Truth's Fool: Derek Freeman and the War over Cultural Anthropology

by Peter J. Hempenstall

New Zealand anthropologist Derek Freeman ignited a ferocious controversy in 1983 when he denounced the research of Margaret Mead, a world-famous public intellectual who had died five years earlier. Freeman's claims caught the attention of popular media, converging with other vigorous cultural debates of the era. Many anthropologists, however, saw Freeman's strident refutation of Mead's best-selling Coming of Age in Samoa as the culmination of a forty-year vendetta. Others defended Freeman's critique, if not always his tone.

Truth's Fool documents an intellectual journey that was much larger and more encompassing than Freeman's criticism of Mead's work. It peels back the prickly layers to reveal the man in all his complexity. Framing this story within anthropology's development in Britain and America, Peter Hempenstall recounts Freeman's mission to turn the discipline from its cultural-determinist leanings toward a view of human culture underpinned by biological and behavioral drivers. Truth's Fool engages the intellectual questions at the center of the Mead–Freeman debate and illuminates the dark spaces of personal, professional, and even national rivalries.

336 pages, Hardcover

Published December 12, 2017

Reviews

[Marion Lougheed · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'll be writing a full review for an academic journal, but here are the highlights: engaging and suspenseful; intricately researched and cited; fair-minded and cautious. Even if you're not an anthropologist, this book has intrigue in spades and grapples with ideas of objectivity, reality, ethics, madness, and more.

[Carol Colfer · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book recounts in great detail the controversy that raged between the New Zealander Derek Freeman and Margaret Mead over the ethnography of Samoa. It went on for decades, without any true resolution. He argued for serious integration between the social, psychological and biological sciences, and was very conventional in his commitment to a version of science very closely allied to the physical sciences (in my interpretation). She was interested in descriptive ethnography and also the utility of ethnography to help us deal with social issues. One learns a great deal (perhaps a bit too much) about Freeman's personality, which was without doubt quite difficult. The author emphasizes Freeman's genuine dedication to what he saw as truth, and his faithfulness to his own ethical system. On the other hand, he was adamant and apparently rather bulld0g like in his insistence on his own point of view, his own opinions. Any kindness he may have felt disappeared when anyone disagreed with him, it seems.
I found the book interesting, partly because I have been curious about this controversy ever since his first book came out on the subject---but not curious enough to look into it in any detail. This book definitely provides such detail.