The subtitle of this post might be "Anthropology Denialism Part Deux." Anthropology denialism is a term I like to use to denote a set of tropes that have passed into popular currency that are used in attempts to discredit anthropology. Anthropology certainly deserves critique, although it is already possibly the most self-flagellating academic discipline. Anthropology denialism, however, seeks to undermine the discipline wholesale for a variety of reasons that are not necessarily connected. Deniers often include creationists, hyper-positivists, biological determinists, and political reactionaries.

To cover all aspects of anthropology denialism would be a monumental task (Jonathan Marks does not use this term, but he does cover much of the same ground in his book Why I Am Not a Scientist), so I want to focus on one trope in particular: The trashing of Franz Boas. One of our racialist buddies on this sub recently engaged in this popular pastime of deniers. I call this post "part two" because I previously did one on a related trope -- the trashing of Margaret Mead.

The charges against Boas vary from him simply being a simple-minded cultural determinist allergic to science to being the head of a Jewish cultural Marxist anti-white conspiracy. First, let's look at the real Boas to answer these softer charges. Boas instituted what became known as the "four-field program" of American anthropology, a holistic discipline of humanity including cultural anthropology, biological anthropology, linguistic anthropology, and archaeology. Boas' philosophy emphasized this holism, including biology. He viewed anthropology as a science, and was in fact originally trained as a scientist (a physicist). Rudolf Virchow, his mentor, imparted upon him the importance of biology, quantitative analysis, and statistics.

Boas went on to do influential work in physical anthropology. Early work focused on childhood growth and development. He introduced the concept of longitudinal study to this area. He also amassed a huge amount of data in his anthropometric analysis of Native Americans, including 16,000 Native Americans as well as 2,000 Siberians. Later on, he conducted a famous study on the plasticity of craniometric variation in the descendants of immigrants to the US. As Michael A. Little notes, Boas did not believe this plasticity to be infinitely malleable, but an interaction between biology and environment:

Relethford's (2004) conclusion was anticipated by Boas (1936, 523) in a later paper referring to the plasticity of the immigration study in which he stated, "These changes do not obliterate the differences between genetic types but they show that the type as we see it contains elements that are not genetic but an expression of the influence of the environment."

This extended to his general ideas about human biology. Biology was to be placed in a historical and cultural context. Little again:

Boas made remarkable contributions to dispelling the myth of fixed or pure races and the importance of the environment in structuring the character of human populations. He was not, however, a disbeliever in the importance of inheritance or even “race” (as a population of genetically related individuals) in characterizing and understanding humans. Rather, he was interested in the superimposition of environmental influences on these hereditary characteristics, particularly during growth or development from conception to adulthood.

Similarly, there is a charge that Boas was anti-evolutionary (in the Darwinian sense), which is simply absurd. During a time that is now known as "the eclipse of Darwinism," Boas defended Darwinian evolution. His goal was in fact to extricate biological evolution from notions of orthogenesis and linear cultural evolution -- in other words, exactly the same goal as Darwin. As Herbert S. Lewis writes:

White and Harris speak of Darwin as a contrast to Boas; White even considers Boas an opponent of Darwin and argues that “those who opposed Darwin did not labor for, or make contributions to, science” (1944:219). The irony is that Boas understood Darwin better than White did; Darwin was, in practice and in outlook, a historicist. It was not Darwin that Boas and his students rejected but the entirely different teleological perspective of Herbert Spencer and his followers.

Lewis gives Boas' view on Darwin:

Boas did not mention Darwin often, and some writers have expressed doubt as to his adherence to Darwinian evolution.14 As early as 1887, however, in the debate with Otis T. Mason, Boas showed his appreciation of two of Darwin’s major points. He noted that evolution operates on individuals and that the episodes of evolution are historical in nature, wholly dependent upon location in time and space and upon the history of the organism.

Boas said (1974[1887]:66), Former events . . . leave their stamp on the present character of a people. I consider it one of the greatest achievements of Darwinism to have brought to light this fact, and thus to have made a physical treatment of biology and psychology possible. The fact may be expressed by the words, “the physiological and psychological state of an organism at a certain moment is a function of its whole history.”

To call the idea that Boas was a cultural determinist a straw man is an understatement. Even a cursory look at his career discredits this idea. However, it lives on in pop culture and has become a common trope of anthropology denial. It also became a basis for a curious anthropological conspiracy theory. In its softest form, Boas brainwashed the masses into believing cultural determinism and laying the groundwork for postmodernism and/or (cultural) Marxism. This conspiracy theory was repeated in more vicious forms by anti-Semites, racialists, and segregationists going well back into the 20th century. Lee D. Baker writes:

The so-called Boas conspiracy, however, has been circulating around anti-Semitic and white-supremacist networks in one form or another for some sixty years (Winston 2001:2).

...

By the late 1950s, anthropology became an unreliable narrator in the story of white supremacy, and Boas was to blame; he subsequently emerged as the likely lightning rod to spark one more version of this incendiary myth: Jews now controlled science! The staying power and wide circulation of this well-traveled lore, I believe, explain why Boas catapults to the top of the list of people who have damaged “white interests.”

George Lincoln Rockwell invoked this conspiracy theory, implicating a number of other anthropologists such as Ashley Montagu:

Dripping with sarcasm with a hint of paternalism, Rockwell evoked the Boas conspiracy as though he were going to present exculpatory evidence that would cinch his case that all men are not created equal:

“You’re bringing tears to my eyes. Don’t you know that all this equality garbage was started by a Jew anthropologist named Franz Boas from Columbia University? Boas was followed by another Jew from Columbia named Gene Weltfish. And our present Jew expert preaching equality is another Jew named Ashley Montagu. Any anthropologist who dares to preach the facts known by any farmer in the barnyard— that breeds differ in quality—is simply not allowed to survive in the university or in publishing, because he can’t earn a living. You never hear from that side. But Carleton Putnam has written a wonderful book called Race and Reason, showing that there is plenty of scholarly evidence to back up my contention that the nigger race is inherently inferior to the white race intellectually.” (Haley 1966:76)

Baker covers well the history of the conspiracy theory. In one section, he notes the controversy over a paper by Sparks and Jantz that challenged Boas' immigration study mentioned above. However, this was in turn challenged by the Relethford study that Little mentions above. The plasticity was not as profound as Boas originally contended, but his demonstration of plasticity was vindicated and Boas did not contend that the variation was entirely environmental in nature as Little notes. This didn't stop the deniers and racialists, though. Baker notes the reaction:

Sam Francis, the former Washington Times columnist turned ultraright-wing pundit, seized this opportunity to tether the results of Sparks and Jantz to Derek Freeman’s widely publicized allegations that Margaret Mead engaged in fraudulent research practices in Samoa (Freeman 1983, 1999). Taken together, Francis argued, this was proof positive that anthropologists in general and Franz Boas in particular orchestrated a vast left-wing conspiracy to destroy the idea that whites are racially superior to blacks and to impose a moral and cultural relativism that has forever crippled American civilization, and that Boas did it with fraudulent data. Francis elaborated: “In other words, Boas decided what his conclusions would be before he finished the research and then ‘shaded’—i.e., cheated on—the data to make them support the conclusion he wanted. This is not science; it’s fraud—and modern liberalism is founded on it” (Francis 2002).

Baker goes on to mention the Gravlee et al study that supported Boas:

Francis did not, however, note how Clarence C. Gravlee, H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard also reanalyzed Boas’s data on immigrant bodies. Reporting their independent findings in American Anthropologist, Gravlee and his colleagues concluded that “on the whole, Boas was right, despite the limited analytical tools at his disposal” (Gravlee et al. 2003:125).

But, of course, Boas, as well as Mead, will go on to be decried as frauds by racialists and deniers. He is listed by the white nationalist publication American Renaissance as one of the "Americans Who Have Damaged White Interests" and pop science writers continue to disregard him as a cultural determinist.

Baker, Lee D. (2010) The Cult of Franz Boas and his “Conspiracy” to Destroy the White Race. Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 154(1): 8-18. http://www.amphilsoc.org/sites/default/files/proceedings/2Baker1540102.pdf

Boas, Franz. (1912) Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants. American Anthropologist New Series, Vol. 14, No. 3 (Jul. - Sep., 1912), pp. 530-562 http://www.jstor.org/stable/659886?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

Gravlee, Clarence C., H. Russell Bernard, and William R. Leonard (2003). Boas’s Changes in Bodily Form: The immigrant study, cranial plasticity, and Boas’s physical anthropology. American Anthropologist 105(2):326-332. http://www.gravlee.org/files/pdfs/gravlee03b.pdf

Lewis, Herbert S. (2001) Boas, Darwin, Science, and Anthropology. Current Anthropology Volume 42, Number 3: 381-406. http://www.anthropology.wisc.edu/pdfs/Boas,_Darwin.pdf

Little, Michael A. (2010) Franz Boas' Place in American Physical Anthropology and Its Institutions. Ch. 3 in Histories of American Physical Anthropology in the Twentieth Century edited by Michael A. Little, Kenneth A. R. Kennedy.

Marks, Jonathan. (2009) Why I Am Not a Scientist. UC Press

Sparks, Corey S. and Richard L. Jantz. A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited. PNAS 99(23) http://www.pnas.org/content/99/23/14636.long