What did you learn about the people of the Samoan Islands?

: What did you learn about the people of the Samoan Islands? Topic 1: Gender. • What did you learn from Mead’s book about gender in the Samoan Islands? • What did you learn that expanded your overall perspective on gender? Topic 2: Social Structure • What can we learn from this book about how social structure functions in a complex society? Topic 3: Kinship Systems and Family. • The society Mead described is built around kinship and family relationships. How does kinship structure the everyday lives of the people described in her book? Topic 4: Economics. • How are people making a living and supporting their families and kin groups in this setting? • What is the relationship of the economics presented to the areas discussed above (gender, social structure, kinship, and economics)? Area B Topic 1: Coming of Age in Samoa is not a new book. • This book was published in 1928. So why is it part of this course? • What does it tell us that we might not get from a journalist's account of the Samoan Islands? Or from another ethnography about a different geographic area? • What can we learn from this book? Topic 2: What we do versus what we say. • Discuss the idea of real versus ideal behavior, as exemplified by the people studied and by the anthropologist. • Are the people actually living out the cultural system as they might describe it? • If not, how does the cultural system vary from what they say? • Does Mead behave as you would expect an anthropologist to behave? • If not, how does her behavior differ from what you would expect? Topic 3: Being an ethnographer. • What are Mead’s greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses as an ethnographer? • Describe the most serious or trying difficulties Mead experienced. • Based on her account, what qualities do you think are most important in a successful anthropological fieldworker? • Could you conduct this kind of ethnographic fieldwork?