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Chapter Overview
Chapter 1: AudiobookHub Recommendation
Chapter 2: During the Jim Crow era, entrenched biases shaped policies built on pseudoscience and myths.
Chapter 3: After early time on Baffin Island, Franz Boas concluded that humanity truly equals individuality.
Chapter 4: Boas championed understanding of cultures through collecting data first, then drawing inductive conclusions from the evidence.
Chapter 5: Boas debunked racial science by measuring thousands of people across New York City.
Chapter 6: Margaret Mead’s anthropology was closely interwoven with her personal life.
Chapter 7: Mead’s anthropological work deeply reshaped her understanding of both sex and gender.
Chapter 8: Zora Neale Hurston’s fieldwork treated African diaspora culture as fully worthy subject matter on its own terms.
Chapter 9: Though some criticize their methods, Boasian ideas remain valuable today.
Description
Gods of the Upper Air (2019) details the story of how Franz Boas, Margaret Mead, Ruth Benedict, Zora Neale Hurston and other researchers challenged pseudoscientific theories upholding racism and established the modern discipline of cultural anthropology. Tracing the travels, romances and ideas that bound this group together, these blinks recount what became a seismic shift in notions of race, sex and gender identity.
Who Should Listen
- Students of anthropology, sociology and gender studies
- Zora Neale Hurston fans
- Americans interested in racial history