: 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?