Download or read book Franz Boas Social Activist written by Marshall Hyatt and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1990-06-11 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered the father of modern American anthropology, Franz Boas introduced the relativistic, culture-centered methods and principles of inquiry that continue to dominate the field. This study analyzes the development of his thought and his contributions to racial and ethnic theory in the context of his own ethnicity and personal experience with persecution. The author focuses primarily on Boas's attempt to fuse science with political and social activism--an effort to insure that his ideological contributions to science had practical relevance to the difficult issues facing American society. Hyatt fills in the details of Boas's background, from his early years in Germany to his emigration to the United States in the late 1880s, and discusses his pivotal role in transforming anthropology from an amateur pursuit into a rigorous academic discipline. The author examines Boas's attacks on those who used science to promulgate theories of racial inferiority based on alleged differences in mental ability. He traces the origins of Boas's own theories and the use he made of them in working for equal rights for immigrants and African Americans. This is the first biographical study to focus on the historical meaning of Boas's contributions and the motivating forces that shaped his work. Essential for courses in race and ethnicity, sociology, the history of anthropology, 20th-century American history, American intellectual history, theories of culture, and related subjects.
Download or read book Franz Boas Social Activist written by Marshall Hyatt and published by Praeger. This book was released on 1990-06-11 with total page 200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Considered the father of modern American anthropology, Franz Boas introduced the relativistic, culture-centered methods and principles of inquiry that continue to dominate the field. This study analyzes the development of his thought and his contributions to racial and ethnic theory in the context of his own ethnicity and personal experience with persecution. The author focuses primarily on Boas's attempt to fuse science with political and social activism--an effort to insure that his ideological contributions to science had practical relevance to the difficult issues facing American society. Hyatt fills in the details of Boas's background, from his early years in Germany to his emigration to the United States in the late 1880s, and discusses his pivotal role in transforming anthropology from an amateur pursuit into a rigorous academic discipline. The author examines Boas's attacks on those who used science to promulgate theories of racial inferiority based on alleged differences in mental ability. He traces the origins of Boas's own theories and the use he made of them in working for equal rights for immigrants and African Americans. This is the first biographical study to focus on the historical meaning of Boas's contributions and the motivating forces that shaped his work. Essential for courses in race and ethnicity, sociology, the history of anthropology, 20th-century American history, American intellectual history, theories of culture, and related subjects.
Download or read book Gods of the Upper Air written by Charles King and published by Anchor. This book was released on 2020-07-14 with total page 482 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award Winner Finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award From an award-winning historian comes a dazzling history of the birth of cultural anthropology and the adventurous scientists who pioneered it—a sweeping chronicle of discovery and the fascinating origin story of our multicultural world. A century ago, everyone knew that people were fated by their race, sex, and nationality to be more or less intelligent, nurturing, or warlike. But Columbia University professor Franz Boas looked at the data and decided everyone was wrong. Racial categories, he insisted, were biological fictions. Cultures did not come in neat packages labeled "primitive" or "advanced." What counted as a family, a good meal, or even common sense was a product of history and circumstance, not of nature. In Gods of the Upper Air, a masterful narrative history of radical ideas and passionate lives, Charles King shows how these intuitions led to a fundamental reimagining of human diversity. Boas's students were some of the century's most colorful figures and unsung visionaries: Margaret Mead, the outspoken field researcher whose Coming of Age in Samoa is among the most widely read works of social science of all time; Ruth Benedict, the great love of Mead's life, whose research shaped post-Second World War Japan; Ella Deloria, the Dakota Sioux activist who preserved the traditions of Native Americans on the Great Plains; and Zora Neale Hurston, whose studies under Boas fed directly into her now classic novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. Together, they mapped civilizations from the American South to the South Pacific and from Caribbean islands to Manhattan's city streets, and unearthed an essential fact buried by centuries of prejudice: that humanity is an undivided whole. Their revolutionary findings would go on to inspire the fluid conceptions of identity we know today. Rich in drama, conflict, friendship, and love, Gods of the Upper Air is a brilliant and groundbreaking history of American progress and the opening of the modern mind.
Download or read book The Political Activism of Anthropologist Franz Boas Citizen Scientist written by Alan H. McGowan and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2024-01-22 with total page 281 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book chronicles the life and political action of Franz Boas, a ground-breaking anthropologist whose work denied the notion of racial superiority and introduced the notion of cultural relativity. In addition, he was a fierce pacifist who opposed the entry of the United States into World War I, and organized a powerful organization protecting the free speech of those accused of left-wing sympathies. He was among the first to recognize the strength of a scientist speaking out on political issues. The book will appeal to those interested in issues of race relations and free speech, and those interested in the role of science and scientists in the larger society.
Download or read book Rethinking Race written by Vernon J. WilliamsJr. and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2014-07-11 with total page 168 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thought-provoking reexamination of the history of "racial science" Vernon J. Williams argues that all current theories of race and race relations can be understood as extensions of or reactions to the theories formulated during the first half of the twentieth century. Williams explores these theories in a carefully crafted analysis of Franz Boas and his influence upon his contemporaries, especially W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, George W. Ellis, and Robert E. Park. Historians have long recognized the monumental role Franz Boas played in eviscerating the racist worldview that prevailed in the American social sciences. Williams reconsiders the standard portrait of Boas and offers a new understanding of a man who never fully escaped the racist assumptions of 19th-century anthropology but nevertheless successfully argued that African Americans could assimiliate into American society and that the chief obstacle facing them was not heredity but the prejudice of white America.
Download or read book Anthropology and Modern Life written by Franz Boas and published by Read Books Ltd. This book was released on 2015-05-06 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This early work by Franz Boas was originally published in 1928 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'Anthropology and Modern Life' is a work on the study of humans and their lives in various societies. Franz Boas was born on July 9th 1958, in Minden, Westphalia. Even though Boas had a passion the natural sciences, he enrolled at the University at Kiel as an undergraduate in Physics. Boas completed his degree with a dissertation on the optical properties of water, before continuing his studies and receiving his doctorate in 1881. Boas became a professor of Anthropology at Columbia University in 1899 and founded the first Ph.D program in anthropology in America. He was also a leading figure in the creation of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Franz Boas had a long career and a great impact on many areas of study. He died on 21st December 1942.
Download or read book The Races of Mankind written by Ruth Benedict and published by . This book was released on 2020-04-20 with total page 36 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 2020 Reprint of the 1943 Edition. Full facsimile of the original edition and not reproduced with Optical Recognition software. Published on October 25, 1943, The Races of Mankind makes the argument that all the world's humans are biologically the same. Written by anthropologists Ruth Benedict and Gene Weltfish and illustrated by Ad Reinhardt, The Races of Mankind attacked Nazi party racial policies and urged mankind to see past superficial differences and live in harmony. The pamphlet was a publication of The Public Affairs Committee, a non-profit educational organization whose purpose was "to make available in summary and inexpensive form the results of research on economic and social problems to aid in the understanding and development of American policy" (Benedict and Weltfish, 1943). The idea of scientific racial equality, however, was not met with universal agreement. When the U.S. Army ordered 55,000 copies, members of Congress labeled the pamphlet "communistic" and its use by the Army was banned. Still, the scientific pamphlet's popularity grew, and by 1945 three-quarters of a million copies were in circulation (Abraham, 2012).
Download or read book Rethinking Race written by Vernon J. WilliamsJr. and published by University Press of Kentucky. This book was released on 2021-12-14 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this thought-provoking reexamination of the history of "racial science" Vernon J. Williams argues that all current theories of race and race relations can be understood as extensions of or reactions to the theories formulated during the first half of the twentieth century. Williams explores these theories in a carefully crafted analysis of Franz Boas and his influence upon his contemporaries, especially W.E.B. DuBois, Booker T. Washington, George W. Ellis, and Robert E. Park. Historians have long recognized the monumental role Franz Boas played in eviscerating the racist worldview that prevailed in the American social sciences. Williams reconsiders the standard portrait of Boas and offers a new understanding of a man who never fully escaped the racist assumptions of 19th-century anthropology but nevertheless successfully argued that African Americans could assimiliate into American society and that the chief obstacle facing them was not heredity but the prejudice of white America.
Download or read book An Analysis of Franz Boas s Race Language and Culture written by Anna Seiferle-Valencia and published by CRC Press. This book was released on 2017-07-05 with total page 120 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Franz Boas’s 1940 Race, Language and Culture is a monumentally important text in the history of its discipline, collecting the articles and essays that helped make Boas known as the ‘father of American anthropology.’ An encapsulation of a career dedicated to fighting against the false theories of so-called ‘scientific racism’ that abounded in the first half of the 20th-century, Race, Language and Culture is one of the most historically significant texts in its field – and central to its arguments and impact are Boas’s formidable interpretative skills. It could be said, indeed, that Race, Language and Culture is all about the centrality of interpretation in questioning our assumptions about the world. In critical thinking, interpretation is the ability to clarify and posit definitions for the terms and ideas that make up an argument. Boas’s work demonstrates the importance of another vital element: context. For Boas, who argued passionately for ‘cultural relativism,’ it was vital to interpret individual cultures by their own standards and context – not by ours. Only through comparing and contrasting the two can we reach, he suggested, a better understanding of humankind. Though our own questions might be smaller, it is always worth considering the crucial element Boas brought to interpretation: how does context change definition?
Download or read book Color in the Classroom written by Zoe Burkholder and published by OUP USA. This book was released on 2011-10-05 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Between the turn of the twentieth century and the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954, the way that American schools taught about "race" changed dramatically. This transformation was engineered by the nation's most prominent anthropologists, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead, during World War II. Inspired by scientific racism in Nazi Germany, these activist scholars decided that the best way to fight racial prejudice was to teach what they saw as the truth about race in the institution that had the power to do the most good-American schools. Anthropologists created lesson plans, lectures, courses, and pamphlets designed to revise what they called "the 'race' concept" in American education. They believed that if teachers presented race in scientific and egalitarian terms, conveying human diversity as learned habits of culture rather than innate characteristics, American citizens would become less racist. Although nearly forgotten today, this educational reform movement represents an important component of early civil rights activism that emerged alongside the domestic and global tensions of wartime.Drawing on hundreds of first-hand accounts written by teachers nationwide, Zoe Burkholder traces the influence of this anthropological activism on the way that teachers understood, spoke, and taught about race. She explains how and why teachers readily understood certain theoretical concepts, such as the division of race into three main categories, while they struggled to make sense of more complex models of cultural diversity and structural inequality. As they translated theories into practice, teachers crafted an educational discourse on race that differed significantly from the definition of race produced by scientists at mid-century.Schoolteachers and their approach to race were put into the spotlight with the Brown v. Board of Education case, but the belief that racially integrated schools would eradicate racism in the next generation and eliminate the need for discussion of racial inequality long predated this. Discussions of race in the classroom were silenced during the early Cold War until a new generation of antiracist, "multicultural" educators emerged in the 1970s.
Download or read book The Franz Boas Papers Volume 1 written by Franz Boas and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2015-08-01 with total page 408 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The introductory volume to the Franz Boas Papers: Documentary Edition, which examines Boas' stature as public intellectual in three crucial dimensions: theory, ethnography and activism"--
Download or read book Indigenous Visions written by Ned Blackhawk and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2018-01-01 with total page 416 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A compelling study that charts the influence of Indigenous thinkers on Franz Boas, the father of American anthropology
Download or read book Franz Boas written by Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2022-12 with total page 644 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the magisterial biography of Franz Boas and his influence in shaping not only anthropology but also the sciences, humanities, and social science, the visual and performing arts, and America's public sphere during a period of global upheaval and social struggle.
Download or read book Threatening Anthropology written by David H. Price and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-20 with total page 454 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DIVAn archival history of governmental investigations of anthropologists in the 1950s, based on over 20,000 pages of documents obtained by the author under the Freedom of Information Act./div
Download or read book Melville J Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge written by Jerry Gershenhorn and published by U of Nebraska Press. This book was released on 2004-01-01 with total page 386 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledgeis the first full-scale biography of the trailblazing anthropologist of African and African American cultures. Born into a world of racial hierarchy, Melville J. Herskovits (1895?1963) employed physical anthropology and ethnography to undermine racist and hierarchical ways of thinking about humanity and to underscore the value of cultural diversity. His research in West Africa, the West Indies, and South America documented the far-reaching influence of African cultures in the Americas. He founded the first major interdisciplinary American program in African studies in 1948 at Northwestern University, and his controversial classicThe Myth of the Negro Pastdelineated African cultural influences on American blacks and showcased the vibrancy of African American culture. He also helped forge the concept of cultural relativism, particularly in his bookMan and His Works. While Herskovits promoted African and African American studies, he criticized some activist black scholars, most notably Carter G. Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois, whom he considered propagandists because of their social reform orientation. ø After World War II, Herskovits became an outspoken public figure, advocating African independence and attacking American policymakers who treated Africa as an object of Cold War strategy. Drawing extensively on Herskovits?s private papers and published works, Jerry Gershenhorn?s biography recognizes Herskovits?s many contributions and discusses the complex consequences of his conclusions, methodologies, and relations with African American scholars.
Download or read book The Franz Boas Papers 1894 1913 written by Franz Boas and published by . This book was released on 2015 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Franz Boas Papers, Volume 2 explores the development of the ethnography of Salishan-speaking societies on the North American Plateau through the correspondence between Franz Boas and the Scottish-born James Teit, who married into an Interior Salish family and community and became fluent in the Nlaka'pamux language. The letters between Teit (1864-1922) and Boas (1858-1942) chronicle Teit's varied career as an ethnographer, from shortly after his initial meeting with Boas in 1894 until Teit's death at the age of fifty-eight. A postscript documents Boas' contribution to Teit's legacy through the posthumous publication of the manuscripts Teit left unfinished at his death...[this publication] meticulously tracks the impact of the different career trajectories of Teit and Boas on the primary product of their collaboration -- the initial development of the ethnography of societies speaking Interior Salish languages." -- Dust jacket
Download or read book Constructing Race written by Tracy Teslow and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2014-07-21 with total page 415 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book explores how physical anthropologists struggled to understand variation in bodies and cultures in the twentieth century, how they represented race to professional and lay publics, and how their efforts contributed to an American formulation of race that has remained rooted in both bodies and cultures, as well as heredity and society.
