Franz Boas

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Franz Boas : biography

July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942

But Boas worked more closely with Bastian, who was noted for his antipathy to environmental determinism. Instead, he argued for the "psychic unity of mankind", a belief that all humans had the same intellectual capacity, and that all cultures were based on the same basic mental principles. Variations in custom and belief, he argued, were the products of historical accidents. This view resonated with Boas’s experiences on Baffin Island, and drew him towards anthropology.

While at the Royal Ethnological Museum Boas became interested in the Native Americans in the Pacific Northwest, and after defending his habilitation thesis, he left for a three-month trip to British Columbia via New York. In January 1887, he was offered a job as assistant editor of the journal Science. Alienated by growing antisemitism and nationalism as well as the very limited academic opportunities for a geographer in Germany, Boas decided to stay in the United States. Possibly he received additional motivation for this decision from his romance with Marie Krackowizer, whom he married in the same year.

Aside from his editorial work at Science, Boas secured an appointment as docent in anthropology at Clark University, in 1888. Boas was concerned about university president G. Stanley Hall’s interference in his research, yet in 1889 he was appointed as the head of a newly created department of anthropology at Clark University. In the early 1890s, he went on a series of expeditions which were referred to as the Morris K. Jesup Expedition. The primary goal of these expeditions was to illuminate Asiatic-American relations.Cole, Douglas 1983 "The Value of a Person Lies in His Herzensbildung": Franz Boas’s Baffin Island Letter-Diay, 1883–1884. In Observers Observed: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. George W. Stocking Jr., ed. pp. 13–52. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.Cole, Douglas. 1999/ Franz Boas: Te Early Years. 1858–1906. Seattle: University of Washington Press.

In 1892 Boas, along with another member of the Clark faculty, resigned in protest of the alleged infringement by Hall on academic freedom. He took the post of chief assistant in anthropology to F.W. Putnam at the Chicago World’s Fair. These exhibits later served as the basis for the Field (Columbian) Museum, where Boas served as the curator of anthropology and was succeeded by William H. Homes. In 1896, Boas was named the assistant curator at the American Museum of Natural History, again under Putnam.

Franz Boas and folklore

Franz Boas was an immensely influential figure throughout the development of folklore as a discipline. At first glance, it might seem that his only concern was for the discipline of anthropology—after all, he fought for most of his life to keep folklore as a part of anthropology. Yet Boas was motivated by his desire to see both anthropology and folklore become more professional and well-respected. Boas was afraid that if folklore was allowed to become its own discipline the standards for folklore scholarship would be lowered. This, combined with the scholarships of "amateurs", would lead folklore to be completely discredited, Boas believed.

In order to further professionalize folklore, Boas introduced the strict scientific methods which he learned in college to the discipline. Boas championed the use of exhaustive research, fieldwork, and strict scientific guidelines in folklore scholarship. Boas believed that a true theory could only be formed from thorough research, and that even once you had a theory it should be treated as a "work in progress" unless it could be proved beyond doubt. This rigid scientific methodology was eventually accepted as one of the major tenets of folklore scholarship, and Boas’s methods remain in use even today. Boas also nurtured many budding folklorists during his time as a professor, and some of his students are counted among the most notable minds in folklore scholarship.

Boas was passionate about the collection of folklore, and believed that the similarity of folktales amongst different folk groups was due to dissemination. Boas strove to prove this theory, and his efforts produced a method for breaking a folktale into parts and then analyzing these parts. His creation of "catch-words" allowed for categorization of these parts, and the ability to analyze them in relation to other similar tales. Boas also fought to prove that not all cultures progressed along the same path, and that, therefore, cultures unlike those of Europe were not primitive, but different.