After the bombshell that Darwin’s theories caused in the middle of the Victorian era, some daring but at the same time attractive anthropological hypotheses came to enlighten us about who we are and where we come from. It can be said that this new field of academic study was illuminated by the Scotsman James George Frazer (1854-1941) when the first volume of his monumental work -which would reach thirteen in all- was published in 1890, The Golden Branch, which deals with the origin of of culture, magic, religions…
The knowledge illustrated by Frazer’s majestic prose is so vast that it is not surprising that the poor man went blind from plunging so much into the ancient texts offered by the Cambridge University Library, from which he never left. to some distant exotic corner of the planet that would allow him to study in situ the totems and taboos of a “primitive†tribe, which the anthropologists of the generation that came after him would do, some with more professionalism than others. Of course, Frazer ended his long academic career with the distinction of not having given a single class.
Another of the most influential pioneers of modern anthropology was his contemporary, the German Franz Boas (1858-1942), who from Columbia University (New York), where he did teach and preach his theories on topics that are very familiar to us today. : race, sex, gender. In fact, Boas, from his chair, created a school, one of his most illustrious disciples being Margaret Mead, who did travel and study “exotic” cultures in situ, with a predilection for the study of the passage in these societies from childhood to age. adult and whose conclusions would come to be recognized as cultural relativism.
Now, it is one thing to study and try to understand and explain the tremendously complex diversity of the human species, and another, very different, is whether or not that intrepid disciple of Franz Boas, who has lately enjoyed a renewed interest among anthropologists and beyond.
Mead published in 1928 his controversial work Adolescence, sex and culture in Samoa, based on his field work and in which he ends up separating the concepts of sex and gender. The controversy was served. There was a legion of enthusiastic supporters of her thesis, but not as many as those who today defend it tooth and nail. Nor were there few detractors of her. There were even those who doubted Mead’s scientific rigor, as was the case, many years later, of Derek Freeman, who in 1999 dedicated an entire book to him based on an investigation that took him to Samoa to check the sources on which Mead based her theory, in addition to reviewing the revealing unpublished correspondence between her and her mentor Franz Boas.
If Freeman’s book did not receive the attention it surely deserved, it is because Mead had long been a true icon of American culture, and therefore untouchable. Still, Freeman’s revelations are devastating. He concludes that she was wrong about almost everything, that she never understood Samoans and their customs, that there was more fantasy in her work than anything else. What’s more, he found some elderly people who still remembered Dr. Mead, who assured him that the Samoans had ruthlessly fooled her.
Now, with the turmoil surrounding trans law, perhaps now is the time to not only review and rethink Mead’s work, but to give Freeman some attention as well. Meanwhile, cultural relativism is going from strength to strength and, until further notice, anthropology remains a highly inaccurate science.
