Franz Boas - The Shackles of Tradition

Part of a television series on 'Strangers Abroad' shown in the 1990's. This is on the distinguished anthropologist Franz Boas. All credits to director, producer etc. are at the end of the film. For interviews of other anthropologists and other anthropological materials, please see www.alanmacfarlane.com

All revenues to World Oral Literature Project

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• Boas
• Franz
• anthropology

[hansniclas]

Supposed racial differences according to boas means radical genetic differences; no human has proven to be so genetically different that you’d classify them as belonging to a different race. What you attribute to biology is essentially the same thing that boas attributes to biology; people within different social groups tend to marry within their own group and reproduce biological traits specific to that group. That is what is meant by social level and it does not constitute race.

[knightschwartz]

@hansniclas race exists on a biological level. If it did not then how on earth could one exsplain the medical differences between races. Doctors have found blacks to be more suspectible to certian medical risks which even Tim Wise admits europeans the same. By at a "social level" I assume you mean the idea of race is mass delusion. we know for a fact race is not skin deep. half of what u write is meaningless academic mumbo jumbo.

[hansniclas]

@knightschwartz Boas never discarded the idea of race on a social level. He says that "race" is just not a reality when it comes to biology; saying that a south african man is more inclined to rape women because his genes is complete nonsense. It all goes back to the entanglement with his own specific "system of meanings" and what sociologist like to call "socialization".

[knightschwartz]

Read Kevin Macdonald on Boas. He was a absolute fraud who said race did not exist.

[CrazyNative4]

this is cool

[AlainG80]

@quatroseven

Scientific ethics is based upon full disclosure, if that information is withhold like with lying by omission. You are blaming the scientists while you ought to blame the marketing guys at big pharma who probably withhold crucial information from the scientists. Please buy some Philosophy of science books, since you and Fringe Elemens have really bad reasons for dismissing it (falsification). And don't understand the fallacies you preach.

If you want help, feel free to ask.

[quatroseven]

@AlainG80

I give you proof that the authoritative measure you pray to does not work and you give me more authoritative reasoning. I guess the education system now is only there to promote the dumbest people to a title.

[AlainG80]

@quatroseven

Since it's not a peer reviewed article that statement is a red herring.

[quatroseven]

@AlainG80

Yeah right, i bet the parents of thousands of sick narcoleptic children had the same trust in "scientific ethics" when they gave there kids the swine flue vaccination last year.

[socrates856]

@fringeelements Well except of course that you completely forget to mention all the other literature on the reanalysis of Boas, and the actual conclusion in the field that is not sensationalized by NYT. That's how ideologues function, just present and collect enough "evidence" to reaffirm a narrative, not do honest scholarship on what is actually the case.

The fact that you are a racist has nothing to do with the bigger problem, which is that you spread dishonest propaganda.