In the summer of 1883, Franz Boas, widely regarded as one of the fathers of Inuit anthropology, sailed from Germany to Baffin Island to spend a year among the Inuit of Cumberland Sound. This was his introduction to the Arctic and to anthropological fieldwork. This book presents, for the first time, his letters and journal entries from the year that he spent among the Inuit, providing not only an insightful background to his numerous scientific articles about Inuit culture, but a comprehensive and engaging narrative as well. Using a Scottish whaling station as his base, Boas travelled widely with the Inuit, learning their language, living in their tents and snow houses, sharing their food, and experiencing their joys and sorrows. At the same time he was taking detailed notes and surveying and mapping the landscape and coastline. Ludger Müller-Wille has transcribed his journals and his letters to his parents and fiancé and woven these texts into a sequential narrative. The result is a fascinating study of one of the earliest and most successful examples of participatory observation among the Inuit. Originally published in German in 1994, the text has been translated into English by William Barr, who has also published translations of other important works on the history of the Arctic. Illustrated with some of Boas's own photos and with maps of his field area, Franz Boas among the Inuit of Baffin Island, 1883-1884 is a valuable addition to the historical and anthropological literature on southern Baffin Island.

Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt tells the remarkable story of Franz Boas, one of the leading scholars and public intellectuals of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The first book in a two-part biography, Franz Boas begins with the anthropologist's birth in Minden, Germany, in 1858 and ends with his resignation from the American Museum of Natural History in 1906, while also examining his role in training professional anthropologists from his berth at Columbia University in New York City. Zumwalt follows the stepping-stones that led Boas to his vision of anthropology as a four-field discipline, a journey demonstrating especially his tenacity to succeed, the passions that animated his life, and the toll that the professional struggle took on him. Zumwalt guides the reader through Boas's childhood and university education, describes his joy at finding the great love of his life, Marie Krackowizer, traces his 1883 trip to Baffin Land, and recounts his efforts to find employment in the United States. A central interest in the book is Boas's widely influential publications on cultural relativism and issues of race, particularly his book The Mind of Primitive Man (1911), which reshaped anthropology, the social sciences, and public debates about the problem of racism in American society. Franz Boas presents the remarkable life story of an American intellectual giant as told in his own words through his unpublished letters, diaries, and field notes. Zumwalt weaves together the strands of the personal and the professional to reveal Boas's love for his family and for the discipline of anthropology as he shaped it.

This early work by Franz Boas was originally published in 1888 and we are now republishing it with a brand new introductory biography. 'The Central Eskimo' was his first monograph and details his time spent on Baffin Island studying the Inuit people. Franz Boas was born on July 9th 1958, in Minden, Westphalia. Even though Boas had a passion the natural sciences, he enrolled at the University at Kiel as an undergraduate in Physics. Boas completed his degree with a dissertation on the optical properties of water, before continuing his studies and receiving his doctorate in 1881. Boas became a professor of Anthropology at Columbia University in 1899 and founded the first Ph.D program in anthropology in America. He was also a leading figure in the creation of the American Anthropological Association (AAA). Franz Boas had a long career and a great impact on many areas of study. He died on 21st December 1942.

Addressing, for the first time, the enigma of how Franz Boas came to be the central founder of anthropology and a driving force in the acceptance of science as part of societal life in North America, this exploration breaks through the linguistic and cultural barriers that have prevented scholars from grasping the importance of Boas’s personal background and academic activities as a German Jew. Müller-Wille argues that to fully appreciate Boas’s complete scientific and literary opus and deep emotional and intellectual attachment to the upbringing that shaped his life, it is crucial to become familiar with his publications in German on Inuit and the Arctic as related to environmental, geographical, and ethnological questions, which have remained largely unknown and neglected in North America. These writings represent his emerging scientific interpretations of Inuit culture and the Arctic, and provide insight into the crucial period of Inuit history dominated by European and North American colonial expansion into their homeland more than 130 years ago. With detailed documentation that will be of great use to academics, this book is also written in a lively prose that will prove accessible even to lay readers as they gain a deeper understanding of the eminent cultural anthropologist’s academic background and thinking as well as his personal and intellectual life path.

Contains a collection of twenty-three essays originally appearing in the journal "Natural Language and Linguistic Theory."

Anthropologists are often reluctant to present their work relating to matters of a broad social context to the wider public even though many have much to say about a range of contemporary issues. In this second edition of a classic work in the field, Edward J. Hedican takes stock of Anthroplogy's research on current indigenous affairs and offers an up-to-date assessment of Aboriginal issues in Canada from the perspective of applied Anthropology. In his central thesis, Hedican underlines Anthropology's opportunity to make a significant impact on the way Aboriginal issues are studied, perceived, and interpreted in Canada. He contends that anthropologists must quit lingering on the periphery of debates concerning land claims and race relations and become more actively committed to the public good. His study ranges over such challenging topics as advocacy roles in Aboriginal studies, the ethics of applied research, policy issues in community development, the political context of the self-government debate, and the dilemma of Aboriginal status and identity in Canada. Applied Anthropology in Canada is an impassioned call for a revitalized Anthropology - one more directly attuned to the practical problems faced by First Nations peoples. Hedican's focus on Aboriginal issues gives his work a strong contemporary relevance that bridges the gap between scholarly and public spheres.