Boas was an early proponent of using dioramas, or replicas of scenes from daily life, in museum settings. He was a leading figure in the research, development, and launch of the Museum's Northwest Coast Hall in , which was one of the first museum exhibits on the life and culture of the Indigenous people of North America. Boas continued to work at the Museum until , when he turned his professional energies toward academia.
Boas became the first professor of anthropology at Columbia University in , following three years as a lecturer in the field. He was instrumental in establishing the university's anthropology department, which became the first Ph. Boas is often referred to as the "Father of American Anthropology" because, in his role at Columbia, he trained the first generation of U.
In addition, several of his graduate students went on to establish some of the first anthropology departments in universities across the country, including programs at the University of California at Berkeley, University of Chicago, Northwestern University, and beyond.
The emergence of anthropology as an academic discipline in the U. Boas was also a key figure in the founding and development of the American Anthropological Association , which remains the primary professional organization for anthropologists in the U. Boas is well known for his theory of cultural relativism , which held that all cultures were essentially equal but simply had to be understood in their own terms.
Comparing two cultures was tantamount to comparing apples and oranges; they were fundamentally different and had to be approached as such. This marked a decisive break with the evolutionary thinking of the period, which attempted to organize cultures and cultural artifacts by an imagined level of progress. For Boas, no culture was more or less developed or advanced than any other. They were simply different. Along similar lines, Boas denounced the belief that different racial or ethnic groups were more advanced than others.
He opposed scientific racism, a dominant school of thought at that time. Scientific racism held that race was a biological, rather than cultural, concept and that racial differences could thus be attributed to underlying biology. While such ideas have since been refuted, they were very popular in the early twentieth century.
In terms of anthropology as a discipline, Boas supported what came to be known as the four-field approach. Anthropology, for him, constituted the holistic study of culture and experience, bringing together cultural anthropology, archaeology, linguistic anthropology, and physical anthropology. Franz Boas died of a stroke in at the Columbia University campus. A collection of his essays, articles, and lectures, which he had personally selected, was published posthumously under the title "Race and Democratic Society.
Actively scan device characteristics for identification. Use precise geolocation data. Select personalised content. Create a personalised content profile. He was a pioneer in the field of anthropology and continues to influence to the methods of cultural anthropology, in particular. He is celebrated for his research and teaching accomplishments, and acted as a mentor to many prominent anthropologists in the 20th century.
Among them were some of the first women to earn high achievements in the field of anthropology — cultural anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict being two notable examples. Edward Sapir was also a student of Boas, and was responsible for the earliest efforts to map Indigenous languages of the Pacific Coast of Canada. Boas was also a vocal critic of European cultural superiority — an ideology that was popular justification for imperialism in the late 19th and early 20th century.
He worked tirelessly and effectively to move the public away from a belief in scientific racism, towards a conception of cultural variation as the basis for explaining significant human difference.
When Boas left Germany in June , he embarked on a journey to Cumberland Sound to conduct geographical and ethnographic research among the Baffin Island Inuit —4. This fieldwork revealed that cultural expression is more than just a matter of geography — people form symbolic belief systems around their physical landscape.
They also reveal the development of his method of inquiry during an early stage of his professional growth as an anthropologist. His fieldwork shifted in to the Northwest Coast Aboriginal peoples. He continued to document his experience with Indigenous languages, artistic traditions, and cultural variation.
George Stocking, Jr. Franz Boas and M. Search The Canadian Encyclopedia. The Passion of Franz Boas. American Anthropologist, 2 , Retrieved June 15, , from www. Lowie, R.
Franz Boas, Anthropologist. The Scientific Monthly, 56 2 , Franz Boas The Journal of American Folklore, 57 , Perusek, D.
Grounding Cultural Relativism. Anthropological Quarterly, 80 3 , Rivet, P. Tribute to Franz Boas. International Journal of American Linguistics, 24 4 , Tax, S. Franz Boas. Intern With Us. The Reorganisation of American Anthropology Franz Boas is credited with developing the four-field approach of American anthropology: 1 Physical or biological anthropology focusses on collecting evidence to explain the biological differences and similarities of the human race.
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