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Boas and HolismA Textual AnalysisUniversity of Montreal, Quebec Some anthropologists advocate going back to Boass anthropology to retrieve his sense of the individual and agency, among other things. Such a "psycho-logical Boas" could only exist in his holistic works. Elsewhere, I argued in a very synthetic way that Boass ethnography was not holistic. Here, I move a step further; perusing the very texts that famous commentators have singled out to prove Boass holism, I discover no holism; I find history as mere movement in space, and no individual agents; hence, no real psychology or agency. I only discern cultural fragments randomly assembling to form regional cultures.
Key Words: neo-Boasian anthropology Boas holism history of anthropology
Philosophy of the Social Sciences, Vol. 36, No. 3,
276-302 (2006) |
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