A Neo‐Boasian Conception of Cultural Boundaries

Abstract

For the past 30 years, anthropology's critics have repeatedly questioned the notion of “cultural boundaries,” arguing that concepts of culture inappropriately posit stable and bounded “islands” of cultural distinctiveness in an ever‐changing world of transnational cultural “flows.” This issue remains an Achilles' heel—or at least a recurring inflamed tendon—of anthropology. However, in the conception of boundaries, we still have much to learn from Boasian anthropologists, who conceived of boundaries not as barriers to outside influence or to historical change, but as cultural distinctions that were irreducibly plural, perspectival, and permeable. In this article, I retheorize and extend the Boasians' open concept of cultural boundaries, emphasizing how people's own ideas of “the foreign”—and the “own” versus the “other” distinction—give us a way out of the old conundrum in which the boundedness of culture, as conceived in spatial terms, seems to contradict the open‐ended nature of cultural experience.

Mon Dance: Creating Standards to Continue the Performing Arts of Thai-Raman

“…There are two ways for inheritence to occur: direct and indirect and the Mon culture was both directly passed on from one generation to the next and indirectly influenced by the surroundings of its new home (Pongsapit, 1994). This phenomenon was proposed by Franz Boas (1914;Bashkow, 2004;Chantachon, 2010) as is also rooted in the cultural ecology of Julian Steward (1990), which stated that culture in each society develops differently when influenced by different internal and external factors. In fact, there are four methods for the spread of culture from one society to the next, which are territorial expansion, historical research, archaeological excavation and observation (Kroeber, 1963).…”

Dancing in the House of Koryak Culture

“…We may find that, as Koryak culture (e.g., dances, souvenirs, shamanic knowledge) becomes an increasingly valuable commodity, people identifying themselves as Koryak and other indigenous Kamchatkans may shift to a more exclusive, essentialising discourse of culture in order to prevent the Russians and Ukrainians who have already appropriated their land and material assets from appropriating their spiritual and cultural assets as well (cf. Harrison 1999Harrison , 2000 6 For a nuanced analysis of boundaries and borders in a Boasian theory of culture, see Bashkow (2004) and Bunzl (2004). 7 Goldenweiser emphasises the point himself in a subsequent passage (1917: 449).…”

Too rare to be a token: An anthropologist in a management department

“…By anthropological standards, business school research on global cultures or countries has been dilettantish. Management has nothing along the lines of Bashkow (2004), Burton, Moore, Whiting andRomney (1996), or Hays (1993) (as examples). Fortunately, the superficiality of the literature in a niche can open up possibilities.…”