Biology Reference
In-Depth Information
depending on things such as country of birth, skin color, head shape and size, and other
physical or cultural traits. It assumes a priori that categories exist and therefore attempts to
classify each group and each physical and cultural characteristic. In contrast, the viewpoint
emphasizing the importance of the environment is a holistic one that explores and tests the
different processes leading to human variation (
Caspari, 2009
). Rather than making assump-
tions about the existence of discrete categories, it attempts to tease apart the complex envi-
ronmental variables that have impacted the expression of biology (
Caspari, 2009
).
Ale
s Hrdli
cka
cka immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe as a child in the late
nineteenth century. After training as a medical doctor, he went to France for a brief stay
where he received his first formal instruction in anthropology (
Brace, 2005
). Following a posi-
tion as a field anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, he
moved to the Smithsonian Institution where he would spend the bulk of his career as a phys-
ical anthropologist (
Brace, 2005
). Given his inspiration by Paul Broca's Anthropology Society of
Paris, Hrdli
Ale
s Hrdli
cka tried for years to set up a similar organization in the United States, which ulti-
mately culminated in the creation of the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (AJPA) in
1918 and the later founding of the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA)
in 1929 (
Spencer, 1981; Brace, 2005
). His position of authority within the museum, the journal,
and the organization allowed Hrdli
cka to manage how anthropology could inform public
discourse about race
d
the social meaning of race is implicit here (
Caspari, 2009
). For
example, he personally played a role in influencing public policy on immigration in the
United States by testifying before Congress in 1922 about his views on the hierarchical
arrangement of the races and biological determinism (
Oppenheim, 2010
).
Hrdli
cka essentially viewed the different races as “stems of humanity” (as many of his
contemporaries did) and focused his questions on the number of races that existed (
Brace,
2005; Caspari, 2009; Oppenheim, 2010
:93). Hrdli
cka defined physical anthropology as the
study of comparative racial anatomy and emphasized a comparative, descriptive approach
towards the study of the three main racial groups as he classified them (white, black, and
yellow/brown); this emphasis was to best understand the white race (
Blakey, 1987; Caspari,
2009; Oppenheim, 2010
). Inherent in his thinking were elements of biological determinism.
He believed that the social differences between the races were due to different evolutionary
histories, and that the white race was superior (
Blakey, 1987; Oppenheim, 2010
). While
Hrdli
cka did not produce students in his position at the Smithsonian, his founding of the
two major organs of our discipline (the AJPA and AAPA) and his extensive scholarship
solidified his status as one of the fathers of physical anthropology, deterministic views
aside.
Franz Boas
Franz Boas held a PhD in physics from a German university but began practicing anthro-
pology in the late nineteenth century. He took a full-time faculty position at Columbia
University in New York in 1905 after spending several years at the American Museum of
Natural History (
Spencer, 1981; Caspari, 2009
). Early on, he did ethnographic research
