The Triumph of Chauvinistic Nationalisms in Yugoslavia: Bleak Implications for Anthropology

Abstract

While nineteenth century anthropology often served as handmaid to colonialism, the dominant intellectual trends in the field in the present century, and particularly since the second world war, have largely been antithetical to colonialism and imperialism and hostile to the myths of racial or cultural superiority used to justify them. Although these trends may appear to some to be evidence of the humanistic orientation of modern anthropology, the humanism was explicitly grounded in science. Thus, the founder of modern American anthropology, Franz Boas, was so empirically oriented as to appear atheoretical. Yet Boas' works were always based on and illustrative of the postulates that race, language and culture are not related mechanically, and particularly that race or biology does not determine the specific content of either language or culture (Boas 1940). Boas' pronounced opposition to fascism, and his more popularly oriented writings (e.g. Boas 1945) make this theoretical position clear. With this in mind, it can be seen that Boasian historical particularism served to invert the previously dominant relationship of anthropological science to imperialism and colonialism. If races and cultures cannot be ranked as inherently superior or inferior, all justifications for colonialism and imperialism disappear except for arguments based on rights derived from conquest, or simply force.

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