Question 1

U.S. and British colonialism in the nineteenth century was based on the idea of bringing democracy to people living in the colonized parts of the world.

Accepted Answer

U.S. and British colonialism in the nineteenth century was based on the idea of expanding their empires and exerting control over the resources and people of colonized parts of the world. Democracy was not necessarily a priority or goal for these colonial powers.

Question 2

Widespread concern about &#34;absorbing semicivilized states&#34; into the United States repeatedly prevented American presidents from seeking annexation of Central American and Caribbean territories.

Accepted Answer

This statement is true. Many Americans in the 19th and early 20th centuries were worried that annexing territories with populations they considered to be culturally inferior or lesser developed would harm the United States economically and socially. This concern was particularly strong in regards to Central America and the Caribbean.

Question 3

According to Langness, one of the implications of Ernest Haeckel's &#34;Biogenetic Law&#34; is that the thought and behavior of &#34;savages&#34; is like that of children in civilized societies.

Accepted Answer

Langness argues that Haeckel's "Biogenetic Law" suggests that the mental and behavioral development of "savages" (i.e. non-Western cultures) follows a similar trajectory to that of children in civilized societies, which reinforces colonialist attitudes and assumptions about superiority.

Question 4

Boas criticized the notion of &#34;psychic unity&#34; by pointing out that the same trait in different cultures often served quite different purposes.

Accepted Answer

Boas believed that cultural differences were not just superficial but went down to the core of human experience. He argued that the same human trait or behavior could have different meanings and roles in different cultures, and therefore, there was no universal or fixed human nature. This contradicted the idea of "psychic unity," which assumed that all humans shared the same basic psychological and emotional makeup.

Question 5

The idea that all great inventions originated just once, in ancient Egypt, was a claim advanced by the German Kulturkreis school of diffusion.

Accepted Answer

The idea that all great inventions originated just once in ancient Egypt was not a claim advanced by the German Kulturkreis school of diffusion.

Question 6

Eighteenth-century German philosopher Immanuel Kant claimed that our perceptions of the world are constrained by pre-existing categories of mind, such as moral ideas and individual concepts of space and time.

Accepted Answer

Kant's philosophy included the idea that our knowledge of the world is shaped by our pre-existing mental structures or categories, which he referred to as "pure concepts of the understanding." These include concepts of space, time, and causality, as well as moral ideas such as the categorical imperative. Kant argues that our experiences of the world are filtered through these mental constructs, and that we cannot know things as they are in themselves, but only as they appear to us through the lens of our conceptual framework.

Question 7

Boas argued that in principle there were no differences between the goals of the natural sciences and the social sciences.

Accepted Answer

Boas believed that the goals of the natural sciences and social sciences were different. He argued that natural sciences seek to explain phenomena through general laws, while social sciences focus on understanding the unique qualities of human culture and behavior.

Question 8

The goal of Boas's &#34;salvage ethnography&#34; was to engage in as much theoretical debate as possible so that the pressing anthropological questions of evolution vs. diffusion could be settled once and for all.

Accepted Answer

Boas's goal with salvage ethnography was not to settle pressing anthropological questions, but rather to document and preserve the cultures of indigenous peoples before they disappeared due to modernization and assimilation. Boas believed that every culture was unique and valuable, and that anthropologists should aim to understand and appreciate this diversity rather than trying to fit everything into a universal evolutionary framework.

Question 9

Boas might be considered an early proponent of the deductive approach in anthropology, allowing his theory to guide his collection and interpretation of data.

Accepted Answer

Franz Boas is actually considered a pioneer of the inductive approach in anthropology, where he emphasized the importance of collecting data through fieldwork before forming theories, rather than letting preconceived theories guide the interpretation of data.

Question 10

Boas basically shared Comte's and Durkheim's &#34;organismic&#34; view that all the elements of a culture stood in some kind of functional relationship to one another.

Accepted Answer

Franz Boas rejected the "organismic" analogy of societies that was popular among early sociologists like Comte and Durkheim. He emphasized the importance of understanding the unique historical development of each culture, rather than assuming that all societies evolve through the same stages or function in the same way.

Deck 7: The Boasian Revolution