Truth be told, I have an anthropological methods/theories crush on Franz Boas. Born into a liberal German family, Boas was allowed to explore a variety of topics in fields that caught his attention, including: the natural sciences, geography, history and culture. After earning a Ph.D. in physics and a brief stint in the military Boas began a yearlong scientific expedition to Baffin Island in northern Canada to collect ethnographic data on Inuit culture. This expedition rooted Boas into the field of anthropology and his later work granted him the title of “father of American anthropology”. This title is aptly fitting due to the fact that Boas founded the relativistic, culture-centered school of American anthropology that found its way into
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Boas had a successful career in natural history/anthropological museums, professorship at a variety of universities and trained/mentored many famous 20th century American anthropologists.
The reading in the A History of Anthropological Theory textbook traces Boas ethnological methodology of anthropology. In which, the text describes how Boas was very opposed to evolutionists theories and psychoanalytic explanations of cultural development. In fact, he believed that “it would be quite impossible to understand, on the basis of a single evolutionary scheme, what happened to any particular people” (108). Rather than follow previous anthropologist’s methods of inquiry Boas preferred to trace the “historical developments of civilizations” (105). By rooting his method in history Boas argued that by studying historical happenings “we are compelled to consider every phenomenon, not only as effect …show more content…
This text was fairly harsh on Boas (which was surprising to me); however, this excerpt was able to effectively place Boas’s contributions in the context of anthropological theory history. Rather than claiming that Boas “invented” and conceptualized the anthropological concept of culture, Stocking attributes this concept to Tylor and other anthropologists who were also working on redefining culture (197). Stocking continues by describing and tracing other anthropologists such as Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s contributions to the definition of culture(s). Eventually, Stocking refocuses his discussion on Boas and traces how Boas came to understand race and relativism. In which Boas believed and demonstrated through his skull studies that “historical events appear to have been much more potent in leading races to civilization than their faculty and it follows that achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other” (213). In follow up on this finding Boas argued that the organization of the human mind across all races was dominated by three characteristics abstraction, inhibition, and choice. In Boas’s eyes this was supported by the existence of numerical and grammatical categories, customary control and aesthetic/ethical standards (220). Therefore, Boas was able to advance the field of
Boas had a successful career in natural history/anthropological museums, professorship at a variety of universities and trained/mentored many famous 20th century American anthropologists.
The reading in the A History of Anthropological Theory textbook traces Boas ethnological methodology of anthropology. In which, the text describes how Boas was very opposed to evolutionists theories and psychoanalytic explanations of cultural development. In fact, he believed that “it would be quite impossible to understand, on the basis of a single evolutionary scheme, what happened to any particular people” (108). Rather than follow previous anthropologist’s methods of inquiry Boas preferred to trace the “historical developments of civilizations” (105). By rooting his method in history Boas argued that by studying historical happenings “we are compelled to consider every phenomenon, not only as effect …show more content…
This text was fairly harsh on Boas (which was surprising to me); however, this excerpt was able to effectively place Boas’s contributions in the context of anthropological theory history. Rather than claiming that Boas “invented” and conceptualized the anthropological concept of culture, Stocking attributes this concept to Tylor and other anthropologists who were also working on redefining culture (197). Stocking continues by describing and tracing other anthropologists such as Kroeber and Kluckhohn’s contributions to the definition of culture(s). Eventually, Stocking refocuses his discussion on Boas and traces how Boas came to understand race and relativism. In which Boas believed and demonstrated through his skull studies that “historical events appear to have been much more potent in leading races to civilization than their faculty and it follows that achievements of races do not warrant us to assume that one race is more highly gifted than the other” (213). In follow up on this finding Boas argued that the organization of the human mind across all races was dominated by three characteristics abstraction, inhibition, and choice. In Boas’s eyes this was supported by the existence of numerical and grammatical categories, customary control and aesthetic/ethical standards (220). Therefore, Boas was able to advance the field of