intellectuals that physical type bore an inherent relationship to cultural traits. Other books followed:Primitive Art (1927), Anthropology and Modern Life (1928), General Anthropology (1938), and Race, Language, and Culture (1940), a collection of his most important papers. During his lifetime, Boas published more than six hundred articles in both the scholarly and popular press.

Boas’ writings, museum work, and teaching contributed to the modern concept of cultural pluralism (or relativism). He moved anthropology away from its nineteenth century origin in armchair theory and speculation and toward its twentieth century development as a science, a careful recording of fact and scholarly monographs grounded in empirical history. Thus, Boas contributed to the development of functionalism. Boas discredited the theory of unilinear evolutionism, with its easy assumption of the innate superiority of Western society. He successfully argued that historical differences were significant because environmental opportunity worked diversely on a basically similar human nature.

During his long and productive career, Boas did not neglect his family. He was a strong and loving father; his letters reveal a man committed to his family’s welfare and happiness. Unfortunately, two of his six children died suddenly, and his wife was killed in an automobile accident in 1929. Despite these tragic events and a heart attack at seventy-three, Boas continued his scholarly effort. At a Columbia University Faculty Club luncheon, he died suddenly, on December 21, 1942.

Summary

In his own antiauthoritarian style, Boas created modern anthropology. He disliked authority in all of its cultural forms, which included his own scholarship. Highly critical, he was never satisfied with his work; he never accepted as permanent any single anthropological concept. His scholarly style created a “school,” but his personality did not. His life, thought, and significance in American history are of a piece.

Influenced by his freethinking family, Boas never hid his views, such as his dislike of racism and anti-Semitism, from public knowledge. While he was not prepared to accept Germany as the sole villain in World War I, Boas was one of the first of his generation of intellectuals to see the terror behind Adolf Hitler’s rise to power. Boas acted accordingly. He publicly denounced Nazism early in its reign. His scholarship, in addition to adding to human knowledge, contributed to human liberation from fear and unreasonable authority.

The spirit of liberalism and the scientific method shaped his work and personality. His belief in cultural relativism was evident not only in his scholarship but also in his kindness to others, whom he met in the academy and in the field. As a result of this attitude, Boas accepted, without judgment, people as he met them—in all of their varied ways.

Boas’ work linked him with every major methodological and theoretical doctrine in modern anthropology. Rejecting conventional wisdom, he held a theory only as long as it challenged the current dogma. In that way, he remained in the forefront of anthropological theory.

Boas was not a remote scientist, but a citizen-scholar. His study of the children of the Hebrew Orphan Asylum in New York City, for example, stressed the developmental importance of home environment and resulted in a change in the institution’s administration. The Mind of Primitive Man was a prime weapon against the intellectual assumptions of racism. With this topic, he was concerned with practical humanitarian consequences for public policy.

In brief, with his personal integrity and varied scientific accomplishments, Boas shaped the course of anthropology in the United States. His precision and scholarly certainty in anthropology were extended to his commitment to the policy consequence of the discipline. In both his life and his thought, Franz Boas made vital contributions to the development and ideals of cultural pluralism in America.

Bibliography

Boas, Franz. The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911: A Franz Boas Reader. Edited by George W. Stocking, Jr. New York: Basic Books, 1974. A brilliant introduction, it places Boas in the intellectual context of his time. Organized chronologically, these selections allow the student to follow the evolution of Boas’ scholarship.

Helm, June, ed. Pioneers of American Anthropology: The Uses of Biography. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1966. Particularly good on Boas’ fieldwork among the Native Americans of the Pacific Northwest, this is a splendid work on how he moved anthropology from an “armchair” or speculative enterprise to a science based on empirical data.

Hinsley, Curtis M., Jr. Savages and Scientists: The Smithsonian Institution and the Development of American Anthropology, 1846-1900. Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1981. This book illustrates the changing intellectual and institutional context for the study of man during Boas’ early career. In his later career, Boas came to dominate the discipline.

Kardiner, Abram, and Edward Preble. The Studied Man. Cleveland: World Publishing Co., 1961. Delightfully written, this book is possible the best introduction to modern anthropology available for the person just starting to explore the field.

Langness, L. L. The Study of Culture. San Francisco: Chandler and Sharp, Publishers, 1974. Brief and clearly written, this book is another excellent introduction. It provides a basic orientation.

Leaf, Murray J. Man, Mind, and Science: A History of Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1979. A solid academic history, this study has many merits, but it should be read after consulting some other works.

Penniman, Thomas K. A Hundred Years of Anthropology. 3d rev. ed. London: G. Duckworth, 1965. This book is a standard history, particularly strong on the British contributions to the creation of the discipline. The scope includes the related topics of imperialism and colonialism and how they shaped the early concerns of gentlemen-anthropologists—a legacy that Boas rejected.

Silverman, Sydel, ed. Totems and Teachers: Perspectives on the History of Anthropology. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981. Former students of famous anthropologists tell about their mentors. The essay on Boas is particularly thoughtful and informative because it reveals him as a private person whose ideas about citizenship and contemporary issues influenced his scholarly concerns.

Spencer, Frank, ed. A History of American Physical Anthropology: 1930-1980. New York: Academic Press, 1982. A good source for understanding how Boas changed the emphasis in anthropology from racist assumptions to a cultural focus.

Stocking, George W., Jr. Race, Culture, and Evolution: Essays in the History of Anthropology. New York: Free Press, 1968. Stocking is the leading historian of American anthropology. His collection of essays is the best intellectual history of anthropology and its place in American thought. The book is richly informative.