Download Levi Fox Page 1 04/23/01 Franz Boas and the Genesis of Cultural

Levi Fox
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Franz Boas and the Genesis of Cultural Relativism
Anthropology, as it was most often practiced in the 19th century, was based upon
evolutionary doctrines and implicitly tied to imperial era ideas about the superiority of people of
white (especially Anglo-Saxon) descent over the rest of the worlds’ populations. Franz Boas, the
man who is almost universally hailed as the founding father of American anthropology, took
particular issue with this style of evolutionary anthropology (both for the racist notions which
underlie it and which it, in turn, helped support and on more theoretical grounds) and spent his
career attempting to develop a working alternative. In formulating this alternative Boas became
“largely responsible for developing cultural relativism,”1 a doctrine which developed around the
ideas that norms and values differed by culture and, most importantly, that because of these
differences it was impossible to judge the relative merit of these values or determine that any
particular culture was objectively better than any other. The body of thought which he and his
students formulated would both serve as the basis for an entire school of American anthropology
and have significant consequences for more general intellectual and popular notions of race,
culture, and ‘human nature.’ In addition, in explicitly rejecting the evolutionist belief in a single
developmental path which all cultures must tread (and which could thus serve as the basis for an
objective determination of the worth of any particular culture) for a theory that recognized (and
even revered) cultural difference, Boas’ relativist philosophy became an integral part of the
intellectual paradigm shift of the late 19th and early 20th centuries that challenged long standing
beliefs in absolute and objectively knowable standards of human existence.
The ideas that would become the doctrine of cultural relativism did not emerge from a
vacuum, but were the result of specific intellectual trends (and personal experiences) that shaped
1
Elvin Hatch. Culture and Morality: The Relativity of Values in Anthropology. (New York, Columbia University
Press: 1983), 38).
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Boas’ thinking on the subject. Boas received his training in late 19th century Germany during a
period when the basic assumptions of Western science were beginning to be questioned by
scholars in a wide range of intellectual fields.2 This widespread challenge, whether in the fields
of science, law, or (in the case of non-Euclidian geometry) mathematics, most often took the
form of an attack on the idea of objective, universal, and absolute truth that existed apart from
the society that upheld it. While these trends greatly influenced Boas and the course of
development of anthropology as a whole, much more personal experiences also shaped his
thinking about the nature of ‘truth.’ Raised in a liberal and intellectually open home, Boas was
(in his own words) “spared the struggle against religious dogma that besets the lives of so many
young people.”3 However, while still in school, an encounter with a theology student impressed
upon Boas the degree to which even intelligent and learned individuals often so firmly believe
“in the authority of tradition” that they deny the right to question certain things. 4 Stunned by
what he termed an “outright abandonment of freedom of thought” on the part of a fellow student,
Boas determined to “recognize the shackles that tradition has laid upon us” so as to be able to
break them.5 Thus, working in conjunction in Boas’ mind were a personal desire to challenge
established ideas and a knowledge of how some predominant (and formerly unquestioned)
theories were being attacked from seemingly all corners of academia. The only remaining
question, which was soon to be answered by his own personal intellectual development, was
exactly how Boas would participate in the intellectual paradigm shift that was going on all
around him during this period.
2
Franz Boas. A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology, 1883-1911 edited by George W.
Stocking Jr. (Chicago, University of Chicago Press: 1974), 10-11.
3
Ibid, 41
4
Ibid, 42.
5
Ibid.
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Despite Boas’ training in the physical sciences, early on in his career (following his
doctoral work on the color of water) he became interested in the subjective nature of perception.6
He proceeded to carry out anthropological fieldwork (a practice which he would come to see as
vital to the success of the brand of anthropology he preached) in an attempt to discover how
peoples subjective perceptions differed across cultures. Originally thinking that environment
was the primary determinant of such differences, Boas soon abandoned this belief in favor of a
cultural deterministic outlook that placed ‘culture’ fully in the center of his future intellectual
endeavors. The vast degree of cross-cultural difference in interpreting seemingly objective
phenomena that Boas’ encountered during his initial field experiences greatly effected his
thinking on the subject universal truths, at least with regards to human thoughts and
experiences.7 This led him to question whether any particular cultures’ ‘truths’ could be
objectively said to be more valid than those of any other culture. In determining that they could
not, Boas directly challenged prevailing notions about the moral and cultural superiority of the
West and set the stage for a new kind of anthropology that recognized cultural differences but
placed no value judgements upon them. This realization also set the stage for the rest of Boas’
work, in which he set out to challenge the still dominant school of evolutionary anthropology and
the racist doctrines that it helped support.
Boas objected to the doctrines put forth by evolutionary anthropologists on a number of
grounds, not the least of which were the consequences of adhering to such beliefs. Forged in the
midst of European imperialism and certain social-Darwinian notions of progressive evolution,
19th century anthropology drew a marked distinction between civilized (Western, rational, and, in
the minds of many, Christian) peoples and non-Western ‘primitive’ cultures. In defining these
6
7
Alan Barnard. History and Theory in Anthropology. (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press: 2000), 100.
Boas, 11.
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other cultures as inferior to the West (because they had, for whatever reason, evolved more
slowly upon the path to ‘civilization’), evolutionary anthropology helped to justify imperialism
as a “white man’s burden” while also legitimating already existing racial discrimination. But
most disturbing to Boas was the way in which this imperialism and discrimination was couched
in racially (and, it follows, biologically) deterministic terms. Throughout his career, Boas flatly
denied that there existed any inherent racial superiority on the part of whites. As evidence
against the evolutionists, he pointed to the achievements of other cultures as well as the fact that
the much-revered civilization of the West was not “the product of the genius of a single people”
but came about through a long process of cultural diffusion and change.8 However, in addition
to directly refuting the racist arguments of those who subscribed to evolutionary anthropology,
Boas also sought to alter the terms of the debate.
Over the course of his long career Boas continually rejected any and all “biological basis
for culture,” and cited the fact that language (a major component of culture) varied wholly
independently of race as evidence for his position.9 Indeed, while Boas is famous for his attacks
on racism and anti-Semitism, his opposition to these doctrines does not come on purely moral
grounds. He firmly believed that the evolutionary anthropology which buttressed these beliefs
was simply bad social science. He saw evolutionary anthropology as the product of a priori
notions of the superiority of Western civilization, which then were used to rationalize and justify
such notions by defining other cultures as inferior.10 As he stated in one of his early writings on
race, “the greater the difference between their intellectual, emotional, and moral processes and
those which are found in our civilization the harsher the judgement on the people” with which
8
Ibid, 223.
Barnard, 101.
10
Boas, 222.
9
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the West is being compared.11 Indeed, he argues that this form of anthropology starts with the
premise that Western culture is the highest form of civilization (indeed, is the best of all possible
cultures), and then proceeds to classify other cultures (and abstract their supposed level of
inferiority) by how unlike the ideal of the West they appear. Instead, Boas argued that cultures
can only be understood in their own terms (deeming, among other things, the learning of one’s
subject culture’s language to be of vital importance) and setting the stage firmly for he and his
students later work which would solidify the concept of cultural relativism and help establish it
as the dominant doctrine in American anthropology.12
In arguing for the primacy of culture as the anthropological unit of examination, Boas
was also arguing for a certain idea of what constituted a ‘culture’ and what made it distinct from
other ‘cultures.’ Following his argument that Western civilization was the product of many
cultural influences, Boas argued that cross-cultural diffusion represented an ‘outer force’ that
helped to shape the development and the particular qualities of a given culture.13 In addition,
Boas conceived of an inner force (often termed the “genius of a people”) which might have an
even greater impact and, importantly, which would determine the way in which an individual
culture took shape.14 This idea of a distinctive and unique cultural force which directed the
organization of each culture was further elaborated in the work of one of Boas’ most famous
students, Ruth Benedict. In her Patterns of Culture (written “under the guiding hand of Boas”15)
Benedict sought to demonstrate both “the diversity of cultural forms and the organic unity of
individual cultures.”16 Benedict’s work lays the cornerstone for cultural relativism as it has been
11
Ibid.
Barnard, 101.
13
Hatch, 43.
14
Ibid.
15
Barnard, 102.
16
Edward A. Purcell, Jr. The Crisis of Democratic Theory: Scientific Naturalism and the Problem of Value.
(Lexington, University Press of Kentucky: 1973), 71.
12
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widely practiced and understood in the years since for two main reasons. Firstly, in arguing that
each culture functions as a consistent and integrated whole, she explicitly lays out the idea that
each individual culture has its own internal logic that cannot be readily compared to (or judged
with regard) to any other culture. Secondly, and most importantly, in pointing out that what is
regarded as abnormal behavior in one culture is perfectly acceptable in another she there exists
no absolute standard by which one can judge the relative value of a culture. It follows that each
culture must thus be judged (and, as Boas consistently argued, can only be understood) wholly
on its own terms, an idea which serves as the basis for cultural relativism. Patterns of Culture,
by becoming a popular best seller, also served the added benefit of helping to spread the
relativist message to a mass audience for the first time.
The life’s work of Franz Boas was greatly influenced (perhaps even made possible) by
the intellectual currents of the late 19th and early 20th centuries which permitted a questioning of
established intellectual paradigms for the first time in Western history. Boas was himself
conscious of this fact, and eventually came “to see anthropology itself as an historical product”
of the Western intellectual tradition.17 However, throughout his career he stuck by his early
refusal to be shackled down by any given body of thought, but sought instead to break any and
all mental shackles that he might encounter. Indeed, Boas conceived of the anthropologist as a
kind of enlightened observer who could understand and appreciate the culture(s) around him
without ever fully accepting their cultural values as ‘true.’ While this may well be an
impossibility (indeed the culture of American anthropology, influenced by cultural relativism
and the rest of Boas’ teachings, is not without its own set of cultural truths, foremost among
these being the idea that ‘cultures’ do exist), the relativist ideas which underlie this vision have
proven to be some of the most influential in recent intellectual history. Backed up by the weight
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of “the general data of anthropology” these ideas helped to further undercut formerly prevalent
beliefs in all forms of absolute knowledge and in the existence of some form of universal ‘human
nature.’18 Moreover, the diffusion of these relativist ideas into the wider public has helped
precipitate (just as Boas wished) the marked decline in racism, anti-Semitism, and general
intolerance that has taken place in the years since Boas died. And, perhaps most tellingly of
Boas’ intellectual legacy, the doctrine of cultural relativism has continued, to this day, to form
the basis of the discipline of American anthropology which he helped found.
17
18
Boas, 23.
Quoted in Purcell, 69.