Franz Boas

Franz Boas (1858–1942) was a German-American anthropologist widely regarded as the founding figure of Cultural Anthropology in the United States. Trained originally as a physicist, Boas brought to anthropology an empiricist's skepticism toward grand theoretical systems, and spent his career dismantling the racial hierarchies and evolutionary schemes that dominated late nineteenth-century anthropology. His insistence that cultures must be understood on their own terms — rather than ranked on a scale of developmental progress — established cultural relativism as the default methodology of twentieth-century social science. He trained nearly every significant American anthropologist of the first half of the twentieth century, including Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict, which makes his influence on the field's assumptions and blind spots a matter of considerable historiographical importance.

The uncomfortable question his career raises: was Boas's cultural relativism a scientific finding or a moral commitment dressed in empirical language? His own answer — that the data compelled it — has been disputed by every generation since.