Story of Bali, Indonesia

There is no way to know the number of subjects that Bateson and Mead observed exhibiting a particular type of behavior or trait. For example, how many mothers showed the turning-away behavior that was central to the interpretations of a lack of climax in the culture and of emotionally withdrawn personalities of the Balinese? Bateson and Mead illustrated the turning-away behavior with only two mothers: one on page 148 and the other in the film, 'Karba's First Years'. Mead used a total of eight subjects (infants and children) in the subsequent reanalysis of the data for a study of motor development and this appears to be all the subjects that were followed longitudinally.

Several dozen subjects in photos were identified by name. Bateson and Mead's publications and photographs were shown to Karba at Bayung Gede and he asked for a copy of the film about himself, 'Karba's First Years', which neither he nor the villagers had ever seen. Bateson and Mead stated that they saw no reason to conceal identities in their publications and did not obtain informed consent as is now the practice in medical research. One wondered how Bateson and Mead would have felt about having their naked baby pictures and movies identified by name and shown around the world, along with a foreigner's critical interpretation of them and their mothers' behavior.

Bateson and Mead's overall data, mostly photographic, is impressive and highly informative but generally, inadequate for each particular trait or pattern of behavior. It appears that they sometimes used single cases or very few cases to make generalized interpretations about all Balinese. There are numerous examples of this, including 'the body as a tube, 'the mother: narcissism the father-child relationship and identification of food with faeces. Possibly a practice of generalizing from a few cases accounts for their description of the mother's playing with her baby's penis. Bateson and Mead described a characteristic pattern of the mother suddenly and sharply pulling at her baby's penis as a way of playing with him and getting him to respond. The authors have never observed this behavior by a mother in the plains or at Bayung Gede. Three mothers at Bayung Gede who were asked about this practice denied ever witnessing such behavior. Such behavior, even if it does occur, must be a rare occurrence and not a general practice as presented by Bateson and Mead. Bateson and Mead's observation of this behavior is not questioned but it is hypothesized that they observed it in a few instances at most and generalized from these, a methodological pitfall

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