Franz Boas

    Major Works

    • Historical particularism
    • Cultural Relativism
    • Work on races

    Historical particularism

    • Franz Boas the founder of the School of Historical Particularism
    • He believed that grand theories of socio-political evolution or diffusion were not provable. He was of the notion that the theories of all societies as a part of one single human culture evolving towards a cultural pinnacle i.e civilization were flawed, especially those that promoted a western model of civilisation as the apex of cultural acheivement.
    • Boas also had reservations in accepting the theories of multilinear evolution of societies.
    • He argued that many cultures developed independently, each based on its own particular set of circumstances such as geography, climate, resources and particular cultural borrowing.
    • Based on this argument, he postulated reconstructing the history of individual cultures, through in-depth investigation that compares group of culture traits in specific geographical areas. The distribution of the culture traits in a specific area were then plotted and further cultural borrowings determined. This gives consent to the reconstruction of individual histories of specific cultures and allows the investigator to draw conclusions as to which cultural elements were borrowed and which were developed individually.
    • Through historical particularism  Fraz Boas emphasised on the reconstruction of each individual culture to understand the underlying intricacies and intrinsic value of each culture. Boas theory was carried forward and developed by his contemporary scholars and students which include Alfred L. Kroeber, Ruth Benedict, Robert Lowie, Paul Radin and Edward Sapir. The theory was also borrowed by the anthropologists working in the  archaeological field as it comprised in-depth study of what had happened in the past.

    Criticisms

    • The main criticism in Historical Partucularism arose because of the heavy concentration of the data collection of the past.
    • The ethnographers stated that the huge amount of data collected is difficult for a investigator to sythesize.  Moreover, the upcoming generations of anthropologists were more interested in studying the cultural process of the present rather than the past.

     

    One of Boas’s most important books, The Mind of Primitive Man (1911), integrated his theories concerning the history and development of cultures and established a program that would dominate American anthropology for the next fifteen years. In this study, he established that in any given population, biology, language, material, and symbolic culture, are autonomous; that each is an equally important dimension of human nature, but that no one of these dimensions is reducible to another. In other words, he established that culture does not depend on any independent variables. He emphasized that the biological, linguistic, and cultural traits of any group of people are the product of historical developments involving both cultural and non-cultural forces. He established that cultural plurality is a fundamental feature of humankind and that the specific cultural environment structures much individual behavior. Boas also presented himself as a role model for the citizen-scientist, who understand that even were the truth pursued as its own end, all knowledge has moral consequences. The Mind of Primitive Man ends with an appeal to humanism.

     

    Work on Raceism

    Boas’s work in physical anthropology brought together his interest in Darwinian evolution with his interest in migration as a cause of change. His most important research in this field was his study of changes in the body from among children of immigrants in New York. Other researchers had already noted differences in height, cranial measurements, and other physical features between Americans and people from different parts of Europe. Many used these differences to argue that there is an innate biological difference between races. Boas’s primary interest—in symbolic and material culture and in language—was the study of processes of change; he, therefore, set out to determine whether bodily forms are also subject to processes of change. Boas studied 17,821 people, divided into seven ethno-national groups. Boas found that average measures of the cranial size of immigrants were significantly different from members of these groups who were born in the United States. Moreover, he discovered that average measures of the cranial size of children born within ten years of their mothers’ arrival were significantly different from those of children born more than ten years after their mothers’ arrival. Boas did not deny that physical features such as height or cranial size were inherited; he did, however, argue that the environment has an influence on these features, which is expressed through change over time. This work was central to his influential argument that differences between races were not immutable .Boas observed:

    The head form, which has always been one of the most stable and permanent characteristics of human races, undergoes far-reaching changes due to the transfer of European races to American soil. The East European Hebrew, who has a round head, becomes more long-headed; the South Italian, who in Italy has an exceedingly long head, becomes more short-headed; so that both approach a uniform type in this country, so far as the head is concerned.

    These findings were radical at the time and continue to be debated.

    Work on Cultural Anthropology

    The essence of Boas’s approach to ethnography is found in his early essay on “The Study of Geography”. There he argued for an approach that considers every phenomenon as worthy of being studied for its own sake. Its mere existence entitles it to a full share of our attention, and the knowledge of its existence and evolution in space and time fully satisfies the student. This orientation led Boas to promote a cultural anthropology characterized by a strong commitment to Empiricism (with a resulting skepticism of attempts to formulate “scientific laws” of culture)

    A notion of culture as fluid and dynamic Ethnographic fieldwork, in which the anthropologist resides for an extended period among the people being researched, conducts research in the native language, and collaborates with native researchers, as a method of collecting data, and Cultural relativism as a methodological tool while conducting fieldwork, and as a heuristic tool while analyzing data.

    Boas argued that in order to understand “what is”—in cultural anthropology, the specific cultural traits (behaviors, beliefs, and symbols)—one had to examine them in their local context. He also understood that as people migrate from one place to another, and as the cultural context changes over time, the elements of a culture, and their meanings, will change, which led him to emphasize the importance of local histories for an analysis of cultures. Although other anthropologists at the time, such as Bronisław Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown focused on the study of societies, which they understood to be clearly bounded, Boas’s attention to history, which reveals the extent to which traits diffuse from one place to another, led him to view cultural boundaries as multiple and overlapping, and as highly permeable. Thus, Boas’s student Robert Lowie once described culture as a thing of “shreds and patches”. Boas and his students understood that as people try to make sense of their world they seek to integrate its disparate elements, with the result that different cultures could be characterized as having different configurations or patterns. But Boasians also understood that such integration was always in tensions with diffusion, and any appearance of a stable configuration is contingent.

    Cultural Relativism

    • The idea that a person’s activities or beliefs should be understood in the terms and values of their own culture, not someone else’s. 
    •  Cultural Relativism brought attention to the problem of Ethnocentrism; which is the belief that one’s own culture is more valuable or better than another.  Ethnocentrism leads us to make premature judgements about a culture and the people that are a part of that culture. 
    • Cultural relativism also led to the formation of ethnology. Ethnology is a comparison of cultures using ethnographic data, society, and culture. 
    • Ethnology is usually done when anthropologists go into, “the field”- meaning they travel to a country and live with the people there to get the best possible taste and experience of their culture. This data resulting from ethnography helps us understand other cultures and how they are similar and different to other cultures.

    Critiques of the evolutionary perspective of Comaprative Methodology 

    Franz Boas, a pioneering figure in anthropology, was known for his critiques of the evolutionary perspective in anthropology, particularly the work of scholars like Herbert Spencer and Lewis Henry Morgan. In his essay “The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology,” Boas highlighted several major criticisms against the evolutionists:

    1. Ethnocentrism: Boas argued that evolutionary theories tended to be ethnocentric, meaning they viewed Western societies as superior and placed them at the apex of a linear progression of cultural development. This perspective often led to biased interpretations of non-Western cultures and misrepresented their complexity and diversity.

    2. Cultural Relativism: Boas emphasized the importance of cultural relativism, the idea that cultures should be understood within their own contexts rather than judged against Western norms. He criticized evolutionary scholars for imposing their own cultural biases onto their interpretations of other societies, thereby distorting the understanding of those cultures.

    3. Methodological Flaws: Boas pointed out methodological flaws in the comparative method employed by evolutionists. He argued that the method often involved cherry-picking data to fit preconceived evolutionary schemes, rather than conducting unbiased empirical research. Boas advocated for more rigorous and contextually grounded ethnographic research methods.

    4. Inadequate Evidence: Boas challenged the evolutionary notion of unilinear cultural evolution, which posited a single trajectory of development from “primitive” to “civilized” societies. He argued that there was insufficient empirical evidence to support such a linear progression and that cultural development was much more complex and varied than evolutionary theories suggested.

    5. Historical Specificity: Boas emphasized the importance of historical specificity in understanding cultural phenomena. He argued against the notion of a universal human progress and instead highlighted the unique historical trajectories of different societies. This perspective undermined the universalizing tendencies of evolutionary theories.

    Overall, Boas’s criticisms of evolutionary anthropology played a significant role in shaping the discipline of anthropology, leading to the emergence of cultural relativism and a more nuanced understanding of human societies.


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