Franz Boas: References & Edit History

Boas’s early professional struggles and their strain on his personal life are detailed in Douglas Cole, Franz Boas: The Early Years, 1858–1906 (1999). A useful discussion of the roles played by Boas and his students in establishing the major theoretical trends and institutional contexts of 20th-century Americanist anthropology may be found in Regna Darnell, And Along Came Boas: Continuity and Revolution in Americanist Anthropology (1998). Boas was instrumental in fighting racism within anthropology and in the wider venue of public policy, as demonstrated in George W. Stocking, Race, Culture and Evolution (1968); Marshall Hyatt, Franz Boas, Social Activist: The Dynamics of Ethnicity (1990); Vernon J. Williams, Jr., Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and His Contemporaries (1996); and Lee D. Baker, From Savage to Negro: Anthropology and the Construction of Race, 1896–1954 (1998).