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johnaggreyodera's review
4.0
Read for a class in 2015. Most of the works are a wonderful introduction to American anthropology (though Boas was a German Jew). I’m still unsure what to think re his “findings” on human plasticity, which he came to by obtaining the “cephalic index” - percentage ratio of the width to the length of the head - of children of Italian and Jewish immigrants to the US in the early 20th century. Apparently he found that children born to these immigrants while they were in the US had different physical features from their biological siblings born before the parents immigrated - and the more time the parents had spent in the US before the conception, the more pronounced the physical differences. This struck me as some weird race science bullshit, and heightened my already existing suspicion about much of anthropology. But the truth simply is that I don’t know enough, and would love recommendations from people more familiar with anthropology (and the theories debunked in the discipline since Boas wrote) on how I can go about educating myself about these issues.
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