Dialectical Anthropology, 19: 237-253, 1994

© 1994 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

CRITICAL IMPLICATIONS OF FRANZ BOAS' THEORY AND

METHODOLOGY

Janine Hitchens

Janine Hitchens, an Independent Anthropologist, is involved in Health Care Reform,

Social Services Department, Beth Israel Medical Center, New York City.

The Grand Scheme of unilinear evolution as it was developed in the nineteenth

century, placing Western European and American civilization at the pinnacle
of humanity, was vigorously attacked by the Boasian school, and the theory of
cultural relativism was forged in the heat of many long theoretical battles in the
discipline. Simultaneously, the Boas school attacked the fundamental tenets of
white supremacy by showing with solid empirical studies that race, language
and culture were not coextensive entities and that there was no innate racial
inheritance guaranteeing the white man's natural right (or duty) to rule.

The attack on race prejudice and ethnocentrism, however, never led to an all-
out attack on exploitation of subject peoples, to an interest in the modes or
oppression and their cultural consequences, or even to scholarly
acknowledgement of the fact of exploitation. In fact, the Boas school never
showed any real interest in studying the situation of conquest and exploitation
as such. 1

The legacy of Franz Boas is controversial, as Mina Davis

Caulfield's statement suggests. Although his humanist sympathies often
led him to offer his f'mdings in the service of social justice, he did not
fully develop the critical potential of historical particularism. In this
essay I will review the theoretical and epistemological underpinnings
of Boas' anthropology and discuss the ways in which certain
theoretical and methodological characteristics of historical
particularism remain relevant to a revitalized critical anthropological
approach. Lastly, I offer suggestions as to how historical particularism
can be modified in order that its potential as a means for social critique
can be made more effective.
In the context of the post-World War I resurgence of the Ku Klux
Klan, Boas wrote an,article in 1921 disparaging the validity of IQ tests
as indices of racially-determined intelligence, on the grounds that they
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were culturally biased.2 In his study on Hebrew orphans, he compared

IQ test scores and anthropometric measurements of institution-bound
children with those of children in foster care. He found a correlation
between emotional deprivation and decreased rates of mental and
physical growth. 3 In turn, these findings spurred child welfare
reform. 4 As early as 1904, Boas had begun to publish articles citing
cultural achievements of African peoples in such ancient kingdoms as
Songhai and Ghana as evidence that African-Americans could prosper
if given equal rights and opportunity. 5 In "The Anthropological
Position of the Negro" (1907), he posited that the discrepancy between
black achievement in African societies and in American society was
due to adverse social conditions and the lasting impact of slavery. 6
Written during the Jim Crow era and shortly prior to his support of the
civil rights leaders who founded the NAACP in 1909, 7 such works
were progressive. Thus, Boas frequently undertook studies which had
broad social and policy implications.
To test the morphological premises of racial hierarchies then
advocated by many evolutionists, Boas pursued statistical evidence
avidly--based on anthropometric comparisons of osseous, muscular
and brain weight data. The following serves as a prime example:

The alveolar arch (of the Negro) is pushed forward, and thus gains an
appearance which reminds us of the higher apes... The same may be said of
the broadness and flatness of the noses of the negro a n d . . , the Mongol.8

Yet, he goes on to show, for every piece of evidence of this kind

employed to demonstrate the inferiority of non-white peoples, other
empirical data confounds such inference:

The European and the Mongol have the largest brains.., on the other hand the
European shares lower characteristicswith the Australian,both retaining in the
strongest degree the hairinessof the animal ancestor... 9

This comparison pits data conceming apparently greater prognathism

among blacks against data asserting apparently greater hairiness among
whites. It is an apt illustration of what Arnold Krupat would take to be
the use of irony by Boas,l~ this instance to subvert the credibility of
assertions of the biological backwardness of non-whites on the basis of
physical indicators of race. One might suspect that the purpose of data
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juxtaposed in such a manner is to poke fun at the morphological debate

in such a manner as to expose its absurdity.
Insofar as he understood the use to which such a credibly presented
"science" of man--one informed with an accurate historical
sensibility---could be put in presenting his often politically charged
views, he understood (at least tacitly) how to communicate with the
audience of his era. William Willis echoes this point, "Boas prescribed
many solutions to social problems in the white world. Since he posed as
a neutral scientist, these prescriptions are masked in his scholarly
publications beneath an apolitical surface." 11 Though Boas was probably
not wholly self-conscious of this, it may be that such a "pose" was the
most politic, and hence effective, stance from which an immigrant
Jewish intellectual could mount a challenge to the views of entrenched
WASP elites in the American scholarly community. Marshall Hyatt has
instructively chronicled Boas' struggle against the xenophobic attitudes
of numerous prominent scholars from whom he had often to solicit
research funding and support in securing positions and publications of
his work, especially during his early career. 12
Using stringently obtained data, his opposition to the theory of genetic
determinism continues throughout Race, Language and Culture. He
touches upon the roles that class and economic well-being play in the
degree of access to a nutritious diet, medical care and adequate sanitary
conditions. Such access, or lack thereof, was found to affect skin, stature,
brain weight and physical stamina. 13 Boas mentions also how the
displacement by white settlers of Native American Indian tribes from
ancestral grounds to new climatic settings was disruptive of habitual
customs which had preserved original physical types.
It is striking that revelations of this kind--found to effect the stability
of racial traits--never prompted Boas to study per se the effects of
class,wealth, and displacement of peoples or near genocide upon the
physical and psychological welfare of culture groups, nor even to
suggest the undertaking of research along such lines. He mentions that
the goods produced by the tribal trader, slowly handcrafted, cannot
compete with the manufactured goods of industrial Europe. Differences
in speed and volume of production are vast, with the result that "the
industries of the primitive people of our times are exterminated by the
cheapness and large quantity of the products imported by the White
trader." 14 He locates the cause of this development in the fact that the
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trading parties are no longer operating on a par, as tribal peoples had

when trading among themselves. Clearly, Boas appears aware of the role
of economic dynamics in generating inequality in such cases, although
he does not pursue a critique of neocolonial penetration and its
ethnocidal ramifications. Yet it is for just such a critical enterprise that
historical particularism is aptly suited.
Preferring instead to concentrate on what is now called salvage
ethnography, Boas stops short of studying the process and consequence
of economic and cultural disruption. Similarly, while he devotes much
time to documenting the equal capacities of people of color, he does so
primarily to demonstrate their ability to be socialized into the white
mainstream and as proof of their eligibility to rights within the dominant
culture. 15 He does not probe the condition of the African-American who
has been dispossessed of his o w n cultural heritage. George Stocking
attributes such deficiencies to "what would seem to be a certain fatalistic
attitude toward technologically based historical processes" 16 vis-a-vis
"the overpowering technologically primitive cultures" by Western
European nations in the course of culture contact. 17 If, as Stocking
maintains, Boas' pessimistic belief in the inevitability of hegemony of
industrializing Western nations over often rapidly disintegrating
indigenous cultures in part accounts for his foci on salvage ethnography
on the one hand, and immigrant acculturation studies on the other, it
reveals a limitation to Boas' thinking which does not necessarily imply
a limitation on the historical particularist approach.
Boas, Stocking has emphatically argued, must be understood in
historical context as a man who, while to some degree bound by a
nineteenth century faith in the progress of human rationality, to which
technological development appeared coupled, expressed his alienation
from modern American life in various ways. 18 Having experienced the
anti-Semitism and xenophobia of a number of his colleagues, he took up
the cause of combatting bigotry and intolerance toward minorities and
agitated to insure the civil rights of others, consonant with early
twentieth century American egalitarian rhetoric. He rose, in 1923, to the
courtroom defense of Armenians who were not legally entitled to own
land due to their purportedly Mongoloid brachycephaly. Arguing that
allegedly immutable physical characteristics of a given race could be
impacted upon by cultural practices, he used data comparing the head
measurements of immigrant and U.S.-born Armenians to fight the case.
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His data demonstrated that Armenians who had immigrated to the U.S.
had the characteristic lack of the occiputal protrusion, while their U.S.-
born offspring exhibited it. Herskovits describes the significance of these
findings.

In Armenia, children are placed on a cradleboard, on which, after a manner of

much of Eastern Europe, they lie on theirbacks, tightlyswaddled. Being unable
to toss about the weight of the head suppresses the developmentof the occiput;
but this genetic trait at once asserts itself in Armenians of American birth who
are permitted the free movement that allows unrestricted development of the
tender bony structure of the head. The case was dismissed.19

Thus, despite Caulfield's criticism of Boas in the epigraph, he is

commendable for the subject matters he often chose to investigate and
for the causes to which he lent his scientific credibility and prestige.
Boas further expressed his own marginality, as Stocking points out,
through his elaboration of the pluralistic concept of culture. With it, he
strove to assert the integrity of the diverse value systems of non-white
people both for their own sakes and in order to provide anthropology
with the "basis for systematic criticism of the particularistic cultural
assumptions and pseudo-scientific universals that still pervaded 'modern
civilization. '''2~ In defending the intelligibility and viability of other
peoples' cultural values "he was establishing a kind of Archimedian
leverage point for the criticism of (Western) civilization. ''21 It was part
of Boas' conception of anthropology as a science that cultural relativism
should facilitate critical reflection. 22 George Marcus and Michael
Fischer discuss an experimental phase in American anthropology.
through the 1920s and 1930s, during which Boasian disciples used field
data as a point of departure for rendering cultural critique of American
attitudes and lifestyle.23 While they take note of the obvious flaws and
excesses in her work, Marcus and Fischer acknowledge how Margaret
Mead's elaboration of the systematic juxtaposition of foreign and
American practices further opened up the critical possibilities of
ethnographic writing.
Closely connected to his affirmation of the cultural alternative were
Boas' methodological innovations, aimed at disassembling the pseudo-
scientific arguments which falsely conflated the categories of physical
attribute, cultural practice and language. Stanley Diamond has
commented that Boas and those who followed him "establish (and it is
242

a brilliant achievement) that there are no inferior cultures, races or

languages; and correlatively that races, languages and cultures are
historically, not functionally, related. ''24 Boas brought to the field a
rigorous and critical methodology which linked the unmasking of
ethnocentric biases with the affirmation of alternate cultural possibilities.
This represented both an invaluable corrective to nineteenth century
evolutionist methodology and an innovation that paved the way for an
anthropology better calibrated for normative critique of the relationship
between Western and non-Westem cultures.
Consistently skeptical of the received ideas of his era, Boas argued
against the premise, then popular for its totalizing simplicity, that like
causes produce like effects. He cited many cases to illustrate that
ostensibly similar phenomena exhibited by disparate peoples were often
arrived at via very different historical trajectories, rather than in
conformity with any teleological sequence. In one case he had shown
that while totem-bearing clans among Apache, Navajo and certain of the
Pueblo tribes had been formed as a result of association of smaller
settlements, among Indians of the North Pacific Coast totem-bearing
clans had originated via fission from larger mother clans, 25
demonstrating that cultural phenomena can arise by a variety of means
not predictable via nomothetic methods.
This point goes to the heart of two important and interlinked features
of the Boasian paradigm, first the neo-Kantian position that cultural
behavior cannot be comprehended in terms of laws comparable to those
formulated within the natural sciences, and second, the centrality of
history in the achievement of methodological rigor. Whether similar
phenomena can be attributed to like causes depends, as Boas put it in his
seminal essay "The Limitations of the Comparative Method in
Anthropology," upon their "comparability" in terms of the historical
conditions out of which they a r o s e . 26 Geared toward countering the
bastardized version of cross-cultural inquiry practiced by Brinton,
Powell and others, the "comparability" guideline gave Boas' conception
of anthropology as "science" distinctive markings. Comparability
depended upon loyalty to history, particularistically conceived, upon
case-by-case comparison of causal nexuses which are unique rather than
universal in nature.
Consistent with his ideographic and inductivist tendencies, Boas
suggested that a prerequisite to cross-cultural analysis is the need to
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understand the viewpoint of the cultural actor. In arguing against the a

priori classification of material artifacts and in challenging the prevalent
assumptions about the inferiority of non-European languages, Boas
demonstrated how a concern with lived meaning was indispensable to
the comprehensive appreciation of cultural phenomena. He points out
that while in certain tribes a mask will be used to personify a deity, in
others, a similar mask may be employed to disguise the wearer from a
malevolent spirit or to portray an ancestor in a ritual dance. 27 He implied
that it was historically inaccurate, in museum exhibitions, to group
together masks from diverse tribes, where transmission of culture traits
could not be verified, and without reference to the given milieux in
which they were produced and used. Further, he indicated that such
erroneous classification reflected the failure to recognize that the
meanings of mask usage are socially variable, indeed that human
purposes and understandings are multiple and are of critical relevance to
the researcher.
Similarly, rather than accept the widely held assumption that the
vocabulary of the Eskimo language was superfluous and redundant in
nature, Boas explained that the extensive range of semantic terms for
"snow" aptly reflected the priorities and concerns of Eskimo people. An
Eskimo hunter's need to know whether the snow he plans to traverse is
characterized by an icy crust with soft powder beneath, or a hard
consistency throughout, reflects his need to gauge his estimated rate of
travel, the gear he will need. to take along and the sound his footsteps
will make to the animal he tracks.28 That the discovery of how the native
orders his experience, in accord with historically and contextually
specific priorities and constraints, has become a major preoccupation in
anthropology, is evinced by contemporary concern with "emic"
categories and by the advent of ethno-scientific and sociolinguistic
researches. Thus, Boas intended that the Eskimo language should be
viewed not in terms of standards derived from European languages but
as the expression of the conceptions and imperatives of its native
speakers.
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Theoretical and Epistemological Underpinnings

While several authors have noted the difficulty in tracing the

epistemological sources of Boas' perspective, 29 it is generally
acknowledged that during the period of Boas' education in Germany, in
the 1870s and 1880s, idealist philosophies, especially the works of Kant,
dominated the intellectual landscape. 3~ During the four semesters he
spent at Kiel, Boas studied closely with Benno Erdmann, a historian of
philosophy and an eminent Kantian scholar with strong epistemological
interests. 31 It is an item of anthropological lore that Boas read Kant on
frigid Arctic evenings during his field trip to Baffin Island in 1883. 32 He
worked with the historical geographer, Adolph Bastian, whose own
perspective had incorporated Kantian psychophysics, at Berlin' Royal
Ethnography Museum in 1885. 33 That Boas was much influenced by the
writing of Alexander yon Humboldt further substantiates a neo-Kantian
influence.34
Kant held the sphere of human creativity, meaning and ethical
deliberation to be qualitatively different from the sphere of material
nature, the former partaking of the realm of noumena or spirit.
Accordingly, human culturalactivity could never be subject to laws
analogous to those goveming nature and could not be postulated to
follow a determined course. In the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant had
sought to delineate those matters appropriately treated by natural
science, and those outside its ken. 35 Dorothy Ross adds the interesting
historical note that, as the situation in post-Revolutionary France
degenerated into tyranny and revolt, millenarian hopes faded and, late in
his life, Kant expressed his recognition that human fate must be worked
out solely in the domain of history. 36
Incorporating this key contrast in Kantian epistemology, Boas
articulated both a strong support for natural science and, as Gregory
Schrempp put it, "a defense of a realm of human concern beyond the
scope of natural science and different in character. ''37 Objecting to Otis
Mason's method of classifying together similar objects for display at the
United States National Museum with regard to neither their historical
contexts nor the meanings imputed to them by their creators, Boas had
argued "classification is not explanation. ''38 Advancing instead the
premise that objects should be arranged "according to the ideas" of the
peoples with which they are connected,39 the neophyte scholar risked
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alienating influential members of the Smithsonian Institution. In his

1887 essay "The Study of Geography," Boas asserted that "there exists
another object for science besides the deduction of laws from
phenomena, ''4~ that other aim being the "thorough understanding of
phenomena, ''41 without regard for any laws that might be exemplified.
Accordingly, Boas posited two different, though equally valid, forms of
scientific inquiry, the "physical''42 and the cosmographical, or
"historical.''43 The physicist's approach, guided by an "aesthetic"
impulse, 44 involved an "inclination for abstractions, ''45 while the
historian's approach ensued from an "affective''46 impulse to intimately
probe each phenomenon "for its o w n sake ''47 and in situ.
Consistent with the epistemological position that human action is not
naturally or historically determined, Boas conceived of human
motivation as not necessarily determined by material interests. His
poignant illustration of the starving Eskimos who refrain from hunting
seal as a matter of religious conviction exemplifies his implicit
recognition that action could be based on values which did not spring
from a pragmatic calculus of need or advantage.48 Max Weber, similarly,
had held that meaningful human action is based in ideal as well as
material interests.
Historical particularism, then, embodies views of history and of
human motivation which bear more affinity to those of Weber than of
Hegel. For Boas, the scientific quality of anthropology resided less with
the capacity to postulate laws than with the faithful apprehension of
cultural reality through fieldwork and historical reconstruction. This
interpretation of Boas' scientific sensibility is consistent with his own
emphasis on method over theory, and on detailed observation over
speculation.
The Boasian aim of achieving through fieldwork a respectful and
sympathetic understanding of the subject's values and perspective has
had a progressive impact on anthropology. That participant observation
has become a standard field method is an indication of this. While
Stocking observes that Boas, consistent with his training as a
Naturwissenschaftler, may never have abandoned the notion that cultural
laws might eventually be discovered once enough facts were in,49
several scholars concur that Boas' skepticism toward this prospect
increased as his career progressed. 5~Marvin Harris has gone so far as to
suggest that the impact of Boas' studies in physics upon his general
246

outlook has been exaggerated, adding that Boas seems to have been
"content to continue his particularist studies in complete independence
of their nomothetic payoff."51 Although Harris argues that any form of
inquiry which is both idiographic and idealist in nature cannot be
"science," such criticisms represent the attempt to legitimize, and to
marginalize, qualitative research.
Boas' background in the tradition of historical geography, and in the
writings of the German Romantics, appears also to have contributed
toward his conception of anthropology, while anchoring him in the
Romantic tradition. In his geographical treatise Cosmos, Humboldt had
followed J. G. Herder, the Enlightenment Romantic of a century earlier,
in endorsing a holistic perspective that recognized the uniqueness of
local cultural traditions. Bastian, influenced by Herder and F. W.
Schelling, stressed the psychic unity of mankind and, therefore,
passionately denied any causal influence of race upon culture. Bastian
shared Herder's enthusiasm for languages as vehicles of social tradition,
though again sought not to conflate the categories of race, language and
culture but to verify supposed relationships historically. Herder, as an
early German historicist, had in turn been among the first to articulate a
view of cultures as historically specific, holistically integrated and
unique entities. Herder, to whom Boas had made reference in 1904, had
been, according to R. G. Collingwood, first "to recognize in a systematic
w a y . . , that human nature is not uniform but diversified, ''52 and to
affirm the role of individual creativity in culture change and the shaping
of history. These influences, along with Boas' close reading of Schiller
and familiarity with Goethe, 53 clearly shaped his thinking and the
Romantic sensibility evident in his work.

A Critical Historical Particularism?

The historical particularist approach preserves in its epistemology the

free will of the human agent, while taking account of the historical
circumstances with which s/he must contend. Yet, Boas did not fully
develop these aspects of particularism. His sense of history--which
tended to emphasize the tracing and distribution of culture traits through
culture contact--remained narrow. As we have seen from his passing
reference to the way in which Native American-made goods were
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displaced in the face of overwhelming competition from the

manufacturing quarters of the white world, he could have treated
questions of economy, politics, colonialism and ethnocide, all of which
are within a comparative historical perspective, but did not. There is
nothing inherent in the historical particularist approach which would bar
consideration of such questions, especially now that the goal of
understanding "pristine" tribal cultures apart from their interaction with
colonial and industrialized nations is clearly no longer viable. In short,
Eric Wolf has made the valid complaint that the liberal strain of
anthropology of which Boas was chief proponent "did not address itself
to the problem of power."54
All societies are now mediated by structures of power and individual
perspectives vary in terms of their different positions within such
structures. Boas, however, believed a single informant could speak for
the group. Thus, Goldschmidt notes, "It is as if his belief that all people
were equal rendered them all the same, ''55 or as if the significance of any
artifact or practice were generic and could be furnished by any
informant. In the field, Boas often relied excessively on single
informants.
The monocular quality of his research was appropriate to the study of
small-scale, classless societies in which all members might share and
express a commonality of beliefs. And, in his Northwest Coast and
Kwakiutl work on languages and on mythology, Boas focused on aspects
of cultural life which are symbolic and slow to change. However, such
societies have either disappeared or been thoroughly redefined by
colonialism, capitalism and modernization. A newly recast historical
particularism encounters within a single society cultural actors with
differing viewpoints which reflect differing vested interests, political
orientations, regional, ethnic and class biases within an array of
conflicting social and family networks. There is no one representative
informant of such societies.
Finally, if Boas exhibited an aversion to the blatantly value-laden
theories of evolutionists, polygenists and other late nineteenth and early
twentieth century scholars,56 his notion that data obtained via rigorously
inductive methods could be reported in a manner devoid of theoretical
nuance is clearly problematic. 57 His clarion call for the suspension of
ethnocentric beliefs and deductive casuistries has had a necessarily
salutary effect on anthropological methodology, but the notion of "value-
248

neutral" research has been put to pernicious uses, such as biological

determinism. As a result of his disdain for the bigoted formulations of
his peers, Boas' did not articulate the values and the theoretical
assumptions that are implicit in his work and that account for his
activism and attacks on racism.
To the benefit of anthropology, Boas displaced ethnocentrism by what
Paul Schmidt would later term the "fact" of cultural relativism, that is,
that fact that many different cultural practices with varied rationales
occur among peoples of the world. 58 To the discipline's detriment,
however, the acknowledgement of the capacity of diverse peoples to
address their situations with comparable moral poignancy and reasoned
thought has been taken by many to validate a moral relativism--which
Schmidt has called the "thesis" or value theory, of cultural relativism. 59
By this erroneous logic, the actual is identified with the ideal, as if the
mere fact that apartheid exists in South Africa and has been rationalized
within the value systems of certain powerful minority groups means that
things are as they should be in South African society. 6~ In such a case,
the concept of anthropology as cultural critique is nullified, and praxis
becomes irrelevant. Peter Manicas asserts that Boas intended that
anthropology should be an "ethically significant" enterprise, 61 and that
Boas' activist inclinations bear that out. Boas presented cultural
alternatives as a frame of reference by which to recognize and re-
evaluate the prejudices and presuppositions embedded in our own
cultural practice. Cultural relativism taken as a value theory, implying
that all value systems are equally valid, renders all cultures--including
those of the West--immune to normative critique. Discussions of justice
with respect to international problems and relations become superfluous.
Starvation in Somalia, repression in Haiti, radiation poisoning in Bhopal
and chronic underemployment in L.A., do not matter except as
phenomena to be documented. It is in this sense that Diamond has
remarked, "Relativism is the bad faith of the conqueror, who has become
secure enough to become a tourist. ''62
To the extent that Boas did not distinguish "fact" from the "thesis" of
cultural relativism, he unwittingly fostered a situation wherein the
suspension of moral sensibility has become not only the methodology
but also the theory of anthropology. Under such conditions, it is not
surprising that Claude Lrvi-Strauss, who has stated that "As far as I'm
concerned, significance is always phenomenal, ''63 has been lauded by
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many as a paragon of professionalism. In a milieu in which the

methodologically sound recognition of diverse value systems has been
mistaken as proof of the theoretically unsound premise of ethical laissez-
faire, the practice of anthropology becomes little more than curiosity, the
pretext for professional advancement or for the advancement of the
economic or political interests subsidizing research.
Further, the hesitancy of many researchers to engage in ethically
significant work has, over time, been perpetuated by the proven
indispensability of relativism at the methodological level. Boas had
advocated on-site field work, to be conducted, optimally, in the mother
tongue of the population under study. He had called for the holding in
abeyance of one's prejudgments and for the immersion of the researcher
in the activities of the community in order to facilitate the receptivity of
the researcher, albeit more partial than Boas may have imagined, to the
unfamiliar context of belief and practice of the cultural Other. 64 As a
long-term consequence of such methodological sophistication, relativism
as a theoretical prescription seemed to many inevitable and obvious. Yet,
the appropriateness of normative analysis of field data is not contradicted
by the open-mindedness one strives for during data collection. It may be
objected that the process of analysis is continuous, overlapping the
active data-gathering phase. Nevertheless, such analysis must remain
tentative, spurring only more questions in order that contested areas of
cultural life can be explored by a researcher who is able to listen, with
respect and curiosity, to multiple viewpoints.
An additional reason for the skittishness that many twentieth century
social scientists have felt regarding the making of value judgments arises
from the erroneous belief that either values must vary culturally or must
be invariant according to some transcendental authority. Instead,
Schmidt argues,

A genuine third alternative maintains the objectivity of value judgments but

rejects the source of such objectivity in some transcendent realm, locating it,
rather, in the projection of human ideals. It recognizes the relation of such
judgments to a context and in this special sense the judgments are relative...
The point is that the relation of a judgment to a context does not imply its lack
of objectivity.6s

Accordingly, Schmidt has made an attempt to develop guidelines aimed

at helping anthropologists, in the face of diverse value systems at home
250

and in the field, to reflect upon the normative implications of cross-

cultural research. Schmidt enumerates a set of "basic stresses, ''66 the
avoidance of which is "a positive need for all cultures, ''67 and the
imposition of which constitutes oppression and cruelty. Among these are
hunger, physical violence and isolation. Although, clearly, the criteria as
to what constitutes "happiness" will be culturally relative, as Herder had
realized, obvious signs of cultural breakdown are starvation,
enslavement, violence, physical torture or imprisonment. This
premise--that human beings suffer similarly even as they interpret their
suffering in varied terms depending on varied cultural
circumstances--underlies Schmidt's proposal that "contextually
objective values ''68 can be derived with reference to specific cultural
situations or problems. To his list of "basic stresses" that can impinge on
all members of the human community, I would add ideological
repression and the destruction of the ecosystem. In locating and
interpreting such stresses within specific cultural contexts, the
anthropologist cannot avoid, however, the analysis of economic and
political mediations. Although the concept of "contextually objective
values" requires further elaboration, Schmidt's alternate humanistic value
theory provides an initial basis for the formulation of normative
standards which are appropriate at once to the sensibilities and
circumstances of a specific culture group and to similar contexts in other
cultures. Such a value theory would enable historical particularism to
sharpen its critical edge.
In sum, the basic historical particularist approach applied to the
contemporary situation should be elaborated to take into account politics,
economics and the distribution of power on a global scale; to register the
plurality of voices and viewpoints to be heard within a given culture, and
to acknowledge the normative implications, both for ourselves and for
the Other, of cross-cultural research. Given these elaborations, historical
particularism can serve not only as a viable method of research in the
field but as the basis for a renewed critical anthropology, preserving
Boas' insistence on the ritual context of cultural activity and the freedom
of the human agent.
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Notes

. Mina Davis Caulfield, "Culture and Imperialism: Proposing a New Dialectic,"

in Dell Hymes ed., Reinventing Anthropology (New York: Pantheon, 1969),
p. 183.
. Franz Boas, "The Problem of the American Negro," Yale Review, vol. 10
(1921), pp. 384-395.
3. Franz Boas, Race, Language and Culture (New York: MacMillan, 1949
[1940]), p. 124.
4. Marshall Hyatt, Franz Boas Social Activist: The Dynamics of Ethnicity (New
York: Greenwood Press, 1990), p. 154.
5. Franz Boas, "What the Negro has Done in Africa," in The Ethical Record, vol.
5 (1904), pp. 106-109.
6. Franz Boas, "The Anthropological Position of the Negro," in Van Norden's
Magazine (April 1907), p. 47.
7. Hyatt, Franz Boas Social Activist, pp. 94-95.
8. Franz Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man (Connecticut: Greenwood Press, 1983
[1938]), p. 100.
9. Ibid., p. 101.
10. Arnold Krupat, "Irony in Anthropology: The Work of Franz Boas," in Marc
Manganaro ed., Modernist Anthropology: From Fieldwork to Text (New
Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp. 133-145.
11. William S. Willis, "Skeletons in the Anthropological Closet, " Hymes ed.,
Reinventing Anthropology, p. 134.
12. Hyatt, Franz Boas Social Activist.
13. Boas, Race, Language and Culture, pp. 131-132.
14. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 26.
15. Ibid., p. 240; see also Eric Wolf, "American Anthropologists and American
Society," in Dell Hymes ed., Reinventing Anthropology, p. 255.
16. George Stocking, "Anthropology as Kulturkampf: Science and Politics in the
Career of Franz Boas," in Walter Goldschmidt ed., The Uses of Anthropology
(Washington, D.C.: American Anthropological Association, 1979), p. 45.
17. Ibid.
18. Ibid., pp. 45-47.
19. Melville Herskovits, Franz Boas: The Science of Man in the Making (Clifton,
NJ: Scribner, 1953), p. 28.
20. George Stocking, "Anthropology as Kulturkampf," p. 47.
21. Ibid., p. 47; Boas' efforts in this regard harken back to the Romantic moorings
of anthropology. See George Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution: Essays
in the History of Anthropology (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1982
[1968]), p. 90.
22. Krupat, "Irony in Anthropology," p. 137.
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23. George E. Marcus and Michael M. J. Fischer, Anthropology as Cultural

Critique: An Experimental Moment in the Human Sciences (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1986), p. 127.
24. Stanley Diamond, "Anthropology in Question," in Dell Hymes ed.,
Reinventing Anthropology, p. 421.
25. Boas, Race, Language and Culture, p. 274.
26. Ibid., p. 279.
27. Ibid., p. 274.
28. Boas, The Mind of Primitive Man, p. 191.
29. Clyde Kluckhohn and Olaf Prufer, "Influences During the Formative Years,"
in The American Anthropologist, vol. 61, no. 5 (October 1959), p. 5; see also
A. L. Kroeber and Clyde Kluckhohn, Culture: A Critical Review of Concepts
and Definitions (New York: Vintage, 1963), p. 85.
30. Kluckhohn and Prufer, "Influences," p. 5; see also Marvin Harris, The Rise of
Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture (New York:
Crowell, 1968), p. 267.
31. Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution, p. 143.
32. Ibid.
33. Hyatt, Franz Boas Social 4ctivist, p. 11.
34. Kluckhohn and Prufer, "Influences," p. 12.
35. Gregory Schrempp, "Aristotle's Other Self: On the Boundless Subject of
Anthropological Discourse," in George Stocking ed., Romantic Motives:
Essays on Anthropological Sensibility (Madison: University of Wisconsin
Press, 1989), p. 29.
36. Dorothy Ross, The Origins of American Social Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991), p. 9.
37. Schrempp, "Aristotle's Other Self," p. 30.
38. Franz Boas, "The Principles of Ethnological Classification" (1887), in George
Stocking ed., A Franz Boas Reader: The Shaping of American Anthropology,
1883-1911 (Chicago: University of Chicago, 1974), p. 62.
39. Ibid., p. 63.
40. Boas, Race, Language and Culture, p. 641.
41. Ibid.
42. Ibid.
43. Ibid., p. 642.
44. Ibid., p. 643.
45. Ibid., p. 645.
46. Ibid., p. 644.
47. Ibid., p. 642.
48. Boas, Mind of Primitive Man, p. 126.
49. Stocking, Franz Boas Reader, pp. 11-17.
50. Ibid., p. 13; see also Hyatt, Franz Boas Social Activist, p. 21; Kluckhohn and
Prufer, "Influences," p. 24.
51. Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory, p. 262.
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52. R. G. Collingwood, The Idea of History (London: Oxford University Press,

1946), p. 90.
53. Kluckhohn and Prufer, "Influences," p. 6.
54. Hymes, Reinventing Anthropology, p. 256.
55. Walter Goldschmidt, "Introduction" The American Anthropologist, vol. 61, no.
5 (October 1959), p. 2.
56. Franz Boas, "The History of Anthropology," in Science, vol 20 (21 October
1904), p. 515.
57. Marc J. Swartz, "History and Science in Anthropology," in Philosophy of
Science, vol. 25, no. 1 (1968), p. 59.
58. Paul Schmidt, "Some Criticisms of Cultural Relativism," in Journal of
Philosophy, vol. 52 (1955), p. 782.
59. Ibid.
60. If it is assumed that hegemonic ideologies and value systems set the normative
tone within a society, then, in effect, might makes fight and the cultural
resistance of marginalized groups is to be ignored.
61. Peter Manicas, A History and Philosophy of the Social Sciences (New York:
Basil Blackwell, 1987), p. 224.
62. Diamond, "Anthropology in Question," in Hymes ed., Reinventing
Anthropology, p. 421.
63. Ibid., p. 404. Meaning or significance, as construed by informants is irrelevant
for Lrvi-Strauss, who instead seeks meaning in the "deep structure"
purportedly underlying surface reality. See also, ibid., pp. 407-408.
64. Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution, p. 230.
65. Schmidt, "Some Criticisms," p. 790.
66. Ibid., p. 789.
67. Ibid.
68. Ibid., p. 790.