A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911

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University of Chicago Press, Mar 15, 1989 - Family & Relationships - 354 pages
"The Shaping of American Anthropology is a book which is outstanding in many respects. Stocking is probably the leading authority on Franz Boas; he understands Boas's contributions to American anthropology, as well as anthropology in general, very well. . . . He is, in a word, the foremost historian of anthropology in the world today. . . . The reader is both a collection of Boas's papers and a solid 23-page introduction to giving the background and basic assumptions of Boasian anthropology."—David Schneider, University of Chicago

"While Stocking has not attempted to present a person biography, nevertheless Boas's personal characteristics emerge not only in his scholarly essays, but perhaps more vividly in his personal correspondence. . . . Stocking is to be commended for collecting this material together in a most interesting and enjoyable reader."—Gustav Thaiss, American Anthropologist
 

Contents

THE BASIC ASSUMPTIONS OF BOASIAN ANTHROPOLOGY
1
THE BACKGROUND OF BOAS ANTHROPOLOGY
21
BASIC ANTHROPOLOGICAL VIEWPOINTS
57
THE PATTERN OF BOAS FIELDWORK
83
FOLKLORE AND THE CRITIQUE OF EVOLUTIONISM
129
THE ANALYTICAL STUDY OF LANGUAGE
157
THE CRITIQUE OF FORMALISM IN PHYSICAL ANTHROPOLOGY
189
RACIAL CAPACITY AND CULTURAL DETERMINISM
219
ANTHROPOLOGICAL OVERVIEWS
255
THE PROPAGATION OF ANTHROPOLOGY
283
ANTHROPOLOGY AND SOCIETY
307
BIBLIOGRAPHY
341
INDEX
349
Copyright

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About the author (1989)

Franz Boas, a German-born American anthropologist, became the most influential anthropologist of his time. He left Germany because of its antiliberal and anti-Semitic climate. As a Columbia University professor for 37 years (1899-1936), he created both the field of anthropology and the modern concept of culture. Boas played a key role in organizing the American Anthropological Association (AAA) as an umbrella organization for the emerging field. At both Columbia and the AAA, Boas encouraged the "four field" concept of anthropology; he personally contributed to physical anthropology, linguistics, archaeology, as well as cultural anthropology. His work in these fields was pioneering. Both directly and through the influence of such students as Ruth Benedict, Melville J. Herskovits, Alfred L. Kroeber, and Margaret Mead, he set the agenda for all subsequent American cultural anthropology. In His lifetime Boas had many leadership roles including: Assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History; editor of The Journal of American Folklore; president of the New York Academy of Sciences, and founder of the International Journal of American Linguistics. Boas is the author of hundreds of scientific monographs and articles. He died in 1942.

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