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Franz Uri Boas [a] (July 9, 1858 – December 21, 1942) was a German-American anthropologist and ethnomusicologist. [22] He was a pioneer of modern anthropology who has been called the "Father of American Anthropology".
Another important aspect of Boasian anthropology was its perspective of cultural relativism which assumes that a culture can only be understood by first understanding its own standards and values, rather than assuming that the values and standards of the anthropologist's society, can be used to judge other cultures. In this way Boasian ...
Cultural relativism is the view that concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] It asserts the equal validity of all points of view and the relative nature of truth, which is determined by an individual or their culture.
Historical particularism (coined by Marvin Harris in 1968) [1] is widely considered the first American anthropological school of thought.. Closely associated with Franz Boas and the Boasian approach to anthropology, historical particularism rejected the cultural evolutionary model that had dominated anthropology until Boas.
Cultural relativism is a principle that was established as axiomatic in anthropological research by Franz Boas and later popularized by his students. Boas first articulated the idea in 1887: "...civilization is not something absolute, but ... is relative, and ... our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as our civilization goes."
For Boas, the four-field approach was motivated by his holistic approach to the study of human behavior, which included integrated analytical attention to culture history, material culture, anatomy and population history, customs and social organization, folklore, grammar and language use.
The Mind of Primitive Man is a 1911 book by anthropologist Franz Boas which takes a critical look at the concept of primitive culture. [1] The work challenged widely held racist and eugenic claims about race and intelligence, particularly white supremacy.
The idea of cultural emphasis is rooted form the work of Franz Boas, who is considered to be one of the founders of American Anthropology. [2] Franz Boas developed and taught concepts such as cultural relativism and the "cultural unconscious", which allowed anthropologists who studied under him, like Edward Sapir and Ruth Benedict, to further study and develop ideas on language and culture.