Reflections On The Shackles Of Tradition

Pioneers of Social Anthropology: The Shackles of tradition

The most important figure in The Shackles of Tradition is Franz Boas, a German born Anthropologist, whos greatest donation atomic number 18 his studies of Inuits and Kwakiutl of The Canadian Arctic and the United States Northwest, respectively. Born the son of a wealthy businessman and kindergarten teacher, in Minden Westphalia, Germany; Boas left national at 20 to study geography at the university of Heidelberg. In 1881 he studied the relation of the Eskimo to the environment. The only other leading light character in The Shackles of Tradition is George Hunt, a Tlingit Ethnologist whos greatest contri besidesion were the hundreds of pages of Kwakiutl folklore he documented.
Considered the Father of Modern Anthropology, so many of the issues Boas confronted in his day are cornerstones to Anthropology today. Boas was taught to believe that the Eskimos life was determined by the environment alone, but he later found that this was non so. Environment wasnt the only thing that determined culture.



Boas found that the Inuits didnt simply survived in the harsh Arctic, but they lived, often in spite of it.
I found Boas views of race to be interesting, but also sound, being that he had scientific substantiation to house it. Dr. William Willis says it best Boas was the first distinguished white Social Scientist from the US who minimized the importance of race as a determinative of human behavior. Boas advocated that there was barely any scientific proof of the concept of race. Perhaps the most important lesson we can turn around from Boas is that our own culture is not the apex of evolution; to boot diversity should be studied and preserved.If you want to get a full essay, order it on our website: Orderessay



If you want to get a full essay, wisit our page: write my essay .