Franz Boas

Franz Boas (July 9, 1858 – December 22, 1942) was one of the pioneers of modern anthropology and is often called the "Father of American Anthropology". Like many such pioneers, he trained in other disciplines; he received his doctorate in physics, and did post-doctoral work in geography.

Influence and students

Between 1901 and 1911, Columbia University produced only 7 PhD.s in anthropology. Although by today's standards this is a very small number, at the time it was sufficient to establish Boas's Anthropology Department at Columbia as the preeminant anthropology program in the country. Moreover, many of Boas's students went on to establish anthropology programs at other major universities.

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Boas's first doctoral student was Alfred L. Kroeber (1901), who, along with fellow Boas student Robert Lowie (1908), started the anthropology program at the University of California at Berkeley. He also trained William Jones (1904), one of the first Native American Indian anthropologists (the Fox nation) who was killed while conducting research in the Philippines in 1909, and Albert B. Lewis (1907). Boas also trained a number of other students who were influential in the development of academic anthropology: Frank Speck (1908) who trained with Boas but received his PhD. from the University of Pennsylvania and immediately proceeded to found the anthropology department there; Edward Sapir (1909) and Fay-Cooper Cole (1914) who developed the anthropology program at the University of Chicago; Alexander Goldenweiser (1910), who, with Elsie Clews Parsons (who received her doctorate in sociology from Columbia in 1899, but then studied ethnology with Boas), started the anthropology program at the New School for Social Research; Leslie Spier (1920) who started the anthropology program at the University of Washington, and Melville Herskovits (1923) who started the anthropology program at Northwestern University. He also trained John Reed Swanton (who studied with Boas at Columbia for two years before receiving his doctorate from Harvard in 1900), Paul Radin (1911), Ruth Benedict (1923), Gladys Reichard (1925) who had begun teaching at Barnard College in 1921 and was later promoted to the rank of professor, Ruth Bunzel (1929), Alexander Lesser (1929), Margaret Mead (1929), and Gene Weltfish (who defended her dissertation in 1929, although she did not officially graduate until 1950 when Columbia reduced the expenses required to graduate).

Related Topics:
Alfred L. Kroeber - Robert Lowie - University of California at Berkeley - The Fox nation - Frank Speck - University of Pennsylvania - Edward Sapir - Fay-Cooper Cole - University of Chicago - Alexander Goldenweiser - Elsie Clews Parsons - New School for Social Research - Leslie Spier - Melville Herskovits - Northwestern University - John Reed Swanton - Paul Radin - Ruth Benedict - Gladys Reichard - Barnard College - Ruth Bunzel - Alexander Lesser - Margaret Mead - Gene Weltfish

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His students at Columbia also included Mexican anthropologist Manuel Gamio, who earned his MA after studying with Boas from 1909-1911, and became the founding director of Mexico's Bureau of Anthropology in 1917; Esther Goldfrank, who travelled with Boas to New Mexico in 1919 to conduct research among the Pueblo Indians; Gilberto Freye, who shaped the concept of "racial democracy" in Brazil; and anthropologist, folklorist and novelist Zora Neale Hurston, who graduated from Barnard College, the women's college associated with Columbia, in 1928.

Related Topics:
Mexican - Manuel Gamio - Esther Goldfrank - Gilberto Freye - Zora Neale Hurston - Barnard College - 1928

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He was also an influence on Claude Lévi-Strauss, whom he met during the latter's stay in New York in the 1940s.

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Several of Boas's students went on to serve as editors of the American Anthropological Association's flagship journal, American Anthropologist: John R. Swanton (1911, 1921-1923), Robert Lowie (1924-1933), Leslie Spier (1934-1938), and Melville Herskovits (1950-1952). Edward Sapir's student John Alden Mason was editor from 1945-1949, and Alfred Kroeber and Robert Lowie's student, Walter Goldschmidt, was editor from 1956-1959.

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Most of Boas's students shared his concern for careful, historical reconstruction, and his antipathy towards speculative, evolutionary models. Moreover, Boas encouraged his students, by example, to criticize themselves as much as others. For example, Boas originally defended the cephalic index (systematic variations in head form) as a method for describing hereditary traits, but came to reject his earlier research after further study; he similarly came to criticize his own early work in Kwakiutl (Pacific Northwest) language and mythology.

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Encouraged by this drive to self-criticism, as well as the Boasian commitment to learn from one's informants and to let the findings of one's research shape one's agenda, Boas's students quickly diverged from his own research agenda. Several of his students soon attempted to develop theories of the grand sort that Boas typically rejected. Kroeber called his colleagues' attention to Sigmund Freud and the potential of a union between cultural anthropology and psychoanalysis. Ruth Benedict developed theories of "culture and personality" and "national cultures", and Kroeber's student, Julian Steward developed theories of "cultural ecology" and "multilineal evolution."

Related Topics:
Sigmund Freud - Psychoanalysis - Ruth Benedict - Julian Steward

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Nevertheless, Boas has had an enduring influence on anthropology. Virtually all anthropologists today accept Boas's commitment to empiricism and his methodological cultural relativism. Moreover, virtually all cultural anthropologists today share Boas's commitment to field research involving extended residence, learning the local language, and developing social relationships with informants. Finally, anthropologists continue to honor his critique of racial ideologies. In his 1963 book, Race: The History of an Idea in America, Thomas Gossett wrote that "It is possible that Boas did more to combat race prejudice than any other person in history."

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