The Boasians

Founding Fathers and Mothers of American Anthropology

By (author) William Y. Adams

Publication date:

02 September 2016

Length of book:

356 pages

Publisher

Hamilton Books

ISBN-13: 9780761868026

This book is a study in depth of the work of Franz Boas and twenty of his students at Columbia University in the early years of the twentieth century. Collectively they laid the entire institutional as well as the intellectual foundations of American anthropology as it exists today. The book begins with a discussion of the historical context of Boasian anthropology, and an overview of its nature and limitations. The work of Boas and his leading students is then discussed in detail, including biographical data, a review and critique of their research, a review in detail of each of their major publications, and an overall assessment of their contribution to anthropology, as seen in their own time and today.

PHOTO CREDITS
PART ONE: BACKGROUND

Introduction
Antecedents and circumstances
The founding grandfather: Franz Boas, 1858–1942

PART TWO: THE FOUNDING FATHERS

Clark Wissler, 1870–1947
A. L. Kroeber, 1876–1960
Robert H. Lowie, 1883–1957
Edward Sapir, 1884–1939
Paul Radin, 1883–1959
Melville J. Herskovits, 1895–1963
The journeymen

Frank G. Speck, 1881–1950
Alexander Goldenweiser, 1880–1940
Fay-Cooper Cole, 1881–1961
Leslie Spier, 1893–1961
Melville Jacobs, 1902–1971
Alexander Lesser, 1902–1982
PART THREE: THE FOUNDING MOTHERS

Elsie Clews Parsons, 1874–1941
Ruth Benedict, 1887–1948
Margaret Mead, 1901–1978
The handmaidens

Gladys Reichard, 1893–1955
Erna Gunther, 1896–1982
Esther Goldfrank, 1896–1997
Ruth Bunzel, 1898–1990
Gene Weltfish, 1902–1980
Ruth Underhill, 1883–1984
Marian W. Smith, 1907–1961
Zora Neale Hurston, 1901(?)–1960
PART FOUR: RETROSPECTIVE

Achievements and failures
The legacies

BIBLIOGRAPHY

William Adams has...produced a valuable work by marshalling so much information about the men and women who created the distinctive discipline that is (or was) American anthropology.