Essay about Father Franz Boas--Father of American Anthropology

Boas emigrated from Germany to the United States believing America to be a politically ideal country; he began to study the Native Americans of the North West Coast such as the Haida, Kwakitul and the Bella Coola. The first American article Boas published dealt with concepts of language pertaining to the that of the Eskimo people who were perceived to be uncivilized in the manner of language, Boas

Ruth Benedict, Alfred Kroeber and Hortense Powdermaker all discovered anthropology through a college lecture. Benedict had become a high school English teacher, social worker, writer and poet (Mead, 7). After attending a lecture by Alexander Goldenweiser and Elsie Clews Parsons, Benedict knew that this career would keep her interested and she would enjoy it (7). Alfred Kroeber majored in English, like Benedict, but after hearing Franz Boas in a seminar on American Indian Languages he switched to studying anthropology (Steward, 4). Hortense Powdermaker was not happy with her desk­job after graduating from college so she went back for more schooling (Hortense, 293). She took a course in social anthropology and knew that was the career for her (293). All three of these anthropologists started in careers not related to anthropology but for unknown reasons had attended a lecture focusing on anthropology. The effects of attending one lecture

Recently, anthropology has not been seen in the highest of regards nor the brightest of lights, but it is still a very crucial and important science that helps us better understand different cultures and societies. When Franz Boas travelled to the far Northwest of North America in the 1880’s to study the ritual on the potlatches, he noted an ongoing conflict between the Canadian government and the Inuit people. The potlatch ceremony was an ancient ritual that displayed one’s wealth and power by giving away his possessions and throwing a big dance for those invited. The people of this region held this tradition very dear to their hearts as it included an economic, political, kinship, and religious element. However, the Canadian and American

The Peopling of the Americas is one of the most highly debated topics for anthropologists due to its significance culturally and scientifically, however many questions about these origin theories remain unsolved and further fuel the debate. In this paper I will hope to accurately summarize the main theories of this concept, and provide in-depth analysis regarding its importance.

To this day and age, Native American tribes are segregated from the rest of the community with Reserves and Preservation camps, where they can do their way of life but only to a limit of their former cultural potential.

In 2012, the average pay for archaeologists and anthropologists was $57, 420 per year. To some people, this may not seem like a very large sum of money. However, there are more things to life than just earning money. Everyone wants to have an adventure, and this is basically what archaeologists do. As stated in Old Mobile Archaeology: Dig Deeper into Archaeology, “Archaeologists are like detectives, solving riddles from the past.” Archaeologists get to see into the past, meet new people, and get to travel the world. Those are three reasons why archaeology and anthropology are amazing things to study.

Whorf and Boas each spend a considerable amount of time studying North American indigenous cultures., Their on-the-field-engagement-to-language-mastery ratio, however, varied. Although Whorf spent over two years mastering Hop language and carefully trying to extract meaning from the dissimilarities between Hopi and SAE, he never went out into the field to speak to an actual Hopi member. Boas, in his work with the Kwakiutl is a more involved ethnographer, who recognized the value of first-hand information, he believes any grasp of the language is valuable and can yield critical information about the culture when combined with other methods of collection. The morality of his methods are questionable, however. He states, “Fortunately the Indian is easily misled, by the ability of the observer to read his language, into thinking that he is also able to understand what he reads.” In this way, Boas is able to inspire the natives’ eagerness to be put on record. Boas cannot be deemed disrespectful and condescending and further reading of his texts will prove the

Darwin was a naturalist, known for his theory of evolution by means of natural selection. He was the first to bring about the idea of evolution. In order to collect his information, he sailed around the world on the Beagle. Among the places he visited were the Cape Verde Islands, Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, and the Galapagos Islands. When he was finished with his voyage, he returned home with a significant amount of information. He wrote a 770-page diary, 1,750 pages of notes, and made 5,436 sketches of skins, bones, and carcasses of organisms that

Throughout the course of American history, the usage of gangs has always been embedded in the striving desire to be rebel, such as defeating the overhanging stature of the British empire. However as the 13 colonies formed a colonial gang in an effort to eliminate British influence in America, the definition of the word gang has transformed into an entirely different meaning. One common definition of a gang is a group of three or more individuals who engage in criminal activity and identify themselves with a common name or sign.This more sinister transformation of the word gang, has become the leading sovereignty against the fight for justice. These new evil gangs have also played an integral role in American history as well with great historical mob-bosses of Al Capone, Carlo Gambino, and Albert Anastasia. These ruthless gangsters resound in history because of their despicable acts and live in utter infamy. The precedents that these grave gangsters had set for the future generations of criminals, did not fail to live up to expectations. Modern gangs now in America are sprinkled all across the borders of the United States, ranging from each state and city to national street gangs, local street gangs, prison gangs, motorcycle gangs, ethnic, and organized crime gangs. American gangs are responsible for an average of 48% of violent crime in most jurisdictions, and up to 90% in other jurisdictions. Major urban areas and their suburban surroundings experience the majority of gang

One of the most illustrating concepts for me was to know about Bourdieu’s cultural capital. In forms of capital, Jean Bourdieu defines cultural capital as habits, manners, knowledge and style of presentations that define a person’s body and mind. Thus, Bourdieu describes cultural capital as literally the unconscious part of you that guides your actions and behaviors in the world. However, Bourdieu believed that gaining cultural capital, especially, the predominating cultural capital was not easy. In other words, it takes both time and economic capital to acquire cultural capital. For that reason, Bourdieu saw cultural capital as paradoxically a symbol of both natural gift and hard work because of the amount of time and effort

Anthropological analyses always starts with a question, and, in regards to Mythology, majority of the questions are asked in retrospect. This “retrospective analysis” is a very scientific and alienating way of approaching myth- a cultural component who’s roots are planted in a deeply social and emotional practices. Years of inquiry and speculation have resulted in anthropologists coming up with numerous methodologies and practices to explain exactly how one needs to approach the study of myth thats best reveals its function. Most of the methods are broken down and explained in a series of steps, much like a lab experiment- as if the only way for anthropologists to write about cultural phenomena is to abstract themselves from myth’s present

Dating back to the Greek philosophers, the belief that all animals and plants were related had started to form. Some Greek philosophers believed in a single continuum going from perfection to less perfection. Homer believed this single continuum was like a golden chain that linked all living things together, and that all links were necessary. Although some of the Greek philosophers supported this idea, they did not think that living things could be come extinct because extinction contradicted their beliefs about God. This chain theory would later lay the framework for evolution, allowing people to grasp the idea that

I am an anthropologist. I always knew it and I always felt it; I just didn’t know what to call it. I didn’t even realize I had been raised to be one until I started self-reflecting for this paper and I realized that even as a small child I had a deep curiosity for what was, is, will be, and why. I used to pick a random spot and wonder what was there in the old days and I would often pick up a stick and start digging with the hope that I would make some magical find, and I often did. Most of the time these finds were nothing more than a few coins, rusted lids, and pull tabs from old beer cans, but every once in a while, I would find a real treasure like a bone or an arrowhead. It never really mattered what I found because

Boas paved the way doing field work as the first anthropologist to go out and do it. His beliefs were different to many of his opponents, questioning and proving erroneous many theories that were formed by them. Such as his research of skeletal anatomy in which he demonstrated how the cranial structure is malleable due to health, nitration and envirmental factors, not it being a racial trait, as believed by others in his field. Boas also believed that it is crucial for one to experience a culture for oneself in order to comprehend the culture thoroughly. It was his belief that one should gather his own information by going out into the field and gathering it, rejecting data not collected in the field. It was him whom brought forth

Boaz received much of his schooling from scholars in Germany, who like many others, were skeptical of evolutionism. Boaz became convinced that the task of an anthropologist wasn 't simply to study peoples and their culture but to also carefully and systematically collect detailed data and material on these particular cultures and only then would one be able to be cognizant of them. In the USA, this became known as cultural anthropology. It consisted of everything humans have created from society, symbolism, to materialism. It quite literally encompassed everything human and because of this reason Boas, advocated for subfields to be created in Anthropology. These fields became known as linguistics, cultural anthropology, physical or biological anthropology, and archaeology. Students were then trained in a specific field rather then the