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The Boasian Legacy to Perpetuity; An Issue of Debate

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Although it is now trite to eulogize Franz Boas as the father of modern
anthropology, one can see the influence of his methods written clearly in the history of
anthological thought. His innovations were in some cases radically different from, and in
many ways antagonistic to, established doctrine, especially the practice of describing
social behaviours and beliefs within a racial framework. This essay will take as its topic
an investigation into the context and development of two of Boass most resilient and
influential ideas; these being cultural relativism, an attempt to understand a culture in
terms relevant to it, and the historical method which was characterized by holistic
descriptions of entire cultures yet only minimally concerned with theoretical explanation.
This essay will demonstrate that both the ethnological principle of cultural relativism and
the historical method of anthropological inquiry were a reaction to social Darwinism and
an outgrowth of Boass criticism of prominent American museums which displayed
native artifacts in evolutionary sequences that were arranged hierarchically.
The social context wherein Boas developed his innovative ideas was characterized
by a plethora of racist ideologies. Prominent among these was social Darwinism. It used
the terminology of Darwins theory of evolution to purport that the white race had
achieved a position of advantage over lesser races as the result of an inherent biological
superiority. The reference to Darwins work lent a veneer of scientific credibility to the
assertion while implying that the unequal social relations which existed were natural and
therefore immutable. An apparent objective of its use in 19th century America was to
rationalize a spectrum of injustices that included the segregation of natives on reserves
and the confiscation of native lands for use by Americans and immigrants to America.
Boass career was characterized by an active resistance to this racist dogma. It pervaded

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not only lay social discourse but also the concepts and language of the academic field of
anthropology.
Influenced by German enlightenment ideals, Boass professional opinions were
frequently at odds with established anthropological truths native to the American social
climate. Furthermore, his innovations in the discipline went against the grain of accepted
methods of the day and differentiated him from his contemporaries. Prominent among
these innovations was his approach to central project of anthropology - the determination
of why and how customs and beliefs come to exist in a culture so that, in turn, laws
governing their development could be established. 1 Boas used the historical method
when, at that time, his peers favoured the comparative method for ethnological
investigation.
In Boass words, the comparative method was the analysis of variations under
whichcustoms or beliefs occur so as to find the common psychological cause that
underlies them.2 The principle venue for this comparative analysis was the museum.
When in 1887 Boas studied the northwest coast Indian artifact collections in the National
Museum he found that the material had been displayed in accordance with the
comparative method. The northwest coast artifacts were located throughout the museum
in unrelated exhibits rather than being displayed together as a single collection.
Moreover, the artifacts were integrated into exhibits that included material from many
other tribal groups.3 Boas observed three defining features of this display technique, all of
which were meant to emphasize the variations under which customs and beliefs occur.
1

Franz Boas and William Dall, Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification, Science, vol. 9, no. 228
(Jun. 17, 1887), p. 588.
2
Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, Science, vol. 4, no. 103
(Dec. 18, 1896), p. 905.
3
Douglas Cole, Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858-1906 (Vancouver: Douglas & Mcintyre, 1999), p. 127.

3
The first of these features was the grouping of artifacts; hand-woven baskets, for
example, were displayed together based on their use. The second feature was the
relationship between the artifacts and the people who made and used them; the objects
were displayed together regardless of their cultural provenance. The third feature was the
presentation of the artifacts. These were sequenced according to the complexity of their
design. Modern American and European standards were the benchmark according to
which artifacts were judged. The ethnocentricity of this process made the exhibits as
much about as an explicit contrast between natives and westerns as the exhibits were
about the natives and their artifacts. However, the context under which the comparisons
occurred, and the very act of comparison were not yet seen as problematic, to wit, the
sequences were thought of as a valid means to demonstrate the psychological causes that
underlie Native customs and beliefs.
The comparative technique by which the artifacts were grouped was influenced
by Gustav Klemm's variant of social Darwinism. He proposed that cultures developed in
stages along a continuum and that the technology produced by a culture was a marker of
its stage of development.4 On the basis of Klemms theories, artifact sequences ostensibly
demonstrated the state of social evolution that a culture had reached. Evolutionary
sequences were, therefore, hierarchical; the apparent complexity of an artifact established
the relative position of a culture - and more broadly a race - underneath that of the white
race. Compounding this fallacy was the prejudicial assumption that native artifacts, as
compared to objects used by western cultures for the same purposes, were simple in
design, clumsy in workmanship and stylistically inferior.

Douglas Cole, Captured Heritage (Vancouver: UBC Press, 1985), p. 110.

4
This comparative system of classification and the conclusions drawn from it
resonated with the attitudes regarding race and technology held in industry, in academia
and in the public consciousness. Because of the pervasiveness of the two concepts they
were a more intuitive choice by which to evaluate native artifacts than the exotic
standards of the natives themselves. Popular wisdom and racist dogma embraced Gustav
Klemms theory that technological complexity paralleled racial sophistication. The
simple racist assumption that whites were superior to lesser races was merely recast in the
conclusions of the comparative method i.e., that the technology of so called superior
races was more complex than that of inferior races.
Boas raised fundamental objections to the display technique, the theory that
informed it and the conclusions derived from it. By isolating artifacts from the cultural
context to which they belonged the exhibits deprived the objects of the meaning ascribed
to them by the people who had made and used them. Boas held that by regarding a
single implement outside of its surroundings, outside of other inventions of the people to
whom it belongs, and outside of other phenomena affecting that people and its
productions, we cannot understand its meanings.5 Furthermore, by recontextualizing the
artifacts in an evolutionary progression, the museum was giving them ahistoric meanings
unintended by their native inventors. The displays, arranged as they were, misled the
viewer by implying that the people who produced the artifacts were related in ways that
they were not necessarily. For example, the exhibits suggested that the creators of the
artifacts, by virtue of having created physically similar objects, could be justifiably
classified into a coherent group. In the context of the dominant racist social discourse, the

Franz Boas, The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart, Science, vol. 9, no. 224 (May
20, 1887), p. 485.

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coherent group with which the artifact makers would be associated was a racial group. In
this way the comparative technique of artifact display encouraged museum attendees to
think of natives together as a race. The evident similarities between the pieces of material
culture on display also suggested broad similarities between the cultures of the respective
inventors. However, this oversimplified the diversity of expression and thought existing
within and between cultures. Boas noted that other undue inferences were also suggested;
in displays arranged in evolutionary sequences according to the comparative method,
identities or similarities of culture were considered incontrovertible proof of historical
connection, or even of common origin.6 To Boas, this was not merely an unsubstantive
claim but also unscientific; it assumed a common origin before it had been demonstrated
empirically.
Boas found fertile ground for criticism in the premises upon which the
comparative method was based. By being grounded in the tenets of social Darwinism, the
comparative method assumed first that social Darwinism was valid and second that
evolutionary theory bore directly on the classification and arrangement of cultural
artifacts in museum displays. Boas argued to the contrary. He held that the comparative
approach, as an avenue of anthropological inquiry, was in fact incompatible with
Darwin's evolutionary theory. Unlike evolutionary theory, which took as its study groups
of individuals in taxonomical aggregates of species, genus, family, order, class, phylum
and kingdom, the object of anthropological study is the individual, not abstractions from
the individual under observation.7 Moreover, by drawing an analogy between
ethnological phenomenon and biological species the comparative method introduced

6
7

Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, p. 901.

Franz Boas, The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart, p. 485.

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abstractions into ethnology that ultimately offered little useful insight into the
ethnological phenomenon. Boas summarized his criticisms of the union between
ethnology and social Darwinism by stating we mustconsider all the ingenious
attempts at constructions of a grand system of the evolution of society as of very doubtful
value.8
Boas noted that the deductions being inferred from the comparative method were
non sequitur; he observed that though like causes have like effects, like effects have not
like causes.9 By this Boas meant that any given cultural phenomena, though similar,
could be due to many different environmental conditions or social pressures. It was
impossible, he argued, to deduce from general trends seen in the artifact sequences a
single specific cause with which the similarities among artifacts could be attributed.
Moreover, Boas believed that insofar as science could justifiably claim a general cause
for an invention of material culture, the disposition of men to act suitably is the only
general cause.10 Hence Boas considered that this was too vague to be made the
foundation of a comparative study of inventions. His arguments problematized the use in
museum exhibits of a deductive system like the comparative method. To further illustrate
the untenability of the method, Boas explained that many cultures share the same
ethnical phenomena including the idea of a future lifeinventions such as fire and the
bow [and] certain elementary features of grammatical structure. 11 He held that this was
not sufficient evidence to conclude that close cultural relationships or a common history
exist between the cultures that share these ethnical phenomena. Consequently, in his
public criticisms of the comparative method, Boas emphasized the logical fallacy it rested
8

Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, p. 905.

Franz Boas and William Dall, Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification, p. 589.
10
Franz Boas, The Occurrence of Similar Inventions in Areas Widely Apart, p. 485.
11
Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, p. 901.
9

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on and he also dismissed the conclusions arising from it as being misconceptions and
invalid.
The anthropologist did not, however, exclude the possibility of a meaningful
comparative analysis of artifacts and even went so far as to state the purely historical
method without the comparative method would be incomplete. 12 Both were needed to
discover the processes of cultural development. By Boass standards a comparative
approach was valid for this purpose only if comparisons were situated in a context of
nonspeculative anthropological inquiry and were restricted to those phenomena which
have been proved to be effects of the same causes. 13 In this way, a comparison of two
artifacts would be valid only if the two artifacts solved the same environmental problem.
Yet, the relationship between an artifact and the context in which it emerged is very
complex and, as Boas argued, not evident from evolutionary sequences.
After recognizing the limitations of the deductive comparative method, Boas
formulated an alternative. It was an inductive approach to anthropological inquiry called
the historical method. While both the comparative method and the historical method
attempted to ascertain the history of the development of the physiological and
psychological character of a culture, the historical method did not explain phenomena a
priori of empirical findings and it uniquely emphasized the surroundings in which a
culture occurred.14 Boas defined surroundings as the physical conditions of the country,
and the sociological phenomena, i.e., the relation of man to man. 15 The study of the
surroundings of a culture was not limited to the present; it extended to the history of the
12

Douglas Cole, The Early Years, p. 129.

Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, p. 904.
14
John Buettner-Janusch. Boas and Mason: Particularism versus Generalization. American
Anthropologist, no. 59, p. 321.
15
Franz Boas and William Dall, Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification, p. 588.
13

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people, the effect of migration, and previous contact with neighbouring peoples. Unlike
the comparative method which inferred the history of native peoples through an analysis
of the artifacts made by them, Boass historical method more directly ascertained the
history of native peoples through the ethnographic study of customs in their bearings to
the total culture of the tribe practicing them, and in connection with an investigation of
their geographical distribution among their neighbouring tribes.16 Whereas the first
method produced explanations through theory, Boass approach depended significantly
on observation and description to create explanations. Moreover, Boass method was a
purposeful attempt to distance anthropological method from racist judgements; it sought
to overcome the ethnocentricity evident in the comparative method by interpreting
cultural phenomena in terms that originate in, and are relevant to, that culture. Based on
his criticisms of museum displays, Boas concluded that the main object of ethnological
collections should be the dissemination of the fact that civilization is not something
absolute, but that it is relative, and that our ideas and conceptions are true only so far as
our civilization goes.17 This principle later came to be known as cultural relativity.
The principle of cultural relativism overcomes the limitations that ethnocentrism
has on ones ability to perceive a culture different from their own. To translate the
principle into practice Boas realized that it was necessary to participate in the cultures
being described. Participation, to Boas, meant engaging in the customs of that culture and
speaking the local language. This would allow the ethnographer to become at least
partially enculturated and thereby better able to understand elements of that culture in
conceptual terms native to it. Boas did this in 1883 when he was working for the German
16

Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, p. 905.

Franz Boas, The shaping of American anthropology, 1883-1911: a Franz Boas reader, ed. George W.
Stocking Jr. (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1974), p. 66.
17

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Polar Commission. For a year he worked surveying Baffin Island and was dependent
upon local natives to be his guides. During this time he became immersed in Eskimo
culture, he learned the fundamentals of their language and took notes on their customs.
Cultural relativism calls attention to the importance of the local context in
understanding the meaning of particular human beliefs and activities. This explains why
Boass ethnographic work did not center on concepts such as race and technology; neither
of these concepts were indigenous to the cultures he studied. Instead, his analyses were
mediated by an environmental determinism. Boas used this term in its widest sense. 18
He held that a causative relationship existed between the challenges a culture encountered
in nature and the solutions they invented to deal with them. Language, clothing, utensils,
behaviours, beliefs and all aspects of culture were understood by Boas within this
framework.
Rather than describing anthropological phenomena in the context of race, Boas
propounded a broad definition of ethnic groups. He identified them with a delimited
geographic locality, a common language, a period of history, as well as shared social
institutions, philosophies and physical arts. The extent to which these characteristics were
shared by a group of people in turn justified, from an anthropological perspective, their
identification as an ethnic group. Yet Boas was aware of the deficiencies of even so broad
a concept. Because it was an artificial construct it did not necessarily correlate with
peoples sense of shared identity with each other. Moreover, even when taken together, all
of these parameters were unable to perfectly circumscribe a group of people and justify
their mutual exclusivity from other groups. Both of these processes were not possible

18

Franz Boas, The Limitations of the Comparative Method of Anthropology, p. 902.

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because the traits used to define ethnic groups were shared to varying degrees with
people who would otherwise not be considered a part of the ethnic group in question.
The categorization and arrangement of artifacts in museum exhibits was not
simply a stylistic issue. Displays communicate fundamental ideas about human
psychology, social interaction and the relationship between humans and their physical
environment. Boas expected that the ideas conveyed in museum exhibits should be based
on empirical data and should not be influenced by a priori assumptions regarding the
nature of humanity. It was therefore unacceptable to Boas that any museum, such as the
National Museum in Washington for example, would introduce into its displays the
unfounded racial prejudices of social Darwinism. In Boass own displays at the American
Museum of Natural History he sought to depict historically accurate psychological,
sociological and environmental relationships through arrangements that were as much as
possible, true to the cultural milieu from which the artifacts were taken. To this end,
artifacts collected during the Jesup North Pacific Expedition and displayed in the Hall of
Northwest Coast Indians were grouped together by Boas according to their geographic
and tribal provenance. In so doing, Boas was trying to emphasize the principle of cultural
relativity and preserve the meanings associated with the objects by the natives who
created and used them. Boass method drew on a well established tradition of arranging
artifacts by an ethnic-geographic paradigm. He explained that the method had been used
by numerous museums. The ideal plan of [artifact] arrangement is to exhibit a full set
of a representative of an ethnic group, and to show slight peculiarities in small special
sets.19 Boas made no attempt at putting the artifacts into any kind of hierarchal sequence.

19

Franz Boas and John Powell, Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification, Science, vol. 9, no. 229,
(June 24, 1887), p. 614.

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Boass tribal organization was not without its own difficulties. Otis Mason, an
outspoken critic of Boass method, argued that it would be impracticable for a museum to
adequately represent every ethnic group on a continent. There were simply too many
groups and not enough funding, museum space and representative artifacts to do this.
Mason estimated that in America at the time of Columbuss first landfall there were
probably many more than twenty-five thousand tribes inhabiting the country. 20 To be
completely representative, a museum whose exhibits were arranged by ethnicity would
have to account for the entire range in cultural phenomena that existed amongst these
tribes. Not only was it problematic that there were a significant number of tribes to be
represented but it was also problematic that the system of tribal organization was
inherently very fluid. In exemplifying this point Mason drew attention the large number
of changes to tribal groups during the tumultuous period following colonization that
occurred by way of absorption, consolidation and division. According to Mason, tribal
organizations were not permanent, but only temporary and that, in light of this, it was
neither sensible nor feasible to structure a museum exhibit around the concept. 21
Additionally, Mason claimed that tribal displays would necessarily be repetitious and that
the significance of the artifacts could be lost in the monotony. In general, Mason rejected
Boass method because the lessons taught thereby are not of prime importance when
compared to the lessons of a museum of the antiquities of the higher races, and of the
past and present of the lower races.22
Especially problematic for a museum exhibit arranged in the geographic-ethnic
paradigm is the possibility that any given artifact may have been traded. Boass displays
20

Ibid., p. 612.
Ibid.
22
Ibid., p. 614,
21

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in the American Museum were showpieces for his concept of cultural relativity and
therefore intentionally sought to convey the meaning of each artifact on display.
However, if an object were traded then the number of potential meanings it held also
increased. The question for Boas then became, which of the many meanings originally
given to an artifact should be represented in an exhibit? If for example a museum was to
display a silver bracelet, the artifact could be represented as status symbol but could also
be represented as a gift in a potlatch, an object made as a curio for sale to westerners or it
could be represented in an indefinite number of other ways. With each previous owner
and use an object would have acquired a different meaning. In other words, an artifact
had as many meanings as it had contexts. However, a museum exhibit that placed each
artifact in its proper context could elucidate only one the many possible meanings
attributed to the object. Nonetheless, this was favourable to the evolutionary scheme
employed by the comparative method which failed to convey the meanings of the
artifacts being exhibited.
The methodological debate regarding the differences between the historical and
comparative approaches, between cultural relativism and ethnocentricity, and between
inductive and deductive reasoning was not quickly or easily resolved. Only after Boass
death and through the work of his students did his ideas become widely accepted. Yet
prior to this, both systems of anthropological inquiry were considered equally valid. The
decision of which would be implemented in a museum display depended upon the
number of artifacts to be exhibited, the availability of display space, and the educational
objective of the museum, whether this was:

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to show the manner in which tools, weapons, dress, etc., have been
elaborated, under the operation of the environment, by the human mind in
varying stages of development, or [was]to convey to the observer the
resultant of all the forces acting in and on a comparable series of ethnic types
or units, each complete in itself.23
Ultimately, the issue of greatest importance to the discipline of anthropology was not
which of the two systems was the better one. They were, after all, both experimental and
tentative rather than being complete and final. The more important issue was determining
how cultures developed.
This essay has addressed an epistemological issue of central importance to the
discipline of anthropology; this being the manner in which we can learn why and how
cultural customs and beliefs come to exist. It has been seen that two competing and
antagonistic methods were devised to provide scientific answers to these two questions:
the comparative method and the historical method. The comparative method was
fundamentally informed by the theory of social Darwinism and it was premised on the
assumption that an outward similarity in form or function of an element of cultural
phenomena corresponded to a broadly shared psychology. The implementation of this
method in museum displays produced artifact sequences arranged hierarchically by
ethnocentric standards to demonstrate an evolutionary progression of the cultures
represented by the artifacts. This method encouraged the conceptualization of distinct
peoples as races and, consequently facilitated the interweaving of racist value judgements
into the scientific projects of anthropology. The historical method, as propounded by
Boas, emerged from his criticisms of both the comparative method and the theory of
23

Franz Boas and William Dall, Museums of Ethnology and Their Classification, p. 587.

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social Darwinism it built upon. His approach took as its starting point ethnographic
research and was an inductive, descriptive method rather than being deductive and theory
driven. Museum exhibits, such as the Hall of Northwest Coast Indians, which were
designed with the historical method in mind, demonstrated the principle of cultural
relativism; artifacts were grouped according to ethnic and cultural provenance in a way
that attempted to preserve the meanings originally given to them. Boass innovations
were clearly influential to subsequent anthropological thought and among his legacies to
perpetuity were the lessons garnered from a defining issue of his professional career.

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15
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