Diffusional anthropology

Franz Boas (1858-1942) German Physicist interested in study of colour of sea water, emigrated to USA, travelled to the Arctic ocean, was intrigued by the languages and behaviour of the Eskimos and subjective percepions of colour; became highly influential American anthropologist; worked with the Kwakiutl Indians from Northern Vancouver and the adjacent mainland of British Columbia, Canada; older than Bloomfield - the latter shared his descriptive and positivistic approach. The Mind of Primitive Man, 1911; Race, Language and Culture, 1940.

• Boas saw no basis for equating race (derived from simple physical characteristics) with culture. Language families as well as cultural forms were independent of racial classification.

• Opposed linear evolution of culture: each culture should be studied in its own terms and not in relation to others.

• Careful documentation of individual cases. Expanded scope of data thought important to the study of culture. Avoided strong theoretical statements.

• Agreed that different peoples have different conceptions of the world but ...

• Believed in cultural relativism: differences in peoples are the results of historical, social and geographic conditions and all populations have complete and equally developed culture.

• And historical particularism: each culture has a unique history and one should not assume that universal laws govern how cultures operate - there are no universal stages (thus countered the evolutionist stage theories of Lewis Morgan and Edward Tylor).

• Encouraged study of categories of sense and perception, eg. colour.

• Emphasised importance of language and linguistics for anthropology - recall that though in Europe anthropology emerged as a discipline almost a century after linguistics, American linguistics began as an offshoot of anthropology.

• Unlike Sapir-Whorf after him, Boas believed that thought influences language and that a culture could not be restricted by the form of its language.