Boasian anthropology was a school within American anthropology founded by Franz Boas in the late 19th century.
Boasian anthropology was a school within American anthropology founded by Franz Boas in the late 19th century.
Boasian anthropology was based on the four-field model of anthropology uniting the fields of cultural anthropology, linguistic anthropology, physical anthropology, and archaeology under the umbrella of anthropology. It was based on an understanding of human cultures as malleable and perpetuated through social learning, and understood behavioral differences between peoples as largely separate from and unaffected by innate predispositions stemming from human biology—in this way it rejected the view that cultural differences were essentially biologically based. It also rejected ideas of cultural evolution which ranked societies and cultures according to their degree of "evolution", assuming a single evolutionary path along which cultures can be ranked hierarchically, rather Boas considered societies varying complexities to be the outcome of particular historical processes and circumstances—a perspective described as historical particularism.
Another important aspect of Boasian anthropology was its perspective of cultural relativism which assumes that a culture can only be understood by first understanding its own standards and values, rather than assuming that the values and standards of the anthropologist's society, can be used to judge other cultures. In this way Boasian anthropologists did not assume as a given that non-Western societies are necessarily inferior to Western ones, but rather attempt to understand them on their own terms. From this approach also stemmed an investment in understanding and protecting cultural minorities, and in critiquing and relativizing American and Western society through contrasting its values and norms with those of other societies. Boasian anthropology in this way tended to consider political activism, through scientific education about society, a significant part of the scientific project. [1] [2] [3] [4] [5] [6]
The program of research and public education activities pursued by Boas, his former students, and their associates—eventually including most of the field of anthropology as practiced in the United States—encompassed a number of discrete areas of inquiry and activity. These include many anthropological specializations and neighboring inter-disciplines, such as those known today as museum anthropology, folkloristics, linguistic anthropology, Native American studies, and ethnohistory. [7] [8] [9] [10] [11] [12]
Boas had a large group of students who dominated the first generation of professional anthropologists in the United States, and went on to found many of the earliest anthropology departments in the country. [13] Among the prominent students of Boas who became exponents of Boasian anthropology were:
In the mid 20th century, Boasian anthropology came under critique both from those students who wanted to reintroduce evolutionary processes into the study of culture, and from those who disagreed with its relativist stance and its view that biological differences did not reflect innate differences in human ability or potential. In the late 20th century earlier Boasian anthropology was also critiqued for its acceptance of race as a valid biological category, [14] leading to attempts to redefine a neo-Boasian anthropology which studies the particular historical trajectories leading to the construction of social categories of cultures and races. [15]
Anthropology is the scientific study of humanity, concerned with human behavior, human biology, cultures, societies, and linguistics, in both the present and past, including past human species. Social anthropology studies patterns of behavior, while cultural anthropology studies cultural meaning, including norms and values. A portmanteau term sociocultural anthropology is commonly used today. Linguistic anthropology studies how language influences social life. Biological or physical anthropology studies the biological development of humans.
Cultural anthropology is a branch of anthropology focused on the study of cultural variation among humans. It is in contrast to social anthropology, which perceives cultural variation as a subset of a posited anthropological constant. The term sociocultural anthropology includes both cultural and social anthropology traditions.
Edward Sapir was an American anthropologist-linguist, who is widely considered to be one of the most important figures in the development of the discipline of linguistics in the United States.
Franz Uri Boas was a German-American anthropologist and a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology". His work is associated with the movements known as historical particularism and cultural relativism.
Ruth Fulton Benedict was an American anthropologist and folklorist.
Cultural relativism is the position that there is no universal standard to measure cultures by, and that all cultural values and beliefs must be understood relative to their cultural context, and not judged based on outside norms and values. Proponents of cultural relativism also tend to argue that the norms and values of one culture should not be evaluated using the norms and values of another.
Ralph Linton was an American anthropologist of the mid-20th century, particularly remembered for his texts The Study of Man (1936) and The Tree of Culture (1955). One of Linton's major contributions to anthropology was defining a distinction between status and role.
Robert Harry Lowie was an Austrian-born American anthropologist. An expert on Indigenous peoples of the Americas, he was instrumental in the development of modern anthropology and has been described as "one of the key figures in the history of anthropology".
History of anthropology in this article refers primarily to the 18th- and 19th-century precursors of modern anthropology. The term anthropology itself, innovated as a Neo-Latin scientific word during the Renaissance, has always meant "the study of man". The topics to be included and the terminology have varied historically. At present they are more elaborate than they were during the development of anthropology. For a presentation of modern social and cultural anthropology as they have developed in Britain, France, and North America since approximately 1900, see the relevant sections under Anthropology.
Alfred Irving "Pete" Hallowell was an award-winning American anthropologist, archaeologist and businessman.
Multilineal evolution is a 20th-century social theory about the evolution of societies and cultures. It is composed of many competing theories by various sociologists and anthropologists. This theory has replaced the older 19th century set of theories of unilineal evolution, where evolutionists were deeply interested in making generalizations.
Alexander Aleksandrovich Goldenweiser was a Russian-born U.S. anthropologist and sociologist.
Melford Elliot Spiro was an American cultural anthropologist specializing in religion and psychological anthropology. He is known for his critiques of the pillars of contemporary anthropological theory—wholesale cultural determinism, radical cultural relativism, and virtually limitless cultural diversity—and for his emphasis on the theoretical importance of unconscious desires and beliefs in the study of stability and change in social and cultural systems, particularly in respect to the family, politics, and religion. Explicated in numerous theoretical publications, they are empirically exemplified in monographs based on his fieldwork in Ifaluk atoll in Micronesia, an Israeli kibbutz, and a village in Burma.
Historical particularism is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought.
Regna Darnell is an American-Canadian anthropologist and professor of Anthropology and First Nations Studies at the University of Western Ontario, where she has founded the First Nations Studies Program.
Social anthropology is the study of patterns of behaviour in human societies and cultures. It is the dominant constituent of anthropology throughout the United Kingdom and much of Europe, where it is distinguished from cultural anthropology. In the United States, social anthropology is commonly subsumed within cultural anthropology or sociocultural anthropology.
Herbert S. Lewis is a Professor Emeritus of Anthropology at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he taught from 1963 to 1998. He has conducted extensive field research in Ethiopia and Israel and worked with Oneida Indian Nation of Wisconsin. Aside from publications based on ethnographic field research he has written theoretical works about political leadership and systems, ethnicity, cultural evolution. Since the late 1990s he has published extensively about the history of anthropology, much of it offering new insights into the work and thought of Franz Boas.
Alexander Lesser (1902–1982) was an American anthropologist. Working in the Boasian tradition of American cultural anthropology, he adopted critical stances of several ideas of his fellow Boasians, and became known as an original and critical thinker, pioneering several ideas that later became widely accepted within anthropology.
American anthropology has culture as its central and unifying concept. This most commonly refers to the universal human capacity to classify and encode human experiences symbolically, and to communicate symbolically encoded experiences socially. American anthropology is organized into four fields, each of which plays an important role in research on culture:
Museum folklore is a domain of scholarship and professional practice within the field of folklore studies (folkloristics).
