Friday 22nd April 2022, at 17:00 CET
Program:
17:00 Welcome by HOAN convenors, Fabiana Dimpflmeier and Frederico Delgado Rosa
17:05 Keynote speaker Rosemary Lévi Zumwalt (Agnes Scott College), “Franz Boas: Working for Social Justice and Battling Social Inequality”
17:25 Open forum for questions and comments
17:30 HOAN Correspondents presentations:
- Marko Pisev (Serbia)
- Filip Wróblewski (Poland)
- Synnøve Bendixen (Norway), who will also present Anthropology in Norway: Directions, Locations, Relations (Bendixen, Hviding, ed., 2022).
17:50 Open forum for questions and comments
17:55 Grażyna Kubica-Heller: presentation of the Malinowski centennial conference, Cracow September 2022
18:00 Closing and farewell words by HOAN convenors
Franz Boas: Working for Social Justice and Battling Social Inequality
Abstract
Elsie Clews Parsons wrote Robert Lowie about her reactions to the chapter on Boas in his History of Ethnological Theory. While offering praise for his “very just and discerning appraisal,” she remarked, “You do not mention his ardor in combating the scientific fallacies which bolster up social injustices. This has been more marked, of course, in recent years but it was always there and is an essential part of his make-up.” She mentioned a studio portrait of himself that Boas had given Parsons with the inscription, “Elsie Clews Parsons, fellow in the struggle for freedom from prejudice.” Parsons concluded, “I began that way and he ends that way. I suppose somewhere our trails crossed”[1]. In this paper, I will draw from my recent manuscript – Franz Boas: Shaping Anthropology and Fostering Social Justice (University of Nebraska, fall 2022) – for a focus on Boas’s work for social justice, specifically with respect to race.
[1] Parsons to Lowie, January 6, 1938, Lowie Papers; see Zumwalt, Wealth and Rebellion, 170.
