Franz Boas and the Culture Concept in Historical Perspective

It has been argued that Franz Boas contributed little to the emergence of the culture concept in anthropology and in fact hindered its growth. In the context of an earlier re-evaluation of the role of E. B. Tylor, it is argued here that in the work of Boas the concept was in fact provided with much of the basis of its modern anthropological meaning. In developing his argument against racial mental differences, Boas proceeded by showing that the behavior of all men, regardless of race or cultural stage, was determined by a traditional body of habitual behavior patterns passed on through what we would now call enculturative processes and buttressed by ethically tainted secondary rationalizations. The behavioral significance of the older humanist-evolutionist idea of culture was thus inverted, and the basis laid for the notion of culture as a primary determinant of behavior.