No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

In the late nineteenth century, Franz Boas joined other men of science who sought to establish a rational method of labeling and organizing variations in human complexion. For Boas, it was imperative to include Native Americans, especially given the prevailing notion that, in collision with white civilization, they were soon to become extinct. Thus, Boas undertook the massive endeavor of calculation and quantification of Indian bodies. This chapter argues that when Boas published his key work, The Mind of Primitive Man in 1911, he had taken important, if tentative, steps toward disrupting the scientific drive toward racial classification. By reading Boas's raw data sheets from the early 1890s along with his writings on an array of topics, one can speculate on the significance of this little-studied aspect of his progressive assertions about race in The Mind of Primitive Man.

No abstract