[jhbadger]

But you can't really dismiss criticism of her work as being from just a bitter rival. Whatever his personal motivation for doing it, Freeman and later anthropologists talked to Samoans themselves (some of whom were alive when Mead was doing her study of their society) and they didn't agree with Mead's description of them.

[tropdrop]

It seems Mead and Freeman experienced a slice of life from different parts of Samoa, which was summed up for me in this part of the wikipedia article:

"Samoan culture had been changed by the integration of Christianity in the decades between Mead's and Freeman's fieldwork periods" ... "Leacock pointed out that Mead's famous Samoan fieldwork was undertaken on an outer island that had not been colonialized. While Freeman had undertaken fieldwork in an urban slum plagued by drug abuse, structural unemployment, and gang violence." [1]

Note that doesn't necessarily mean that Freeman's island perfectly resembled Mead's island prior to its urbanization – I'd wager, rather, that Samoan society was diverse!

1 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Margaret_Mead#Criticism_by_Der...