ABSTRACT
Attempts to grapple with the differences among human groups have tended to be intimately linked with both the notion of the Great Chain of Being (which promotes notions of racial superiority), and the economic suppression of the lower classes (which is rationalized by notions of racial superiority). Nineteenth-century theories of history failed to divorce racial from cultural history, and were undermined by the development of the culture concept, employed by Franz Boas and his students.
