Franz Boas, an anthropologist with a background in physics and geography , is one of the most important pieces to understand the transformations that anthropology went through in the 20th century. The thinker discovered this area when he undertook an expedition to the island of Baffin, in the far north of Canada, where he had contact with Inuit peoples, popularly called Eskimos.
Of Jewish origin, Boas migrated to the United States, where he developed a study on the natives of the United States . The experiences with cultures very different from the European one made him realize that it is necessary to establish a deep anthropological study in order not to fall into prejudice. Boas researched, wrote and taught anthropology, becoming one of the most important scholars in the field of all time.
Read also: Cultural identity – set of elements that form the culture of a people
Biography of Franz Boas
Franz Boas was born in the city of Minden, Germany, on July 9, 1858 . The son of an assimilated Jewish family, his father was a successful merchant and his mother a primary school teacher. The liberal and progressive inspiration of his family influenced the way Boas saw the world, which also influenced his work as an anthropologist.
Franz Boas, one of the greatest anthropologists of all time.
The anthropologist did not graduate from an Anthropology course. In fact, neither this course nor the Social Sciences course, a grade of which anthropology is a part, existed. Boas studied Geography at the University of Heidelberg, and defended a doctoral dissertation in Physics at the University of Kiel in 1881, at the age of just 21.
Between 1883 and 1884, the young student left on an expedition to the island of Baffin , in the far north of Canada, in order to draw a cartographic study of the place. It was at this moment that Boas had his first anthropological experience while living with the Inuit, native to the region.
Boas realized, with the daily contact with those people, that understanding their culture was a much more complex process than what the then scholars of anthropology had been theorizing. It was necessary to get in direct contact with the people, immerse themselves in their culture and, most fundamentally, learn their language. Boas also realized that these people were very different from Europeans in physical and cultural aspects, but that this did not make them inferior.
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The anti-Semitism was a problem that has raged for centuries and German Jews began to gain more space in the late nineteenth century. Motivated by this, Boas moved to the United States in 1886 . That same year, he organized an anthropological expedition to the Canadian province of British Columbia, to begin an ethnographic study of the native peoples of that region.
In 1892, Boas was hired as a professor of anthropology at Clark University in Massachusetts. In 1896, he became a curator at the American Museum of Natural History in New York. In 1899, he became a professor of anthropology at Columbia University , also in New York City, where he resided (while not traveling for work) until his death.
Franz Boas saw the human side of other peoples and showed himself to be a man ahead of his time.
His studies have come a long way since then, and he has become a reference in anthropological studies in the United States . With his research, Boas was able to highlight the errors of the theoretical current that had originated anthropology, which was social evolutionism. Evolutionism, or social Darwinism, pointed to a hierarchy of development of the human species through races, which could be measured by culture.
This line of thought claimed that white people were more developed, blacks were less developed, and indigenous and Easterners were between the two extremes in the line of intellectual and cultural development. For Boas, these works did not evidence scientific theories, as they did not use a precise method to analyze the groups in question. These were theoretical abstractions with no scientific basis and with racist pretensions.
At Columbia University, Boas founded and directed the Department of Anthropology , which had the first undergraduate and graduate courses in Anthropology in the Americas. Author of hundreds of books and articles on physical and cultural anthropology, linguistics, and ethnology, Boas is considered one of the most important names in the science that studies humanity.
He was also a professor and research advisor for important names in the social sciences, such as American anthropologist Margareth Mead, Belgian anthropologist Claude Lévi-Strauss, Brazilian social scientist Gilberto Freyre , and American anthropologist, singer, writer and filmmaker Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was a black woman, a granddaughter of slaves and became a great intellectual and artist in the first half of the 20th century.
Franz Boas passed away on December 21, 1942, at the age of 84. Still lucid, Boas taught, researched and wrote until his death.
Cultural anthropology
Certainly, Franz Boas is a reference in studies of cultural anthropology for having made a real turn in this area as a researcher. His studies influenced two great anthropologists who developed the subject in more depth, the Polish Bronislaw Malinowski and the Belgian Claude Lévi-Strauss.
Boas’ efforts in cultural anthropology were briefly three: to separate the concept of culture from the concept of race, to understand the importance of language for the formation of culture, and to promote a relativistic analysis of culture that would avoid ethnocentrism. For the anthropologist, language is one of the central points for understanding the culture of a people. It is necessary, in order to really understand the formation of a social group, to enter that group, live closely with people, observe their culture and study their language.
It is necessary to stop believing that there are higher or lower cultures based on their products, as this is much more linked to the material environmental conditions of these groups. It is also necessary to understand that race and culture have no direct connection .
The fact that Africans do not develop technologies such as the steam engine or electric powered equipment does not mean that they were inferior. The less developed technology of peoples that did not focus on Europe was due to other diverse conditions, in general, linked to the historical trajectories and the material condition of these peoples.
The Inuit peoples, studied by Boas, are mistakenly called Eskimos and inhabit northern Canada, Alaska and Greenland. [1]
Civilization concept
The concept of civilization for 19th century European anthropology was rigidly ethnocentric. Based on positivist theories , assuming a progressive air and misusing Darwin’s evolutionism , theorists like Edward Burnet Tylor, James Frazer and Herbert Spencer created a theory that considered the white European people to be civilized. The other peoples were still in a barbaric stage. In order to get a sense of the racist dimension of what was circulating in the intellectual circles of the time, even in the 19th century it was discussed (here in religious circles) whether blacks and indigenous people had a soul or not.
Franz Boas revised this understanding of civilization at the time , as well as revised the idea of culture. Civilization was not to establish what Europeans established as standards of living in society, but rather to create standards of living in society . Civility was the ability to live in community, regardless of culture and level of political organization, as long as there was an organization that allowed collective life.
See also: Alterity – recognize the existence and respect different cultures
Ethnology
Ethnology is the field of study that seeks to understand the facts based on an ethnic profile . Boas understood that ethnology should realize that everything is individuality, in the sense that each society develops in a different way. Historical routes happen accidentally.
Thus, people from different places have different histories and develop in different ways, each one being an individuality. It is impossible to find a universal law that covers all peoples in development, and it is also impossible to rank them according to their cultures .
Ethnography
Ethnography is an anthropological research method that consists of studying an ethnic group through social immersion with the people of that ethnic group – learning the language, living together, observing customs closely, analyzing the simple way of life and the moments of rituals and parties. The Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski , in fact, developed the ethnographic method as a precise study tool for anthropology in the 20th century. However, Franz Boas was the first to recognize the importance of this immersion and conversation with the natives, even in the 19th century.
