Boas and Holism

Abstract

Some anthropologists advocate going back to Boas's anthropology to retrieve his sense of the individual and agency, among other things. Such a "psychological Boas" could only exist in his holistic works. Elsewhere, I argued in a very synthetic way that Boas's ethnography was not holistic. Here, I move a step further; perusing the very texts that famous commentators have singled out to prove Boas's holism, I discover no holism; I find history as mere movement in space, and no individual agents; hence, no real psychology or agency. I only discern cultural fragments randomly assembling to form regional cultures.