49 Facts About Derek Freeman

John Derek Freeman was a New Zealand anthropologist known for his criticism of Margaret Mead's work on Samoan society, as described in her 1928 ethnography Coming of Age in Samoa.

Derek Freeman did two and a half years of fieldwork in Borneo studying the Iban people.

The so-called Mead-Derek Freeman controversy spanned three decades, and Derek Freeman published his last rebuttal of a critique of his arguments only weeks before his death in 2001.

Derek Freeman was raised in Wellington by an Australian father and a New Zealand mother who had been reared in Presbyterian tradition.

In particular, Derek Freeman's mother took an active interest in his education and he maintained a close relationship with her during his adult life.

Derek Freeman later commented that if anthropology had been offered he would likely have chosen to study that.

Derek Freeman studied education and was issued a teacher's certificate in 1937.

Derek Freeman made archaeological field studies around the island of Upolu including the Falemauga Caves and earth mounds in Vailele village.

Derek Freeman collected Samoan artefacts of material culture, which was later deposited in the Otago Museum of Dunedin, New Zealand, of which he was made an honorary curator of ethnology.

Derek Freeman served in Europe and the far east during the war, and in September and October 1945 while his ship was accepting the surrender of Japanese troops in Borneo, Freeman came into contact with the Iban people.

In November 1948, he married Monica Maitland, and shortly after the couple left for Sarawak where Derek Freeman would spend the next 30 months doing fieldwork among the Iban for his doctoral dissertation.

In Borneo, Derek Freeman collaborated closely with his wife, an artist, who made many ethnographic drawings of the Iban.

Derek Freeman returned to England in 1951 and was accepted into King's College at the University of Cambridge, where he completed his doctoral thesis on the Iban in 1953.

Derek Freeman described the Iban kinship system which was remarkable in being neither patrilineal or matrilineal, but allowing either kind of filiation for any individual.

Derek Freeman described this system as "utrolineal", and personal choice inherent in the system underpinned much of Derek Freeman's later work.

Derek Freeman subsequently taught at the University of Otago in New Zealand, and the University of Samoa.

Up until this point Derek Freeman had been trained in a framework of British social anthropology and identified strongly with American, Boasian cultural anthropology, but from 1960 he grew increasingly dissatisfied with that paradigm, partly because he felt that it left him unable to answer several important questions regarding Iban ritual behavior.

Derek Freeman later described how this dissatisfaction culminated when he read a passage in Victor Turner's "Symbols in Ndembu ritual", which questioned the ability of anthropologists to form adequate opinions about psychological aspects of ritual behavior.

Derek Freeman knew Harrisson, from his earlier work in Borneo in 1957 when Derek Freeman had himself once been subject to Harrisson's fiery temper - the two men both had strong personalities and they were both strongly territorial about their research subjects.

Derek Freeman seems to have believed that through erotic statues elaborated by the local Iban and working in concert with agents of the Soviet Union to subvert the British rule of Malaysia, Harrisson was exerting a form of mind control over Derek Freeman himself as well as over the officials of Borneo.

The conflict culminated when Derek Freeman broke into Harrisson's house while he was out, and smashed a carved wooden sculpture at the Sarawak museum.

In Canberra, Derek Freeman was talked into seeing a psychiatrist by the university, agreeing on the condition that the topic of conversation would be Harrisson's madness and not his own mental state.

Derek Freeman himself described the events in Kuching as a "conversion" and an "abreaction" through which he acquired a new level of awareness, including the sudden realization that most of the basic assumptions of cultural anthropology were inadequate.

Derek Freeman changed the name under which he published; until that point he had published as JD Freeman, but from then on he published as Derek Freeman.

Derek Freeman then traveled to Europe to study psychoanalysis for two years.

Derek Freeman contacted Margaret Mead, asking her to introduce him to the American psychoanalytic milieu, which she reluctantly did.

Mead knew at that point that Derek Freeman had privately criticised her work in Samoa, and had heard of his reputation for being difficult to deal with.

In November 1964 Mead visited the Australian National University and she and Derek Freeman had their only meeting.

Derek Freeman privately presented Mead with most of the critique of her work that he would later publish after her death, and at a public meeting they had a heated discussion about the importance of female virginity in Samoan culture.

Mead was by then more than 60 years old and walked with a cane, and the suggestion that Derek Freeman thought Mead might seduce him caused hilarity in the auditorium.

Derek Freeman later commented that he had no idea why he said what he did, and that he was himself mortified at hearing his own words.

Derek Freeman later admitted that he did feel intimidated by Mead even as he was administering his harsh verbal critique of her work, and he described her as a "castrator of men" to whose power he did not want to succumb.

In December 1965, Derek Freeman returned to Samoa, staying there the next two years.

Derek Freeman did not find any, but he did interview several Chiefs who had known Mead and who were highly critical of her depictions of Samoan society.

Shortly after uncovering this information Derek Freeman suffered another breakdown, his Samoan hosts found him wandering the beach in an agitated state.

Samoan witnesses ascribed the incident to spirit possession, some Americans thought of it as evidence of psychological problems, but Derek Freeman himself dismissed those speculations attributing it to fatigue from research and possible symptoms of dengue fever.

Back from Samoa in 1968 Derek Freeman gave a paper criticizing Mead to the Australian Association of Social Anthropology.

Derek Freeman sent the manuscript first to the University of Oxford Press for publication, but the editor requested several revisions which Derek Freeman rejected.

In 1979 Derek Freeman sparked a public controversy in Canberra when he protested against the Mexican government's gift of a copy of the Aztec calendar stone to the Australian National University.

Derek Freeman believed the stone to have been an altar used for human sacrifice, and therefore saw it as being inappropriate.

Derek Freeman stated that the Aztecs were "the most barbaric culture in all of human history".

The event caused public debate, with commentators accusing Derek Freeman of exhibiting a double standard as he did not speak out against a model of the Roman Colosseum in the Classics Museum at the Australian National University, and that he had never spoken similarly out against practices of human sacrifice and cannibalism amongst the Bornean and Samoan people he had studied.

The controversy created an urban legend in Australia that Derek Freeman had either doused the stone with blood in a display of protest, or that he had planned to do so - these stories are however incorrect, and Derek Freeman in fact calmly attended the inauguration of the stone.

Derek Freeman says that he informed Mead of his ongoing work in refuting her research when he met her in person in November 1964 and engaged in correspondence with her; nevertheless, he has come under fire for not publishing his work at a time when Mead could reply to his accusations.

However, when Derek Freeman died in 2001, his obituary in The New York Times pointed out that Derek Freeman tried to publish his criticism of Mead as early as 1971, but American publishers had rejected his manuscript.

In 1978, Derek Freeman sent a revised manuscript to Mead, but she was ill and died a few months later without responding.

Derek Freeman's refutation was initially met by some with accusations of "circumstantial evidence, selective quotation, omission of inconvenient evidence, spurious historical tracking and other critical observations," resulting in "major questions" about the validity and honesty of his scholarship.

Derek Freeman therefore concludes, contrary to Freeman, that Mead was never the victim of a hoax.

Derek Freeman died of congestive heart failure in 2001 at the age of eighty-four.