"Finding the discipline to be largely an amateur enterprise upon his arrival in the US in 1887, Boas set to work to infuse rigorous scholarship and precise methodology into the study of man."(Marshall Hyatt, 1979)
Boas went on his first scientific expedition in 1883-1884 to the Baffin Island. This began his life-long interest in human cultures. In 1886, on his way back from a visit to the Kwakiutl and other tribes of British Columbia, he stopped in New York City and decided to stay. He worked as an editor of the magazine Science. He eventually taught at Clark University and then Columbia University. From 1896 to 1905 he was also curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York.
Throughout his career, he worked closely with the Indians of the American Northwest Coast including important studies of folklore and art into the field of anthropology. He was perhaps the most important source of ethnological information about the Indians of the NW Coast. He recorded volumes of data, especially from the Kwakuitl between the years 1880 and 1920. (In this photo, circa 1900(?), he is shown posing for a model which was being made of a Kwakuitl Winter Ceremonial dancer but in it the dancer emerges from within a circular hole cut in the dancing screen.)
He became a leading figure in the study of linguistics. (He concluded that while all languages had strict rules of grammar, they could not comparitively called "complex" or "primitive.") As previously stated, Boas was uncomfortable with applying generalizations to human culture. Not many anthropologists in Boas' time believed that the races of mankind show equally the human capacity to develop cultural forms. It is largely because of Boas that "the proposition is now universally accepted that every surviving population large enough to have a distribution of individual differences shows equally the human capacity to develop cultural forms", and that differences in outcome are attributed by anthropologists to historic, "cultural" rather than genetic factors. Humans, if they are different from one another, are not different because they are composed of different species. Their differences must be because of unique environment and history.
"If we find differences among them <human beings of one descent group who have different characteristics> they can only be due to environment. Thus, the fundamental problem presents itself, In how far are human types stable, in how far variable under the influences of the environment."(Boas, 1929)
"Evolutionary" anthropologists believed that some peoples have achieved "higher" states of culture, leaving behind--at least temporarily--other peoples. They stated that the differences between and "primitive" and "civilized" peoples are the result of environmental, cultural, and historical circumstances. "Cultural relativists"--like Boas-- argued that that view comes from the human desire to label and characterize other groups, particularly as "inferior." The "cultural relativists" believed that all surviving human groups were "different but equal." Furthermore, laws of cultural causation, Boas argued, had to be discovered rather than assumed. General laws, so clearly present in the natural sciences, could not successfully be applied to cultures--cultures were too complex. Boas's view required that all factors that might have influenced a people's history. An anthropologist must have an understanding of biology, unique environment, migrations, nutrition, disease and contact (or lack of contact) between cultures. Boas felt that anthropologists should first concentrate on learning about the history of the development of particular societies, such as the Kwakiutl, and other Native American Indain societies, before attempting to theorize about the process of cultural change and evolution. Boas saw culutres as "symbolic systems of ideas" rather than as "entities adapting to enviroment."(When boas studied the Kwakiutl Indians, he became one of the first anthropologists to study a culture using its own language.)
Cultural Relativity--The view that all aspects of one particular culture must be understood if any understanding of that culture is to be reached. "Explanation" and "Understanding" are not viewed as "must-haves": they become possibilities.
These profound ideas gave direction to the Science of Archaeology. No longer was there an "agenda" to fulfill. No longer was there justification to falsify data to "prove" the superiority of one race over another. The goal of archaeology was not to provide an explanation, but to add to the understanding of a culture and the concept of culture in general.
"<After research was completed> It appeared that a direct relation between physical and mental endowment does not exist. After thus clearing away racial prejudice, the most formidable obstacle to a clear understanding of a problem, we turned to an investigation of the question whether human types are stable..." (Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man,1929)
It was said that Boas was "a man who created a discipline and sought to make his society just." He was repulsed by the mistreatment of blacks in America, and used his findings to defend them. He is often called "the Father of American Anthropology."
Please send comments, gripes, exaltations, etc. to a.airaudi@mail.utexas.edu.