Chapter I: Front Matter

ANTHROPOLOGY
_and Modern Life_

_By_
Franz Boas, Ph.D.
Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University

NEW YORK
W · W · NORTON & COMPANY, INC
_Publishers_

Copyright, 1928
W · W · NORTON & COMPANY, INC.

PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
FOR THE PUBLISHERS BY THE VAN REES PRESS

Contents {p. v}

CHAPTER PAGE

I. WHAT IS ANTHROPOLOGY? 11

Anthropology treats of man as a member of a social
group--Pure and applied anthropology.

II. THE PROBLEM OF RACE 18

Significance of the term “Race”--Overlapping of racial
types--Subjective existence of types--Racial heredity and
family lines--Inbred and heterogeneous types--Functional
differences between individuals of the same bodily
form--Environmental influences upon bodily form--Races
considered from an evolutionary viewpoint--Relation between
the size of the brain and intelligence--Man as a domesticated
form--Physiological and mental differences between
races--Difficulty of distinguishing between hereditary and
environmental conditions--Significance of intelligence
tests--Tests of American Negroes--Relative importance of
cultural experience and racial descent--Racial descent
disregarded by ethnologists.

III. THE INTERRELATION OF RACES 62

Race consciousness--Open and closed societies--Race a type
of closed society--Intermingling of races--Conditions under
which race antipathies break down.

IV. NATIONALISM 78

Confusion between the terms “Race” and “Nationality”--Mixed
descent of European nations--Language as basis of national
groupings--Culture and political organization as basis of
nationality--Fictitious groupings based on distant relation
of speech--Increase in size of political units--Early
development of tribal units--Decrease in feeling of
difference between tribal groups--The function of nationalism.

V. EUGENICS 102

Effects of selection--Effect of environment and
heredity--General degeneracy--Selection for development
of specific qualities--Social effects of eugenic
legislation--Elimination of the unfit--Dangers of eugenic
procedure.

VI. CRIMINOLOGY 120

Criminals as a class--Criminals as defectives--Social
conditions and crime--Relative importance of hereditary and
environmental factors.

VII. STABILITY OF CULTURE 131

Acceleration of cultural development--Periodicity of the
rate of change--Automatic habits--Relation between material
inventions and automatic habits--The relation between
language and thought--Actions are more stable than their
interpretations--Stability of patterns of thought--Negative
effect of automatism--Intolerance--Independence.

VIII. EDUCATION 164

Phenomena of growth and development--Influence of
heredity--Development of functions--Retardation and
acceleration--Comparison of sexes--Application of
generalized observations to the establishment of
educational standards--Racial characteristics--Cases in
which standards are applicable--Prediction of individual
development--Generalized standards are not applicable to
individuals--Cultural effects of education--Effect of
education upon mental freedom--Conflicts in educational
aims--Effect of education upon crises in the life of the
individual--The cultural outlook of classes--Cultural outlook
of educated class--Cultural outlook of the masses.

IX. MODERN CIVILIZATION AND PRIMITIVE CULTURE 198

Applicability of anthropology--Valuation of different
cultural aims--Objective study must be based on different
cultures--Anthropology an historic science--Prediction
of development of culture impossible--Primitive
cultures as historic growths--General social
laws--Progress in inventions and knowledge--Stability
of moral ideas--Progress in ethical behavior--Progress
in social organization--Leadership--Position of
woman--Marriage--Property--Is the direction of
cultural development predetermined?--Culture not
superorganic--Geographic and economic determinism.

REFERENCES 237