the apparent violence in humanity’s distant past. But evidence of kindness and care is much more widespread.
Keywords
View All in Violence
![A dog stands on a cement sidewalk along a busy street in front of two people eating at a food stall.]()
![In the center of a huge, multistory room, multiple computers hanging on a wall display images of city streets. In the foreground, dozens of people sit at cubicles looking at similar computer images on their desks.]()
![Two people in uniforms—one in black, the other in tan—wearing black boots and hats topped with matching fans face each other and kick one leg up, their feet traveling above their heads. Other people in uniform stand at attention along the roadside behind them.]()
![In a sepia-and-white color palette, two hands cup a pile of sand, much of which is falling between the fingers.]()
![A person wearing a white dress whose skirt is made of ribbons, each with a name written on it, leans back with their eyes closed. They are on grass with a Black Lives Matter banner on the ground beside them and a circle of drummers and bystanders around them.]()
![Surrounded by gray cobblestones, two black kettles sprinkled with ash sit over blackened logs and open orange flames. Two pairs of sneakers on people’s feet are visible just behind the fire close to another kettle.]()
Do Strict Criminal Penalties Protect Animals From Abuse?
In Mexico, a growing animal protection movement often promotes harsh criminal punishment for those who abuse animals. But are these strategies working, or do they lead to further injustices?
Inside Mexico City’s Surveillance State
An anthropologist investigates how one city’s rapidly expanding video surveillance system is transforming criminal investigation—sometimes in deeply flawed ways.
Imagining Other Worlds at the India-Pakistan Border
For decades, soldiers at the border between Attari, India, and Wagah, Pakistan, have staged an elaborate ceremony for onlookers. An anthropologist reflects on the ceremony as a legacy of Partition—and imagines other futures for the two nations.
Cold Hubris and Fundo
A poet-historian reflects on the legacy of colonial-era collecting practices in Tanzania that tore Black Indigenous ancestors from their communities and history.
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with patriarchy and intimate partner violence.
The Heaviness
A multidisciplinary poet-scholar and suicide attempt and multi-suicide loss survivor unveils complex anthropological threads that shape suicidal ideation.
View All in Science
![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 ornate engraving in a large stone wall depicts the head of a figure beneath sunrays. To its right are more figures etched into two levels on top of one another. On the left is an engraving of two feet.]()
![In a science lab, a masked person wearing a white hazmat suit, face shield, and bouffant cap holds small objects under the glass hood of a silver metal workstation.]()
![A close-up image features a pile of logs glowing red and surrounded by orange flames. Sparks fly up against a dark blue night sky.]()
![Shrouded in darkness, a round stone structure on the photo’s right side is illuminated by a light installed on the left side.]()
![A large furry, horned animal stands on grassy terrain with a forest behind and airborne dust surrounding it.]()
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.
What Ancient Egyptians Knew About Meteorites—Long Before Modern Astronomers
An Egyptologist’s study of hieroglyphic texts has revealed that ancient Egyptians likely understood the celestial origins of iron-rich meteorites.
The Hidden Ancestry Extracted From an Ancient Pendant
An anthropologist explains how new forensics tools offer unprecedented answers to questions about who likely held or wore Stone Age objects.
Extinguishing the Idea That Hobbits Had Fire
Research has overturned earlier claims that a diminutive human relative, Homo floresiensis, lit fires—but big stories die hard.
Piecing Together the Puzzle of Oman’s Ancient Towers
In recent years, the Omani government has invested in archaeology and heritage tourism to boost its economy—renewing interest in mysterious 4,000-year-old towers that dot the Southeastern Arabian landscape.
Why Store 41,000 Bison Bones?
An archaeologist explains why a museum keeps so many bones from the Jones-Miller site, an ice age bison kill on the North American plains.
View All in Race
![Two people hug in a bathroom, with one seated on a closed toilet and the other kneeling on a tan-and-brown tiled floor. Two standing onlookers flank the image’s foreground.]()
![A person wearing a white dress whose skirt is made of ribbons, each with a name written on it, leans back with their eyes closed. They are on grass with a Black Lives Matter banner on the ground beside them and a circle of drummers and bystanders around them.]()
![A photograph shows an adult and child watching a black truck pass in front of a memorial of flowers and stuffed animals. The truck has several Canadian flags flying from it and carries a black banner with white text that reads, “Just now found but were never forgotten.”]()
![A photograph features a metal statue of a man on an elevated platform in a grassy circle in the center of a park. Orange and yellow flowers surround the platform.]()
![A photograph features a square area of concrete tiling in a park’s center with bench seating around its perimeter. At the center of the square is a stone statue of a man’s bust covered in red paint.]()
![A photograph features a large body of water with a cityscape visible in the distance. On the left side, a person stands on a wooden pier near a white sign that reads: “PLEASE KEEP YOUR PIER CLEAN. USE TRASH CANS.”]()
How Eugenics Shaped the U.S. Prenatal Care System
Black women in the U.S. are far more likely to die from complications related to pregnancy and birth than White women. Two scholars explore how the discrediting of Black midwives helped create these racial disparities—and call for alternative models of prenatal care.
The Urgency of Envisioning a World Without Police
An anthropologist working in Baltimore argues that safety for Black communities requires an end to policing. That also means taking a hard look at how policing intersects with patriarchy and intimate partner violence.
Advocating for Archaeology’s New Purpose
Archaeologists can help communities retake what colonialism and racism tried to erase through a new goal of “archaeological reclamation.”
How the Early Battle Over Race Science Was Lost
Celebrated 19th-century biologist Ernst Haeckel pushed race science as his little-known protégé Nikolai Miklucho-Maclay defended Indigenous rights. A biological anthropologist reflects on the impacts of their ruptured relationship.
To Decolonize, We Must End the World as We Know It
A contributor to a special series on decolonizing anthropology argues that true decolonization would require the complete dismantling of existing global power structures, including academic disciplines.
Planting Seeds for a More Ethical Future
Three contributors to a special series reflect on why slowing down and building trust between community partners is fundamental to decolonizing anthropology—and our shared future.
Glossary
Discourse
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Written or spoken communication or debate.
Professor Talking Points
- Freeman was trained in cultural anthropology. He fully immersed himself in the Iban culture during his 1940-1943 visit. Only after studying anthropology for more than two decades did he begin to question the validity of cultural anthropology and study more biologically based subjects, such as psychology, ethology, psychoanalysis, and neuroscience, building an interdisciplinary background and perspective to view cultures.
- On Freeman’s dispute with Mead, critics often pointed out, “Derek’s vehemence and persistence beyond a decent point of disagreement often outweighed the virtue of what he had to say” (Hempenstall 2017, 116). Before making public criticisms of Mead’s work, Freeman’s colleagues often found disagreeing with him tedious and difficult.
- In 1964, Freeman published “Psychiatry, Anthropology and the Doctrine of Cultural Relativism.” It was the beginning of his decades-long mission to refute the emphasis anthropologists placed on the influence of culture on human behavior. He believed culture was “projections of the human animal’s impulsive phylogenetically given nature,” whereas human nature was foundational and drove culture (Hempenstall 2017, 131).
- After meeting Mead in his office at the Australian National University on November 10, 1964, and then attending a seminar with Mead the following day, conflicting accounts of the emotions held by Freeman and Mead worked their way into modern literature. Mead supporters claimed she “won” the encounters, pointing to her unshaken stature and composure. Based on Freeman’s comments during the seminar, some speculate that he was caught off guard. Based on his diary entries, an apology letter to Mead, and comments in a 1996 interview about meeting Mead, Freeman expressed respect for Mead and thought their 1964 meeting was productive. In his letter, he politely states he believes she made some mistakes in her Samoan work, and he plans to research her errors, to which Mead responded with her now well-known phrase, “Anyway, what is important is the work” (Hempenstall 2017; Shankman 2009).
- Mead rose to popularity long before Freeman published his critique of her work. An anthropologist and former student of Freeman described Mead as “successful, optimistic, with a fervent belief in the future, she reaffirmed the hope of all Americans that through education everyone could become what he or she wanted to be” (Hempenstall 2017, 194).
- In her work, Mead “acknowledged adolescent stress but argued that the lives of Samoan adolescent girls were relatively less stressful than the lives of American girls in the 1920s” (Shankman 2021, 180). She acknowledged that puberty was a universal, biological experience but positioned her argument into how the process was “managed” among differing cultures. Yet Freeman labeled Mead an “absolute cultural determinist” (Shankman 2021, 176).
Academic Articles
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Freeman, Derek. “Social Anthropology and the Scientific Study of Human Behaviour.” Man 1, no. 3 (1966): 330-342.
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Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. “The Margaret Mead Controversy: Culture, Biology, and Anthropological Inquiry.” Human Organization 43, no. 1 (1984): 85-93.
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Shankman, Paul. “Culture, Biology, and Evolution: The Mead-Freeman Controversy Revisited.” Journal of Youth and Adolescence 29 (2000): 539-556.
Student Discussion Questions
- If Freeman began to question Mead’s work after his 1943 trip to Samoa (as described by Hempenstall [2017] and in various interviews), why do you think he did not publish his misgivings until twenty years later?
- Freeman attributes the events at Kuching as career-altering in terms of his intellectual pursuits; however, colleagues and other professionals began to see Freeman in a mentally unstable light. If Kuching’s events had not occurred (or were kept quieter), would the field of anthropology have been more accepting of Freeman’s new ideas? How much does “mental stability” and how an individual expresses their ideas play a role in accepting those ideas?
- Read the SAPIENS debate articles under “Why Are Humans Violent?” Do any of the essays sway your thinking in answering the question more than the others? Why?
- Why do you think the Mead vs. Freeman controversy has lasted decades, with works still published in 2000 on the matter?
- New research continuously changes the way people think about the world. Take the revelation that Homo floresiensis did not light fires (see: “Extinguishing the Idea That Hobbits Had Fire”). How is this change similar to the Mead-Freeman controversy? How is it different?
Activities
- Read Freeman’s New York Times Obituary (written by John Shaw in Additional Resources). How did the New York Times explain Freeman’s work and his controversy with Mead? Now read a letter to the New York Times editor from Professor Louise Lamphere, published on August 12, 2001. Discuss how the media played a role in developing and prolonging the controversy between Mead and Freeman.
- In a group setting, split the group into Mead supporters and Freeman supporters. Have the groups present their anthropologist’s points regarding Samoa to the class.
- Select a current controversial topic. Examine what the supporters of both sides say using credible sources. Write what both sides have to say about each position. Consider if the media or advocacy groups played a role in promoting one or both sides. Is there a clear “winner”? Why or why not?
Additional Resources
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Article: John Shaw’s “Derek Freeman, Who Challenged Margaret Mead on Samoa, Dies at 84”
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Book: Derek Freeman’s Margaret Mead and The Heretic
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Video: Documentary Educational Resources’ “Odyssey Series: Margaret Mead – Taking Note – PREVIEW”
Unit By
Catherine Torres, Freedom Learning Group
Teaching
The Problems With Coming of Age
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Unit 12
The Influence of Freeman and Mead
