Did you know I wrote a course on human evolution? 🧬🦍🦧🐒🌱🌳 Check it out HERE: www.socratica.com/courses/human-evolution

Thanks for this -- I appreciate what you're doing. As a historian who is working on Great Plains cultures and the "invasion" of the European Empires, I discovered the wonderful work of one of Boas's students, Gene Weltfish, who also taught at Columbia (until they blacklisted her in the McCarthy era). Her book "The Lost Universe" on the Pawnee peoples is exemplary, especially in terms of its interdisciplinary approach. Also love the work of Boasians Frank Speck and A. Irving Hallowell. Thanks again and good luck with all!

This was informative! I am currently reading Boas' The Primitive Man, and the understandings he claims in this piece struck me as perpetuating White superiority through academic discourse. Specifically this quote here: “While in most languages we find numeral systems based upon the 10, we find that certain tribes in Brazil, and others in Australia, have numeral systems based on the 3, or even on the 2, which involve the impossibility of expressing high numbers. Although these numeral systems are very slightly developed as compared with our own, we must not forget that the abstract idea of number must be present among these people, because, without it, no method of counting is possible.” (Boas, 1901, p. 4) Although he offers his connections to the mind of man, I took his reading to reflect his own (maybe subconscious) mind/culture preserving bias through the lens of knowledge production and the cultures (peoples) who had the capacity to obtain it. I'm still learning, but I can see now how racist elements are carried through history in "official" academic spaces that create a false sense of entitlement and superiority.

@daliamendoza7861

Жыл бұрын

**The Mind of Primitive Man

YOU ARE A QUEEN!! thank you so much for this and what you do

Thanks Alivia

Thank you so much for this video, It will help me lots for my homework!!

Thank you Alivia.

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Of course!

Thank you!😊

@AliviaBrown

4 ай бұрын

Anytime!

OMG I love you... I understood better than 1 semester of lessons with my Professor with uncountable PhD's!!!

this was really helpful omg thank uu!!

Please do a video on functionalism. It seems they are very interesting!

i’m loving these research style videos about pivotal anthropologist 💗 you’re editing is great and i love the memes you used, great job!

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

This is so awesome to hear, I'm so glad. Gotta figure out who to make a video about next!!

"We know[sic] today that race is not a biological thing🤡" "Franz Boas is so great[sic] because he opposed scientific racism [eg. evolutionary anthropology]🤡" Wow thanks so much Olivia, I just wanted to learn about Franz Boas but you not only told me about him, you also told me how I am supposed to feel about him too!🙄

@eroorefulufoo6625

7 ай бұрын

i mean prove alivia wrong then? what's scientific about racism?

@BlankethP

7 ай бұрын

The intelligent question is what's racist about science?@@eroorefulufoo6625

@jameseldridge3445

6 ай бұрын

@@eroorefulufoo6625science has no moral conscience. It’s just science.

Interesting

I am very grateful I've come across your channel. Anthropology is my favorite branch of social science. You made me love this field more. Thank you!

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Aw, this is so sweet! I'm so happy!

@twenty-somethingdiaries3629

Жыл бұрын

I'm planning on pursuing higher study on this field. Could you suggest interesting topics for a research?

If all cultures are equal, then cultures based on racism and exploitation are equal to those based on egalitarianism.

Definitely interested in the topic of scientific racism.

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

YAY! (boo scientific racism-but also yay i get to make an interesting video hahaha)

Please make a video on theories

if you haven't made the video on scientific racism, i'm interested! :)

Thanks alivia for the great explanation . We got the video that we need especially I have waited for this for a long time. Love yu .

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Of course!! Happy to help!

Good work. Not sure if you know this, but Boas did a lot of important work with W.E.B. Du Bois as well. Their joint work was important to the rise of the academic side of civil rights and the seeds for the end of scientific racism.

@Unskooled

4 ай бұрын

DuBois was a communist and a huge advocate for eugenics. He believed black people had a double consciousness. He was racist as hell. That's why Booker T Washington couldn't stand him.

Your video will be more useful for anthropology students in india

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Awesomeee!

The legend of the 19 century explained by the legend of the 21st. Another great video Alivia

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

This made my day-thank you!!

What were the connections between racism and physics? That’s the first time I ever heard that about Boas.

What were the major criticisms of the Boasian Relatavist framework?

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

There are definitely some but I'd need to research this further-thanks for bringing it up. I'm curious if any other subs know!

@Matt-Diachronic_Anthropologist

Жыл бұрын

I would not characterize the move away from Boas as a rejection of cultural relativism. The idea that anthropologists need to understand every culture they distinguish from others, as a particular example of Culture (with a capital C); and, also, that they must understand that culture's development within its own particular cultural logic, based on culture history and environmental circumstances, has remained central to the discipline. However, Boas came to seem unscientific and anti-evolution because he would never espouse a version of evolution that was not consistent with what we might now call the fully synthetic view of Darwinian evolution (i.e., including both gradual change and punctuated equalibria type change, and comprising selection, mutation, gene flow & gene drift). The discipline of anthropology, on the whole, turned toward what they called multi-linear evolution; and, the discipline's overall view of humans as biological organisms became pretty fixed. Over that time, very generally, the discipline of anthropology, at least within the US, has gotten very paranoid about anyone suggesting that it is not "a science," as opposed to a discipline that avails itself of any number of scientific analyses, but that still remembers that "science" as particular to a region of the globe, for period of time, is a subject area for us. Anthropology is a holistic discipline, not that we will ever be a totalizing science, but in that we still include all aspects of human Culture in approaching our studies. Finally, to steal a phrase from Gilles Deleuze, don't forget that when we speak of relativism, here, it not "the relativity of truth, but rather the truth in the relationship" that we are seeking. In this case, "it's relative" is not a moral/value judgement about the content of a particular culture; here, it means tracing the actual associations/connections in the historical development of a particular people.

Currently reading magret mead coming of age in samoa and wow its crazy to think how only 100 years creates such different ideas from todays day and age.

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Right?? Get's me every time

Great video! I think scientific racism would be a good topic. Would be interested to see your take on more modern/famous anthropologists.

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Awesome!!! And great idea!

while Boas brought about a lot of development in theoretical anthropology, and he was responsible for a push forward, he was not perfect and was also a product of his own times. while we can be grateful for his contributions, we also need to look beyond and go beyond. Franz boas went to the US fleeing political turmoil in Europe and growing anti-semitism before ww1 (connection to the war between France and Germany and the loss of Alsace-lorraine). when he arrived in the US, he witnessed the racism, segregation, lynching of black people as well as the great dispossession of Native American lands. this is also something that prompted him to criticise (now know as the basin takedown) evolutionism in academics. By doing this, he was actually excluded from main circles of academics by those he criticised (Morgan for example). this is why he became a professor and that his students ended up being women, as because of his position he was not taken seriously enough to teach to men (lol!). that is how we got our Zora Neale Hurston, Margaret Mead etc. however, even though he strongly advocated against racism and it is true that he affected museum display curation, he also had his faults in this regard. He actually also did what was popular at the time, human display of cultures. It was popular with evolutionists, and he used this medium as well. Historical particularism (hp) itself has its faults: - does not account for change nor does it have theoretical space for it = static representations - bounded vision of cultures - prone to essentialism keep it up!

@TeeMaiaspuu

8 ай бұрын

*Boasian takedown

Great video on a great subject! Admittedly, I am highly biased toward Boas, and seeing the centrality of Boasian anthropology restored to archaeology more generally (from Manuel Gamio, Robert Lowie, and Frederica de Laguna onward). Some of my favorite/most used Boas factoids are: For Boas, receiving his education was literally a life-and-death struggle; due to prejudices against him, within the German university system at that time, he bore the real scars of duels he had to fight during his time in school. His methods were so innovative that he found it difficult to find research funding. The major funding institutions of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century simple didn’t recognize ideas like historically particular cultural relativism or participant observation as legitimate ways to undertake scholarly research. He supervised Zora Neale Hurston for some of her post-graduate work. On a personal note, I think Zora would be much better understood as using Sapir’s ideas about language as a way to bring her reader’s into a highly nuanced, culturally-influenced worldview. Her fieldwork from Jamaica and Haiti was published as _Tell My Horse_; it’s great! He died at a luncheon, during a conference/workshop, at which he’d given a speech. Also present at that same luncheon was Claude Levi-Strauss. It was the first time they’d actually met, after having been seated near each other at the head table. On a sadder note than his own death, it is a shame that one of the reasons Boas had to spend so much of his time on the fight against scientific racism was that people were being rounded up in encampments in Europe at that time; and, the divisive rumor being sown in the US, at that time, was that Europe was rounding up it’s undesirables (criminals, the chronically ill, those seen as disabled, etc.), for the express reason of sending them to the US, specifically to undermine the country’s development. The shame being that 100-150 years have gone by, and we still keep finding ourselves faced with that same situation over and over again. My favorite quote that is attributed to Boas is: _“What I want to live and die for is equal rights for all, equal possibilities to learn and work for rich and poor alike !”_ Cole, Douglas. 1983. “The Value of a Person Lies in His _Herzensbildung_.” Franz Boas’ Baffin Island Letter Diary, 1883-1884. In George W. Stocking (ed.) _Observers Observed : Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork_. Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press.

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Wowowowow, thanks so much for the additional and thorough insights into Boas-I really think people will appreciate this!

@Matt-Diachronic_Anthropologist

Жыл бұрын

@@AliviaBrown Thank you for the gracious response. As you can probably tell, Boas is a favorite of mine. Although it has nothing to do with Boas, except that as you rightly pointed out in your video the formal program at Columbia was the first organized department offering a degree in anthropology in the US, another fun factoid is that, based on William A. Haviland's research: the first university to offer an anthropology class for credit was the University of Rochester in 1879.

Is the work of Franz Boas valuable for current day anthropology? If yes how ? In which ways ?

@eroorefulufoo6625

7 ай бұрын

lol do your own homework

@jameseldridge3445

7 ай бұрын

Yes because it’s the dogmatic foundation for diversity in the West. It’s also leading the dysgenics in White nations only. Funny how most historical and modern leaders for “equality” and immigration in western nations are J*wish intellectuals. Read Chapter 2 of “The Culture of Critique” by Kevin MacDonald

This is great! I was going to do a video on Franz Baos for my channel but I found that he is well covered. This video was great and you should totally do a video on scientific bigotry! That is what drew me to Baos actually.... It must have been four years ago now but I was mocked based on what people presumed my genetics to be thanks to my religion. I started fighting eugenics when the California Department of Fair Housing and Employment told me it was "scientific that Jews are blood diseased" and 'oh but of course it wasn't personal', in a discrimination hearing. Since then I tried to figure out why they thought such eugenic stereotypes were scientific and I came across many champions who resisted such hate fueled ideologies like Franz Baos and Raphael Falk and Curt Stern. Great people! Anyway, I was going to do a video on Franz but I guess I'll just comment and figure out who to make a musicology video on next!

History is not always pleasant but it’s always interesting

@Mr.Protector797

Жыл бұрын

I agreed!

Forgot to mention in the video-I was a guest on the Comfortable Spot Podcast this week with Ken Sweeney! So, if you want to listen to a long conversation about what makes anthropology so amazing, definitely go give it a listen 🎧Here's the link! thecomfortablespotpodcast.com/2023/05/08/alivia-brown/

@pathumanuradha5581

Жыл бұрын

Alivia This content is not available in my country 😕

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

Oh noooo! How about this link-podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-comfortable-spot-with-alivia-brown/id1614298509?i=1000612100454

Can you share your views on marriage with respect to anthropology ? Its a hot topic here nowadays

@AliviaBrown

Жыл бұрын

I actually talk about it a little bit in this podcast episode! Although maybe I should make a video on it... thecomfortablespotpodcast.com/2023/05/08/alivia-brown/

@miraadil5068

Жыл бұрын

Yes indeed you should It will help help lots of students to be clear about the topic

On the one hand you claim evaluating a culture from an absolute standard leads to a subjective evaluation, then immediately say that cultural absolutism is "bad [sic]" and cultural relativism is "good [sic]". Its hard to listen to, embarrassing actually. Can you actually advocate for cultural relativism and describing your viewpoints as "good[sic]" and your opponents as "bad[sic]?"🤮

@jameseldridge3445

7 ай бұрын

The power of propaganda: A white man is killed by a black person, the family of the white man goes on national television and apologizes to the black ppl and tells the public to not think it was racially motivated.

All countries and cultures are equal? How about Saudi Arabia and the way women have been historically mistreated there? I could give more examples. I must state moral and cultrual relativism is a distortion of reality in my opiniin.

@jameseldridge3445

8 ай бұрын

She's a product of Marxist white guilt. Equality is a myth used by elites to degrade societies. Socrates even explained this thousands of years ago.

Cultures are not equal. For example, 1930's German culture was murderous to humanity. A culture is "better" to the extent STEM education and John Locke's "Inalienable Rights" are paramount.

@gelboman23

2 ай бұрын

How very ethnocentric of you!

If no culture is better than another, why does everyone want to live in White countries? Why didn't sub-saharan Africa have two story buildings before Europeans turned up? Why didn't Boas settle long-term with the inuits? Why was cannibalism normalized in Pre-European Australia? Why did Native Americans practice human sacrifice on little girls until the late 19th century when pioneers outlawed it? Do you or Boas have any answers? Also, it's worth noting that Boas wasn't European and had a great deal of animosity towards western civilization.

I don’t like him.

@jameseldridge3445

7 ай бұрын

People are starting to think critically about the motive of these “pioneers”

@CandidSailor

Ай бұрын

He definitely knew a good Kosher restaurant. That's for sure ;)

Of course some cultures are better then others 🤦

Boaz ruined anthropology.

I completely reject his idea that race is nothing more than a cultural construct.

@katebushisjesus

9 ай бұрын

and science indefinitely rejects your opinion.

@BlankethP

8 ай бұрын

Straight to jail!

@furkan6402

6 ай бұрын

Based on what?

@BlankethP

6 ай бұрын

Probably based off using his eyeballs?@@furkan6402

@MontyRaeSp8

4 ай бұрын

I look forward to reading your thoroughly articulated argument with appropriate referencing after it's been published in a peer-reviewed academic journal. Or... Maybe... You should consider STFU

Do you really believe that all cultures are created equal ? That is the most moronic idea I have ever heard. Tell that to someone who lives around cannibals.

@plebejs8510

4 ай бұрын

🤦🏻‍♀️what are you doing under an anthropology video with this ethnocentric bs

@wissenschaftkraft5075

4 ай бұрын

The truth is hard for your side to take. Sub-Saharan Africa is not equal to the west in any in sense. You are making false claims.