Capsule bio of Franz Boas--link

[Jeffrey Kopp]

Hi, all.

I have a Web-bot ("TracerLock") set to monitor for certain keywords related
to my sites.  Today it brought back an interesting paper by Italian
professor of American history Alessandra Lorini, "The Cultural Wilderness
of Canadian Water in the Ethnography of Franz Boas,"
<http://www.cromohs.unifi.it/3_98/lorini.html> I found this brief
introduction to Boas' life and work informative; other sub-scholars like me
here might also find it helpful.

She explains that Boas, trained in Germany as a physicist, came to North
America to study the influences of geography and environment on the
movement of peoples. The author postulates Boas' childhood fascination with
and college work on water combined with the Northwest Native peoples' sea-,
river- and fish-oriented life and close friendships he made here to
engender his seminal ethnographic work on the North Coast, helping him
become the "father of modern anthropology."

Boas' grasp of the functional (and sophisticated) economic basis for
potlatch culture, as well as its social significance, is also described.

Regards,

Jeff
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