FRANZ BOAS AND RISE OF CULTURAL RELATIVISM
Keywords:
Franz Boas, culture, methodology, cultural relativismAbstract
Franz Boas was the most influential anthropologist in the first half of the twentieth century but the assessment of that influence is far from uncontroversial, because some authors consider it to be detrimental to anthropology. The paper tries to explain some of the main characteristics of his thought, especially methodology and his influence on (once) very popular cultural relativism. Probably the greatest legacy of Boas besides struggle against racism was novel use of the term culture which is also discussed, but he was at least partially responsible for the situation we still have today - culture is most often analyzed as completely separated from biology. That is why the paper offers critique of cultural relativism and crude separation of biology from culture.
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