Lewis Henry Morgan Research Paper

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LEWIS HENRY MORGAN Lewis Henry Morgan has been credited as being the founder of American cultural anthropology or more broadly as the father of “American Anthropology.” Many anthropologists at the time were called “arm-chair” academics, meaning that they studied anthropology from a distance while sitting in chairs, reading and thinking; Morgan was not an “arm-chair” anthropologist. He went out into the field to learn about other cultures. As noted by Kinton, Jacob Bachofen and John McLennan influenced Morgan (1974:4).
Morgan started his work with an extensive ethnographic study of the Iroquois. Langness informs us that the driving force behind Morgan’s “devotion” to the field was due to a chance meeting with a young, educated Seneca Indian, …show more content…

Boas was one of the first anthropologists who worked towards discrediting “racist and sexist theories and ideologies that sought to legitimize the marginalization of people based on race, religion, gender, and ethnicity” (Robbins 2009:257). In fact, during the World’s Fair of 1893 in Chicago, Boas actually set up his own booth to rival the booth of the people who had originally hired him and sent him to the field. While they were measuring skulls, Boas had Eskimos from Baffinland at his booth so people could see that they were just as cultured and intelligent as anyone else. Boas led the way to the eventual destruction of the common belief in racial superiority and racial determinism that had been a part of anthropology before him (Langness …show more content…

1974. The Study of Culture. 3rd ed. Novato, CA: Chandler & Sharp Publishers.

Mead, Margaret. 1959. “Apprenticeship under Boas.” Pp. 29-45 in The Anthropology of Franz Boas. Memoir 87, American Anthropological Association, edited by Walter Goldschmidt.

Meggers, B. 1946. “Recent Trends in American Ethnology.” American Anthropologist 48:176-214.

Morgan, Lewis H. 1851. League of the Ho-de-no-sau-nee, or Iroquois. Rochester, N.Y.: Sage & Broa.

Morgan, Lewis H. 1871. Systems of Consanguinity and Affinity of the Human Family. Washington: Smithsonian Institution.

Morgan, Lewis H. 1877. Ancient Society. New York: World Publishing.

Robbins, Richard H. 2009. Cultural Anthropology: A Problem-Based Approach. 5th ed. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth

Stern, Bernard J. 1946. “Lewis Henry Morgan Today: An Appraisal of His Scientific Contributions.” Science & Society 10(2):172-176.

Stocking, George W., Jr. 1965. “From Physics to Ethnology: Franz Boas’ Arctic Expedition as a Problem in the Historiography of the Behavioral Sciences.” Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences. 1(1):53-56.
Winick, Charles. 1984. Dictionary of Anthropology. Totowa, NJ: Rowman &

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