Paradigmatic Traditions in the History of Anthropology
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 20081668 |
|---|---|
| Authors | George W Stocking (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2020 |
| Pages | 712-727 |
| Publication date | 2020-10-07 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | CHAPTER |
| Venue | Companion to the History of Modern Science (SOURCE_BOOK) |
| Publisher | Routledge (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.4324/9781003070818-54 |
| OpenAlex | W3091764802 |
| ISBN | 9781003070818 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
In 1904 Franz Boas defined the domain of anthropological knowledge as ‘the biological history of mankind in all its varieties; linguistics applied to people without written languages; the ethnology of people without historic records; and prehistoric archeology’. More than any other ‘anthropologist’, Boas (1858–1942) may be said to exemplify the putative unity of this domain, since (virtually alone among his confrères) he made significant contributions to each of these four inquiries in the course of his long career. But despite the fact that he was perhaps the most important single figure in the institutionalisation of an academic discipline called ‘anthropology’ in university departments in the United States, Boas already felt in 1904 that there were ‘indications of its breaking up’. The ‘biological, linguistic and ethnologic-archeological methods are so distinct’, he believed, that the time was ‘rapidly drawing near’ when the two former branches of anthropology would be taken over by specialists in those disciplines, and ‘anthropology pure and simple will deal with the customs and beliefs of the less civilized peoples only ....’ 1
Sociology · Anthropology · Anthropology: Ethics, History, Culture · History · History, Culture, and Diplomacy
| Citations per year | 0.13 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 1994 - 2025 (32) |
| Highly cited | No |