Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages and Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico by Franz Boas

Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages and Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico by Franz Boas

Combines two classics on the nature of native languages of North America: Boas' famous 1911 essay pointing to new methods of research and Powell's pioneering 1891 work on classification. This work is intended for students of linguistics, as well as for Americanists and anthropologists in general.

Franz Boas was born in Germany in 1858 and educated at the University of Kiel. His first anthropological fieldwork was among the Inuit in Northern Canada in 1883, a turning point in Boas's life as he became fascinated with the role of culture. He began lecturing at the University of Columbia in 1896, establishing the first department of Anthropology in the United States and becoming Columbia's first professor of Anthropology, a position he held for thirty-seven years. He influenced an astonishing variety of scholars and researchers, from the anthropologists Margaret Mead and Ruth Benedict to the philosopher W. E. B. DuBois and writer Zora Neale Hurston. Boas is the early-twentieth-century scholar most responsible for discrediting the then-dominant scientific theories of racial superiority. Through his elaboration of cultural relativism as an alternative theoretical framework, he came to have an enormous influence on the development of American anthropology. The Mind of Primitive Man (1911), demonstrated that there was no such thing as a 'pure' race or a superior one. His books were banned in Hitler's Germany. He was a fierce advocate of intellectual freedom, supported many democratic causes, and was the founder of the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780803250178
ISBN 10	0803250177
Title	Introduction to Handbook of American Indian Languages and Indian Linguistic Families of America North of Mexico
Author	Franz Boas
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	University of Nebraska Press
Year published	1991-09-01
Number of pages	221
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.