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The Franz Boas Enigma
Inuit, Arctic, and Sciences
By Ludger Müller-Wille Baraka Books
Copyright © 2014 Baraka Books
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-77186-015-4
CHAPTER 1
"... the elementary relationship between land and people ...": Geographical and Ethnological Paradigms
Ever since Franz Boas published his monumental work The Central Eskimo (1888), his English writings have been seminal in the expansion of the scientific fields of Cultural Anthropology and Folklore, and more specifically, Arctic Anthropology, Eskimology, Inuit Anthropology, and Inuit Studies in North America and beyond (Krupnik 2014). The 1888 monograph has been quoted over and over again and is often referred to as one of the major starting points of scientific endeavours regarding the peoples in the North American Arctic (Freeman 1984). In this appreciation there has been a neglected dimension of the considerable and important scientific opus that Boas had already published in German during the 1880s. In those publications he had already presented the foundation of his own scientific approach to studying the relationship between Inuit and the Arctic environment.
In the temporal context, Boas was particularly influenced by the geographer Friedrich Ratzel and his concept of Anthropogeographie, a neologism that Ratzel coined and which he applied to give proper attention to the human element in the physical environment. It was a novel approach, the moderne Geographie, as it was called in the 1880s, to study the interplay and relations between Mensch and Erde/Umwelt, humanity and earth/environment (Ratzel 1882). This concept had a considerable impact on Boas's thinking (Speth 1978, 1999). In fact, it became the scientific framework that Boas used, based on his research experience with the Inuit in the Arctic, to develop the "ecological approach," as it would be called later, to study human-environmental relations (Wenzel 1984:90-92, Müller-Wille 1994:30-32, Müller-Wille, ed. 1994:7-11, 1998:11-15).
Boas's German writings and publications between 1883-1894, in which he focussed on Inuit and the Arctic environment are a fascinating and essential source. These works became his defining and lasting contributions to the field that became known as Eskimology in the Danish-Greenlandic tradition and, since the 1970s, as Inuit Studies in Canada and other regions (Études/Inuit/Studies 1977). By the late 1980s these fields were complemented by the emergence of Arctic Social Sciences in a broader sense to accommodate growing interest in research throughout the circumpolar North (Krupnik & Müller-Wille, eds. 2010), more than one hundred years after Boas's early scientific endeavours in the Arctic on Baffin Land, today Qikiqtaaluk / Baffin Island.
In 1885, Boas wrote his first book in German entitled Baffin-Land after his stay with the Inuit in 1883-1884. He offered this succinct summary of his early scientific paradigm: "If the concern is to express the living conditions of human beings with regard to their dependence on the nature of the land, then we need to seek to explain the elementary relationship between land and people very precisely as part of this complex phenomenon." (Boas 1885h:62). As the eminent anthropologist and social scientist that Boas would later become, he has been and continues to be at the centre of discussions that deal with the history of science and the evolution of cultural anthropology in particular. It is therefore not surprising that scholars have been particularly interested in Boas's early education and academic career in Germany in the 1870s and 1880s, leading to the publication of The Central Eskimo, and have analysed his emergence as an influential social scientist and scholar (e.g. Cole 1983, 1999, Cole & Müller-Wille 1984, Dürr et al. 1992, Espagne & Kalinowski 2013, Liss 1995, 1996, Müller-Wille 1983, ed. 2008, Saladin d'Anglure 1984, Stocking 1965, 1996). Yet, despite a number of published biographical assessments and sketches of Boas's life (e.g. Lowie 1947, Willis, Jr. 1972, Liss 1996, Cole 1999, Boas, N. 2004, Zumwalt 2013a, to name but a few), "... Boas has remained an enigma, so misunderstood as a person and so often misrepresented as an anthropologist," as William S. Willis, Jr. pointed out succinctly in 1975 (quoted in Zumwalt & Willis, Jr. 2008:26). It seems that this is still the case more than seventy years after his death on December 21, 1942.
During the 1880s Boas lived and worked in Germany (to June 1883, and again between March 1885 and July 1886), on Baffin Land in the Arctic (June 1883 to September 1884), and in the United States (September 1884 to March 1885 and again as of July 1886 to his death in December 1942). All his life Boas was a consummate and prolific writer publishing constantly in both German and English. Over the span of more than forty years between 1883-1926, he published 87 works of various types and lengths on Inuit and the Arctic: of those, 42 items were in German and 45 in English (see Bibliography for complete list; Müller-Wille 2014). His first publication period between 1883 and 1888 was very intense, with 42 items in German and 27 in English, in all 69 or two thirds of the 87 works. Between 1889 and 1926, his output was 19 publications, one in German and 18 in English.
It is understood that counting titles is just a numerical value and does not provide an adequate assessment of the quality and depth of these publications, which, in Boas's case, varied in length between less than one page and several hundred pages, often with numerous illustrations and maps. Boas's complete bibliography includes 725 titles of publications (711 listed for the period between 1880 and 1943 [Andrews and others 1943] and an additional fourteen unrecorded works found and verified by the author). The opus of publications with titles and content focussed on Inuit and the Arctic represents about twelve percent of his complete bibliography. In many of his other publications Boas referred to the Inuit and the Arctic environment for comparative reasons, presenting particular cases and aspects of ethnography and geography.
These publications represent an extensive body of his work within the realms of geography and ethnology concentrating on the Inuit, their culture and their physical environment. Half of these publications appeared in scientific journals and series, along with one substantial book. The other half consisted of journalistic articles and essays in newspapers and magazines. For obvious reasons the scientific publications in his native German were very much situated within the context of the Central European academic traditions of the time. They were also shaped by the rapidly expanding emergence of Geographie, of which Ethnologie or Völkerkunde was still considered a part. During the second half of the nineteenth century geography became established as a strong institutional academic discipline in Europe and particularly in German universities. It was taught as Heimatkunde und Erdkunde, regional (national) and global geography, at practically all levels in the various German school systems.
In order to document and discuss Boas's German publications on Inuit and the Arctic of the 1880s as well as his diaries, letters, and manuscripts published posthumously (Cole 1983, Müller-Wille, ed. 1992, 1994, 1998), it is important to explain both his biographical context and his academic departure and career as they relate to the concepts and the methodologies he applied in his studies and research.
Boas was born on July 9, 1858 into a German Jewish family in Minden (Westphalia) in Germany, where his parents owned a thriving textile store (Boas, N. 2007:1-4). He went to primary school for four years and to the nine-year Gymnasium, high school, and received the Abitur, matriculation certificate, on February 12, 1877. This date coincided with Charles Darwin's birthday, which, as he said, he would never forget. He studied nine subjects — German, Latin, Greek, French, history, geography, mathematics, physics, and physical education — and obtained grades of "good" or "satisfactory," and the highest grade, "excellent," in mathematics. In physical education he excelled as the Obervorturner, lead demonstrator in gymnastics, acquiring indispensable skills and constitution for later in life when he would meet physical challenges such as travelling under Arctic conditions (APS/FBFP). Obtaining the Abitur qualified him to study any subject at any German university.
Boas entered university for the summer term of 1877 and attended lectures and seminars in physics, chemistry, mathematics, geography, geology, philosophy, and even, briefly, Russian at the universities in Heidelberg (1877), Bonn (1877-1879), and finally Kiel (1879-1881). He obtained his doctorate — Dr. phil. Doctor philosophiae) — in Physics as Hauptfach or Major with dissertation, supervised by Gustav Karsten, and Nebenfächer or Minors in Geography with Theobald Fischer and in Philosophy with Benno Erdmann. On August 9, 1881 he passed the final examination and received the diploma with magna cum laude, the second highest grade, from Albert Ladenburg, the Dean of the Faculty of Philosophy at the Christian-Albrechts-Universität at Kiel. His professors, who were also his examiners, judged his dissertation to be a "specimen diligentiae et acumeninis valde laudabilis," an example of diligence and very laudable acumen (Boas 1881; APS/FBPP, FBFP).
Despite this academic praise Boas felt himself to be very much at an intellectual crossroads. He had not yet found his intellectual footing nor the focus which would allow him to aim at a career as a university professor. Moreover he was not quite sure that he wanted to pursue such a career. His trepidation certainly stemmed partly from the strong public anti-Semitic agitations by Judenhetzern, Jew baiters, as Boas called them and with whom he had negative encounters and altercations in Kiel. In early July 1881, to increase his chances for employment, Boas signed up to take the state examination in geography and philosophy to qualify as a Gymnasiallehrer, high school teacher. However, he dropped that plan later that year. He also had ambivalent feelings about his doctoral thesis in physics in which he investigated the changing colour of the water in the Baltic Sea. This he considered to be a gemässigtes Opus, a moderate piece of work (letters to parents, January-July 1881, APS/FBFP). Soon after the doctorate, leaving pure physics completely aside, he ventured first into psychophysics, publishing a number of articles in 1881-1882 (Andrews and others 1943:67) and also began his one-year voluntary military service on October 1, 1881.
At this juncture, Boas turned again to his earlier interests in geography and particularly the polar regions of North America and their Eingeborenen, Natives, the Eskimos. In 1881-1882, while in the military in Minden, Boas was billeted at his parents' home and found leisure time at night to read and escape the daytime boredom of the barracks and the Feldlager or manoeuvre camp (Cole & Müller-Wille 1984:40). On April 4, 1882, he wrote his former professor Fischer that he had decided to leave physics and psychophysics aside to pursue studies in contemporary 'modern geography', as it was called in the early 1880s (APS/FBPP; Cole & Müller-Wille 1984:40-41). On May 14, 1882, anticipating his future direction in research, he mentioned to his sister Hedwig that his only distraction in the army was to read "... off and on ... something about my Eskimos and make notes afterwards." (APS/FBFP; underlined in the original).
Boas's own academic readings were very much spurred by the current waves of scientific efforts in polar science and opportunities offered by the novel International Polar Year, staged in 1882-1883. The German Polar Commission and its scientists participated in this first international scientific program and in its coordinated global network based on synchronized data collection at fixed locations. Germany established and managed research stations on Baffin Land and Labrador in the Arctic and on South Georgia in the sub-Antarctic ocean. In fact, Franz Boas with his Diener, servant Wilhelm Weike, was soon headed to test his own assumptions about Arctic societies and their life and environment during a year-long stay among Inuit and a few American and Scottish whalers on Baffin Land in 1883-1884. Between September 1882 and September 1883 the German Polar Commission had maintained a research station at Kingua at the north end of Cumberland Sound, called Tinijjuarvik then and today Kangiqtualuk in Inuktitut (Cole & Müller-Wille 1984:38-41, Müller-Wille, ed. 1998:6-11, 85-90).
In the scientific context of the early 1880s Boas's research foci became a blending of geographical exploration and discovery with cartography, concentrating on Physiogeo-graphie and Anthropogeographie with hints of ethnography, ethnology, and physical anthropology. By the mid-1880s, after his critical and defining Arctic sojourn, Boas was extensively studying the human-environmental relations as a geographical problem in time and space. Theobald Fischer, with whom he had taken seminars in polar geography, strongly encouraged him in his endeavours. He wrote Boas that "... he [Boas] could, in fact, advance science significantly by thorough studies of the migrations of the Eskimos and their causes." (April 4, 1882, APS/FBPP; Müller-Wille, ed. 1998:12).
By early 1883, before leaving for the North American Arctic, spurred on by Fischer and others, Boas had decided it would be opportune to advance his academic career in the field of geography by obtaining the Habilitation after his research with the Inuit. This degree would qualify him as Privatdozent, a prerequisite to get a Ruf, a call to a chair in a discipline as Ordinarius / Ordentlicher Professor or full professor at a German university. In the German university system the Habilitation is a postdoctoral degree — Dr. habil. (Doctor habilitatus) — and the qualification to be appointed to a professorship. The procedure entails the submission of a treatise (Habilitationsschrift) and other published works for either internal or external evaluation by several assessors. Once accepted, the Habilitand presents a lecture at the Habilitationskolloquium before all professorial members of the faculty, who all vote on passing or failing the candidate. The successful candidate is invited to hold the public Antrittsvorlesung or Praelectio, the inaugural lecture, to obtain the venia legendi, the authorization to lecture as a Privatdozent, usually an unpaid position (see also Fallon 1976:41-44).
After his interlude in the United States in 1884-1885 Boas would pass the Habilitation in Berlin in June 1886. With that success Boas became very much embedded in and influenced by the concepts of modern geography, as it was understood in Germany at that time. This was more noticeable in his expanding research, publications, and evolving academic networks than has been generally understood by non-German reading scholars, mainly anthropologists, in North America, including those who analysed Boas's academic and scientific career extensively (Stocking 1965). The geographer William W. Speth (1978, 1999) highlighted Boas's contributions to geography in a broader historic context showing the need "... to survey the persistence of Boasian anthropogeography in its various expressions and manifestations," as Kent Mathewson (2002:380) wrote in reviewing Speth's work. In 1947, Robert H. Lowie, one of Boas's first doctoral students at Columbia University, remarked that "... for years I failed to grasp how carefully he [Boas] took cognizance of geographical factors." (Lowie 1947:313). In fact, as an example, Boas used cartography as a means to convey the importance of geographical dimension and interpretation. In many publications over the span of his career he included maps, which in almost all cases he had either surveyed, drawn, or designed himself. The visualization of space and spatial organization of both physical and human elements were an integral part of his presentations.
Boas pursued this academic strategy successfully by situating himself firmly in geography, and only later in the 1880s did he move gradually into ethnology, folklore, and anthropology, as he defined this new discipline propagating the Boasian "science of man" in the widest sense (Broce 1973:32-35). In 1883, with respect to methods and methodology, he found himself between the prevalent geographical approach of spatial Entdeckung or discovery of uncharted lands carried out by expeditions, and the novel application of stationary Feldforschung, field research as it was already being conducted in polar sciences. He opted clearly for the latter approach, calling his research among the Inuit a Forschungsreise or research journey, not an expedition, in the title of his Baffin-Land book (Boas 1885h).
Boas's academic development intertwined with his personal growth and with the changes and events he experienced that had an enduring impact during that period of his life and later on (Cole 1999:38-62, 83-104, Boas, N. 2004: 20-40, Lowie 1947, Verne 2004, Bender-Wittmann 2007, Zumwalt 2013a). These factors include:
• His increasingly competing loyalties to his family in Germany — his mother Sophie and father Meier, older sister Antonie and younger sisters Hedwig and Aenna — and to Marie Krackowizer in New York City in the United States. He had met Marie Krackowizer first through family connections in Germany in 1881 and was secretly engaged in May 1883 (Boas, N. 2004:290-291,295 and Rabbi Bernhard Brilling [1966] about Franz Boas's ancestors and the background of his Jewish-Westphalian family back to the seventeenth century).
(Continues...)
Excerpted from The Franz Boas Enigma by Ludger Müller-Wille. Copyright © 2014 Baraka Books. Excerpted by permission of Baraka Books.
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