Boas, Franz
Boas greatly influenced American anthropology, particularly in his development of the theoretical framework known as cultural relativism, which argued against the evolutionary scale leading from savagery to culture, laid out by his 19th-century predecessors. He believed that cultures (plural) are too complex to be evaluated according to the broad theorizing characteristic of evolutionarylaws
of developing culture (singular). Instead, Boas sought to understand the development of societies through their particular histories, and wrote that despite their many differences, humanity is one indivisible thing. He established thefour-field approach
through his concern with human evolution, archaeology, language, and culture, each of which has become a subfield in the wider discipline of anthropology in the United States.
Boas reexamined the premises of physical anthropology and was a pioneer in the application of statistical methods to biometric study. He was an early critic of the use of race as an explanation for difference in the natural and social sciences, calling race adangerous fiction
and emphasizing instead the importance of environment in the evaluation of individual capabilities, and made important contributions to stratigraphic archaeology in Mexico. As a student of Native American languages, Boas emphasized the importance of linguistic analysis from internal linguistic structure, and pointed out that language was a fundamental aspect of culture. His insistence on rigorous methodology served to establish the scientific value of his contributions, and his methods and conclusions are still widely influential. He was a prolific writer whose works includeThe Mind of Primitive Man(1911, rev. ed. 1983);Anthropology and Modern Life(1928, repr. 1984); andKwakiutl Ethnography(1966).
See G. W. Stocking, Jr., ed.,Franz Boas Reader: Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883–1911(1982); biography by M. J. Herskovits (1953, repr. 1973); C. King's study of Boas and his circle,去ds of the Upper Air(2019).
The Columbia Electronic Encyclopedia,6th ed. Copyright © 2012, Columbia University Press. All rights reserved.
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