Questions and Answers About Franz Uri Boas - Paper Example

2. Why was Boas career seen as so important?

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The reason why his career was considered necessary is that he was going to map out the coastline. He also wanted to change the direction of his own life, as well as change how we think about other cultures and ourselves. He wanted to study the relation of the Eskimo and the environment and collect information on their culture, customs and language since, way before he had explored this place, the Eskimos in the North Polar Region had never been studied. Finally, he was also going to complete the first accurate survey of the Davis Strait and Cumberland Sound.

3. What work sent Boas to the Arctic?

Boas went to the Artic due to his desire to study Anthropological characteristics of the people. In America, his interest was in the study of the cultures that lived in the North West Coast of America. His ambition to display the richness of native Indian life led to a job for him. Besides, Boas went to the Artic since he was overly interested in studying about the Eskimos and their relation to their environment.

4. What other observations did he make?

Other than the anthropological relation to culture, Boas made other observations such as the different ways in which culture was shaped, based on the differences in tribes. Besides, he made the observation that a majority of the scientists that had come before him some mix of both science and ethics, although in different proportions.

5. What knowledge that the Eskimo possessed impressed Boas?

Boas was impressed by the fact that the Eskimos had a detailed understanding of the landscape and also the fact that they could draw very good charts and maps since their knowledge of all the directions of the landscape were very detailed.

6. What conclusions did Boas come to about the relationship between environment and culture during his stay with the Inuit?

During his stay with the Inuit, Boas came up with the conclusion that the same environment will produce the same cultural development. Therefore, the lives of the people such as the Eskimos were entirely determined by their environment.

7. How did Boas come to the idea of cultural relativism?

Boas came up with the idea of cultural relativism based on the fact that the beliefs and practices of an individual are to be understood, concerning the persons culture.

8. What ideas guided his research in the Northwest Coast?

While at the American North West Coast, Boas research was primarily guided by the fact that he had changed his attitude far from any form of ethical reflection, and he together with his collaborators desecrated graves, this time for both financial and scientific purposes.

9. How did he change the way museum objects were displayed?

Boas changed the way the objects in the museum were displayed by placing each and every item in the museum in its original context. He understood where each and every item in the museum fitted in the North American Indian life.

10. Why did Boas think that language was important?

Soon after he began becoming aware of the importance of language, Boas believed that language played a great role since it served as a vehicle for transmitting cultural identity. In this regard, he understood that language was also part and parcel of the essence of any given culture.

11. What approach was prevalent when Boas was working on this project?

As Boas was working on his anthropological project, Historical particularism was the most prevalent approach, which he also happened to popularize. The reason as to why he popularized this approach was since he used it as an alternative to the existing world-wide theories of socio-cultural development.

12. What was Boas position on the question of race?

On the question of race, Boas position was that people from all races were equal and therefore, since there was no exact way to define it, he believed that it was then, of no scientific use. This being the case, he joined the black community in their racial campaigns and stated that there was no evidence that they were racially inferior. Therefore, he minimized the beliefs that race was an important determinant of human behavior.

13. What was Boas role as a teacher?

As a teacher, Boas did not only teach, but he was also responsible for organizing a massive research project that was known as the Jesup North Pacific Expedition. This was aimed at documenting facts about the physical characteristics, culture, and languages of all the tribes in the area. This also involved collecting the elaborate objects that they made.

14. What was the role of cultural relativism?

According to Boas, the role of cultural relativism was to enhance the understanding of the fact that a persons and activities ought to be understood based on the culture of that individual.