The study of geography? Franz Boas and his canonical returns

Journal article

Amongst historians of geography, very little attention has been paid to Franz Boas's ambitious vision for ‘The Study of Geography’ published in Science in 1887. Historians of anthropology have, on the contrary, understood Boas's paper on geography as the cornerstone of his developing anthropological interest. This paper argues that the reason for this revolves around competing understandings of canonicity between geography and anthropology. ‘The Study of Geography’, alone among Boas's early geographical writings, is placed centrally within the anthropological canon. The paper shows how such interpretations locate a Boasian conversion to an ostensibly more mature disciplinary practice to his Arctic fieldwork on Baffin Island, 1883–84. In doing so, Boas was canonized, as were some of his texts and practices. The effect was that post-1945 North American anthropology was acutely Boasian.

This paper disputes aspects of this conventional narrative, using aspects of Boas's corpus and education to argue that there was a more complex relationship between discussions in German human geography in the 1880s and the development of American cultural anthropology into the twentieth century. In doing so, the paper examines the relationship of Boas, his texts and practices, to the geographical canon and notes his recent recovery in French scholarship. In consequence, the implications of these canonical turns and returns for conceptions of canonicity in geography are discussed.

Authors: Powell, R

• Publication status: Published
• Peer review status: Peer reviewed
• Publisher: Elsevier
• Journal: Journal of Historical Geography
• Volume: 49
• Pages: 21–30
• Publication date: 2015-07-31
• Acceptance date: 2015-04-14
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jhg.2015.04.018
• ISSN: 0305-7488
• Language: English
• Keywords: canon; history of geography; Franz Boas; Arctic; history of anthropology; field work