![]() ![]() If contemporary readers can read the text through a postmodern lens, when she wrote, her approach was unprecedented. Part of the persona she constructs is that she is a scientist sharing data yet she no sooner invokes standards of scientific rigor than she shifts course to promise us a good “tale”. Like many postmodern ethnographers, Mead self-consciously constructs an authorial position rather than attempting to remain absent and objective. The text has much in common with postmodern conceptions of ethnography, which acknowledge “writing culture” as mediated by interpretive, representational and linguistic considerations. Taking a “recovery and reappraisal” approach, this article argues that the text is neither a collection of detailed, field note-anchored observations nor a cross cultural critique, but a love story to place. A lightening rod for an array of criticism, Coming of Age in Samoa also attained monumental popularity with both scholarly and popular reading audiences, convincing many that it captured the sexual and social lives of Samoan adolescent girls and that North American girls might be instructed by this portrait. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |