New Books In Anthropology

This episode proved remarkably popular, so we're reposting it as an NBN classic for those who missed it the first time. American anthropologists consider Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Margaret Mead to be foundational figures, but outside the academy few people know the details of their ideas. In this new volume, Charles King provides a carefully-researched and beautifully-written history of the Boas Circle that everyone will enjoy reading. King covers the period from Boas's birth to the publication of Ruth Benedict's The Chrysanthemum and the Sword, combining the personal and intellectual histories of authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Ella Deloria, Edward Sapir, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, and of course Boas himself. Above all, Gods of the Upper Air: How A Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century(Doubleday, 2019) is a reminder of the central ideas of Boasian anthropology: a recognition that gender roles and racial assumptions are cultural constructions