ANTH 3690 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Moral Relativism, Potlatch, Cultural Relativism
Document Summary
Documentary focused more on his history than his research. When climate is conducive to popular belief it is hard to get a job this is why boas left. Important for taking what comes to be cultural relativism, as he is the founder of the cultural relativist pov: done fieldwork, extended his language understanding, worked with hunt. Ruth benedict patterns of culture: basically she came up with a theoretical framework of patterns of culture. Said that cultures could be understood to almost have a personality and certain types of cultures would mean that people were more a certain way than another way. Kind of racist as it makes assumptions about a group. Against the first world war because he thought it was just sending working men to their death. But not against wwii: applied anthropological practices with margret mead and figured out that dating practices were different between american men and european women.