Franz Boas: biography of this influential American anthropologist

Franz Boas (1958-1942) is known as the father of American anthropology. He has also been considered one of the four fathers of anthropology, for having laid the foundations of one of its branches: cultural anthropology.

In this article we will see a biography of Franz Boas very summarized, as well as some of the main characteristics of his life and work.

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Biography of Franz Boas: life and work of this anthropologist

Franz Boas was born on July 9, 1858 in Minden, Germany. His grandparents were Jewish and his parents had assimilated some of the German values ​​of the Enlightenment era, as well as liberal ideas from the 1848 revolution.

Inevitably Franz Boas developed sensitivity towards both groups, while he did not subscribe strongly to either and was able to develop a critical awareness towards anti-Semitism and nationalism. Likewise, from a very young age, he developed a great interest in the natural sciences, and shortly after he became interested in studies in cultural history.

Some time after having participated in the military services, Boas studied geography in Berlin, where he grew interested in cultural processes beyond demographic ones. In 1886 he visited Kwakiutl and other Canadian tribes, and upon his return to the United States he was editor of the magazine Ciencia. Later he collaborated in the preparations for the anthropological exhibitions of 1893 at the National Museum of History in Chicago, where he exhibited part of his work.

He finally worked as a professor at different universities in the United States and as curator of anthropology at the American Museum of Natural History, in New York, where he was also director and editor of the research reports of different studies that analyzed non-Western cultures and societies.

Beginnings of cultural anthropology

Like many of the pioneers of anthropology, Franz Boas began his training in mathematics, physics, which he complemented through different studies that finally allowed him to develop his main works. For example, he received training in philosophy, where he was especially interested in Kant's thought. From there he came to psychophysics and soon became interested in addressing some problems in the epistemology of physics.

In other words, he was concerned about how the knowledge that said discipline validated and disseminated was being constructed. Subsequently, Franz Boas specialized in geography, a field that allowed him to explore the relationships between subjective experiences and the material conditions of the world. In this context there was an important debate about whether the determining factors were physical or cultural, and Boas interacted closely with other researchers who analyze this debate based on the processes of migration.

For its part, anthropology was developing around an evolutionary perspective on culture. This means that the studies that were developed justified cultural differences based on arguments biologicists who said that some human “races” have greater or better capacities to adapt, or not, to certain contexts.

In general and in that historical context, These arguments supported racist and exclusionary practices that affect people whose skin is not white. From here and from his interest in migratory processes, Boas studied how the new environments affect migrants, and no longer the other way around, as had been suggested by some studies.

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From cultural evolutionism to cultural relativism

One of Franz Boas's main contributions to modern anthropology was the shift towards a relativist perspective on culture. What he broadly proposed was that cultural differences are mediated by culture, and not so much by biology, as he had been maintaining in the evolutionary approach.

In other words, Boas argued that the origin of cultural difference was not given by biology, which inevitably must be taken into account to analyze the processes of racialization. Based on his research, Franz Boas positioned himself as one of the greatest representatives of the questioning of white supremacy that permeated the anthropologist's studies.

This was one of the origins of cultural anthropology, I understand that culture is the local context where action occurs human being, which was added to the other three branches of anthropology that were already developing: linguistics, physics and archeology.

Finally, Boas approached ethnography maintaining that all cultural phenomena had to be considered as worthy of being studied in their specificity and particularity, which led him to establish a break with the cultural laws that science formulated. He developed a preference for empiricist practices, and was eventually able to develop cultural relativism as an important methodological and theoretical tool, which served both for the collection and analysis of data.

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Legacy and notable works

Franz Boas taught in Massachusetts and Chicago and founded the American Anthropological Association, as well as the journal of American Anthropology, since 1898.

Some of the most notable works of Franz Boas They are the following books: Race, Language and Culture (race, language and culture), 1940; Anthropology and Modern Life (Anthropology and modern life) from 1928; The Relation of Darwin to Anthropology (The relationship between Darwin and anthropology), a text published posthumously.

Bibliographic references

• New World Encyclopedia. (2017). Franz Boas. Retrieved June 18, 2018. Available in http://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Franz_Boas.
• Tax, S. (2018). Franz Boas. German-american anthropologist. Encyclopedia Britannica. Retrieved June 18, 2018. Available in https://www.britannica.com/biography/Franz-Boas.