Franz Boas: a biography of this influential American anthropologist.

This researcher opposed the scientific racism that reigned until the beginning of the 20th century.

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 look at a biography of Franz Boas very summarized, as well as some of the main characteristics of his life and work.

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 revolution of 1848.

Inevitably Franz Boas developed sensitivity to both groups, while at the same time he did not subscribe strongly to either and was able to develop a critical awareness of anti-Semitism and nationalism. a critical awareness of anti-Semitism and nationalism.. He also developed a keen interest in the natural sciences from an early age, and soon after became interested in cultural history studies.

Some time after participating in the military services, Boas studied geography in Berlin, where his interest in cultural processes beyond demographics grew. In 1886 he visited Kwakiutl and other Canadian tribes, and upon his return to the United States he was editor of the journal Science. 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.

Finally, he worked as a professor at various universities in the United States and in the United States. 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 several studies analyzing non-Western cultures and societies.in New York, where he was also director and editor of the research reports of several studies analyzing non-Western cultures and societies.

Beginnings of cultural anthropology

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

In other words, he was concerned about how the knowledge that this discipline validated and disseminated was being constructed. Later on, Franz Boas specialized in geographyThis field 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 was closely related to other researchers analyzing this debate on the basis of migration processes.

For its part, anthropology was developing around an evolutionary perspective of culture. This means that the studies that were being developed justified cultural differences based on biologistic arguments that 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 affecting people and exclusionary practices affecting people whose skin is not white. From this point on, and from his interest in migratory processes, Boas studied how new environments affect migrants, and not the other way around, as some studies had been suggesting.

From cultural evolutionism to cultural relativism

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

In other words, Boas argued that the origin of cultural difference was not given by biology, which must inevitably be taken as the origin of cultural difference.This must inevitably be taken into account when analyzing the processes of racialization. From his research, Franz Boas positioned himself as one of the major representatives of the questioning of white supremacy that ran through anthropological studies.

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

Finally, Boas approached ethnography by arguing that all cultural phenomena should be considered worthy of being studied in their specificity and particularity, which led him to establish a rupture 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 for both data collection and analysis.

Legacy and outstanding works

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

Some of the most outstanding works of Franz Boas are the following books are the following books: Race, Language and Culture (Race, Language and Culture), 1940; Anthropology and Modern Life (1928); Anthropology and Modern Life (1928); The Relation of Darwin to Anthropology (published posthumously.

Bibliographical references

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