Franz Boas: cultural history for the present, or obsolete natural history?
Author: Verdon, Michel
Source: The Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, Volume 13, Number 2, June 2007 , pp. 433-451(19)
Publisher: Blackwell Publishing
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Abstract:
Recently, some neo-Boasian anthropologists have portrayed Boas as an anthropologist with a deep sense of history, of the individual, and of agency. Focusing on Boas's ethnographic practice rather than his theoretical and programmatic statements, I first find an `atomistic' (opposite of holistic) ethnographer, and a deep convergence between this atomism and Linnaean-type natural history. In Foucault and Jacob's interpretation of natural history, this means studying socio-cultural phenomena through their external manifestations, and removes historicity, and even individual cultures, from Boas's ethnography. Reviewing possible counter-evidence from the holistic Boas (his work on style, meaning, the `genius of a people,' texts, secondary explanations, and psychology), I retrieve the same natural historian, and the same atomism. All these facets of his practice thus appear as surface manifestations of this underlying épistémè, which provides a single interpretative framework making it possible to integrate most of his ethnographic work. Overall, this worldview leaves little, or no, room for individuals and their agency.Document Type: Research article
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9655.2007.00435.x
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