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In his forward to Margaret Mead's classic study of adolescence in Samoa, Franz Boas wrote “… much of what we ascribe to human nature is no more than a reaction to the restraints put upon us by our civilization…” (Mead 1928). This comment and the pioneering work on maturation in the South Pacific summed up the two basic perceptions which anthropologists use for viewing behavioral phenomena: that the human organism and its responses must be understood within the context of cultural conditioning, and that only by a comparative view of the ways in which different cultures function in time and place can we wholly understand human behavior. While our own particular interests may be directed toward problems of the here and now, or even of the specific individual, the anthropological perspective is essential in order to free us from the myopic distortions of the ethnocentric view.
A cross-cultural view of adolescence enables us to sort out the regularities and differences in the way people approach maturity and offers clues to those phenomena which are universal, and those which are imposed by particular cultural systems. This is hardly a simple, uncomplicated task, as a closer look at the issues will reveal.
The very definition of the period to be called adolescence poses problems. It would seem that reference to the physical characteristics of the human species would provide a ready definition, but even here the evidence is blurred. Pubertal growth spurts are well documented for man, and may occur in other primates. But at best, given our present knowledge we are forced to depend upon