Volksgeist as Method and Ethic: Essays on Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition (Volume 8) (History of Anthropology)

Franz Boas, the major founding figure of anthropology as a discipline in the United States, came to America from Germany in 1886. This volume in the highly acclaimed History of Anthropology series is the first extensive scholarly exploration of Boas' roots in the German intellectual tradition and late nineteenth-century German anthropology, and offers a new perspective on the historical development of ethnography in the United States. Boasian Ethnography and the German Anthropological Tradition -- The Study of Geography / Franz Boas -- Franz Boas and the Humboldtian Tradition: From Volksgeist and Nationalcharakter to an Anthropological Concept of Culture / Matti Bunzl -- From Virchow to Fischer: Physical Anthropology and "Modern Race Theories" in Wilhelmine Germany / Benoit Massin -- German Culture and German Science in the Bildung of Franz Boas / Julia E. Liss -- The Ethnographic Object and the Object of Ethnology in the Early Career of Franz Boas / Ira Jacknis "The Culture as It Appears to the Indian Himself": Boas, George Hunt, and the Methods of Ethnography / Judith Berman -- "The Little History of Pitiful Events": The Epistemological and Moral Contexts of Kroeber's Californian Ethnology / Thomas Buckley -- Orientalism as Kulturpolitik: German Archeology and Cultural Imperialism in Asia Minor / Suzanne Marchand -- Index Franz Boas, the major founding figure of anthropology as a discipline of America, came to the United States from Germany in 1886. Though this fact is widely known, the significance of Boas' roots in German intellectual tradition and late nineteenth century German anthropology remains obscure. The essays in Volkgeist a Method and Ethic explore the Germanic influences on Boasian anthropology and clarify their implications for the ethnographic practice that Boas promulgated.