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Franz Boas, geographer, and the problem of disciplinary identity

✍ Scribed by William A. Koelsch

Publisher
John Wiley and Sons
Year
2004
Tongue
English
Weight
133 KB
Volume
40
Category
Article
ISSN
0022-5061

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✦ Synopsis

Abstract

This paper examines Franz Boas as an aspiring professional geographer during the 1880s: his Baffin Land
research, his publications, his participation in geography organizations, and his struggle to attain a
university appointment in geography. Frustrated by a seeming lack of opportunity for advancement in Germany,
Boas explored career opportunities as a geographer in America and launched a series of unsuccessful but
meaningful attempts to dominate the intellectual direction of American geography. Finally, the article reviews
the circumstances surrounding Boas's appointment as an anthropologist at Clark University in 1889. Through
examining Boas's own words and actions, the paper demonstrates that his professional identification with
geography was lengthier and stronger than earlier accounts have suggested. It also critiques the myth of a
Baffin Land β€œconversion” to anthropology, and delineates the circumstances of his shift from German
human geography to his Americanist recasting of anthropology after 1889. Β© 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

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