ABSTRACT
In the previous two chapters, I have shown that in his cultural anthropology and physical anthropology, Boas contested the existence of Jewish difference that could potentially block or hinder the Jews’ assimilation. By reconstructing his epistemological and methodological considerations, I have demonstrated that this contention takes different forms in his linguistic work and in his physical anthropology because it is subordinated to differing anthropological goals. I have emphasized the importance of his development of anthropological categories for his understanding of the Jews’ current situation in society. Arguably, one of Boas’s main contributions to American anthropology is the fundamental separation between race and culture. As has been noted, prior to Boas’s arrival in the United States, American anthropology was largely evolutionist. In the evolutionist paradigm, race and culture were viewed as intricately linked, as two aspects of one and the same human evolution. The idea that race and culture were only contingently related, while novel in the American context, was widely accepted in liberal German anthropology at the turn of the twentieth century. Based on this separation, Boas was instrumental in gradually extending the signifi cance of the cultural component (thereby diminishing the emphasis on the racial one) in accounts of human diversity and difference. The methodological differentiation between race and culture existed in Boas’s anthropology together with social and political agendas. Within Boas’s anthropological paradigm, there is an unresolved confl ict between his support of assimilation as a means by which to alleviate social tensions and his deep belief in the right of every culture to persist in its particular form of existence. In this chapter, I wish to broaden the perspective and examine the implications of some of his major methodological distinctions after his time. I will fi rst compare Boas’s conceptualization of the stranger with that of Simmel’s, in order to emphasize the particular confi guration of collective presuppositions and anthropological alternatives. I will then turn to a comparison of the negation of Jewish racial difference in cultural anthropology, with the study of Jewish difference in departments of human genetics. Boas was instrumental in detaching the biological study of human differences from anthropological departments and establishing this fi eld within medical
and natural-science disciplines. I will attempt to show that by transforming their grounds, Boas unintentionally facilitated accounts of Jewish biological difference. I will then argue that with the separation of race and culture, key attributes of race were transposed to culture. Jews lived in diasporas for many centuries, a fact that facilitated their representation by Boas as being already deeply assimilated. The shift in anthropology from assimilation to pluralism, however, complicates accounts of Jewish culture. I will conclude this chapter in arguing that the Jews’ form of existence-as it is constituted by cultural anthropology-occupies a structural place in Boas’s anthropological paradigm.
