And Along Came Boas: Continuity and revolution in Americanist anthropology(86 Studies in the History of the Language Sciences)

The advent of Franz Boas on the North American scene irrevocably redirected the course of Americanist anthropology. This volume documents the revolutionary character of the theoretical and methodological standpoint introduced by Boas and his first generation of students, among whom linguist Edward Sapir was among the most distinguished. Virtually all of the classic Boasians were at least part-time linguists alongside their ethnological work. During the crucial transitional period beginning with the founding of the Bureau of American Ethnology in 1879, there were as many continuities as discontinuities between the work of Boas and that of John Wesley Powell and his Bureau. Boas shared with Powell a commitment to the study of aboriginal languages, to a symbolic definition of culture, to ethnography based on texts, to historical reconstruction on linguistic grounds, and to mapping the linguistic and cultural diversity of native North America. The obstacle to Boas’s vision of anthropology was not the Bureau but the archaeological and museum establishment centred in Washington, D.C. and in Boston. Moreover, the “scientific revolution” was concluded not when Boas began to teach at Columbia University in New York in 1897 but around 1920 when first generation Boasians cominated the discipline in institutional as well as theoretical terms. The impact of Boas is explored in terms of theoretical positions, interactional networks of scholars, and institutions within which anthropological work was carried out. The volume shows how collaboration of universities and museums gradually gave way to an academic centre for anthropology in North America, in line with the professionalization of American science along German lines during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. The author is Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Centre for Research and Teaching of Canadian Native Languages at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. She is a fellow of the Royal Society of Canada.

Table of Contents:
1. Frontispiece; 2. Preface; 3. Introduction: Continuities Across Scientific Revolutions; 4. I. The Bureau of American Ethnology; 5. 1 The Development of Professional Anthropology in America; 6. 2 Government-Sponsored Science; 7. 2.1 Joseph Henry and the Smithsonian Institution; 8. 2.2 Spencer Baird and the Collection of Specimens; 9. 2.3 The Geological Surveys; 10. 2.4 The Curtailment of Government Science; 11. 2.5 From Geology to Ethnology; 12. 3 Constraints of Government Anthropology; 13. 3.1 Bureau Archaeology; 14. 3.2 Finances of the Bureau; 15. 3.3 Applied Anthropology; 16. 3.4 The Limitation to the American Indian; 17. 4 The Mapping of North America; 18. 4.1 The Myth Concordance; 19. 4.2 Linguistic Manuscripts; 20. 4.3 Bibliographies; 21. 4.4 'Introduction to the Study of Indian Languages'; 22. 4.5 The Definition of Linguistic Families; 23. 4.6 Brinton's Linguistic Classification; 24. 4.7 The Authorship of the Powell Classification; 25. 5 Organizing Anthropological Research in America; 26. 5.1 Problems in Professional Standards; 27. 5.2 Bureau Fieldwork; 28. 5.3 Collaboration; 29. 5.4 The Missisonary Question; 30. 5.5 Powell's Evolutionary Synthesis; 31. 5.6 The End of an Era in the Bureau; 32. II. The Development of Institutional Alternatives; 33. 6 Early Attempts at University Anthropology; 34. 6.1 Graduate Education in America; 35. 6.2 False Starts in Academic Anthropology; 36. 6.3 The University of Pennsylvania; 37. 6.4 Clark University; 38. 6.5 The University of Chicago; 39. 6.6 The Temporary Insufficiency of Academic Anthropology; 40. 7 The Tradition of Museum Research; 41. 7.1 The Peabody Museum; 42. 7.2 The Bureau and the National Museum; 43. 7.3 Changing Times in the Bureau; 44. 8 Uneasy Institutional Cooperation; 45. 8.1 The Field Columbian Museum; 46. 8.2 The American Museum of Natural History; 47. 8.3 The University of California, Berkeley; 48. 9 Boasian University Programs; 49. 9.1 Boas's Teaching at Columbia; 50. 9.2 The University of Pennsylvania; 51. 9.3 Boasian Anthropology at Chicago; 52. 9.4 The Geological Survey of Canada; 53. 9.5 The Autonomy of Academic Anthropology; 54. III. Continued Mapping of North America; 55. 10 Boas and the Bureau of American Ethnology; 56. 10.1 From Synonymy to Handbook; 57. 10.2 Boas's 'Handbook of American Indian Languages'; 58. 10.3 The Myth Concordance; 59. 10.4 The Phonetics Committee; 60. 11 Mapping the Languages of California; 61. 11.1 'The Handbook of California Indians'; 62. 11.2 California Institutional Cooperation; 63. 12 Revising the Linguistic Classification; 64. 12.1 'Diffusional Cumulation' and 'Archaic Residue'; 65. 12.2 The Linguistic Stocks of California; 66. 12.3 The Sapir Classification; 67. 12.4 Radin and the Genetic Unity of All American Languages; 68. IV. Boasian Hegemony Consolidated; 69. 13 Formalizations in the Face of Opposition; 70. 13.1 The Establishment of a National Journal; 71. 13.2 The American Anthropological Association; 72. 13.3 The National Association Becomes Boasian; 73. 13.4 The American Folklore Society; 74. 13.5 The American Council of Learned Societies; 75. 13.6 Confrontations with the Old Establishment; 76. 13.7 Boasians in the Bureau; 77. 14 Articulating the Boasian Paradigm; 78. 14.1 The Content of the Boasian Paradigm; 79. 14.2 Boasian Ethnology; 80. 14.3 The Distribution of Folklore Elements; 81. 14.4 Boasian Fieldwork; 82. 14.5 The Culture Area Concept; 83. 14.6 The Critique of Evolution; 84. 14.7 The Emphasis on Cultural Wholes; 85. 14.8 Theoretical Syntheses; 86. 14.9 Envoi; 87. List of Illustrations; 88. Illustration Credits; 89. List of Figures; 90. References; 91. Index of Biographical Names; 92. Index of Subjects and Terms

Review :
It’s a measure of any really good book, ..., that it makes you change your mind. For me, Darnell’s work falls squarely into this category. This is a fascinating and insightful work that makes a major contribution to documenting the history of anthropology. [...] an ‘adequate history’ of American anthropology that successfully brings together theories, institutional structures, and networks of anthropologists and thereby convincingly demonstrates existing continuities across the Powellian and Boasian paradigms. [...] Darnell’s account of the shift from the Powellian to the Boasian paradigm makes fascinating reading and should be obligatory for anybody seriously interested in the history of American anthropology and linguistics. [...] Darnell’s dissertation has been the most important unpublished source for the history of the professionalization of North American anthropology, and it is a great pleasure to see it now become available, strongly updated, appropriately expanded, and compactly argued, to a wider audience. [...] a model of intellectual history [...]It will become a standard reference for the early years of American anthropology. [...] of interest not only to historians but also to anyone in anthropology — especially linguistics anthropology [...][...] to anyone who wants to understand more about what occurs at the critical junctures when theories change[...]