The Shackles of Tradition

The Shackles of Tradition
The film describes the anthropological journey of Franz Boas. It is based on his studies concerning ethnography in the 1880s when he was in the Canadian Arctic. Later, he went to North America where he studied the indigenous Indians. As clear in the title, the film shows how the traditions were being lost through the embracement of the modern American ways of life. Additionally, the film recommends that one should break the shackles of his tradition which include ethnocentrism, preconceptions, and bias against other races and ethnic communities (Boas). Therefore, people from various ethnic communities should accept the ways of life of other so that there can be love and appreciation. Thus, peaceful coexistence.
Boas asks many questions in the film with the aim of understanding human being better. For instance, he wishes to know the determinants of the behavior of human beings. The first part of the film discusses the study that Boas did concerning the Eskimos who live in the Canadian Arctic (Boas). He discovered that the Eskimos were focused on their activities no matter the harshness of the environment that they lived in. The environment of the Eskimos had great challenges that could discourage them, but they persisted in making their lives better. Therefore, the study made Boas reject the previous assumptions which supported that the actions of human beings are determined by the environments they live. He disqualified the appropriateness of the concept of explaining the life of human beings and their diversity based on geographic determinism.

Boas concluded that culture influences the way people carry out their activities.
Boas stated that the educated people should avoid blaming the way of life of the Eskimos which seems primitive. He recommends that cultural relativism should be practiced where the will of the heart describes the values of an individual despite him or her hailing from a particular culture or place. Additionally, he recommended that people should avoid judging others according to their culture. He discouraged ethnocentrism and called for the understanding of other people’s cultures. Furthermore, he argued that no culture should be viewed as superior to the other. Also, the value of individuals in a particular culture should not be measured by considering their level of civilization (Boas).
In the second half of the film, Boas focused on race. It discussed a report that was made in the early 1990s where United States Immigration Commission was to set regulations concerning the entry of certain from Europe to the United States of America. The basis of the regulation was to be the inferiority of the race where the immigrant belonged. For example, the non- Anglosaxons were not desired (Boas). It was argued that their entry to the United States of America could deteriorate the racial superiority in the country. The act made Boas pose a question of whether the human potential is influenced by his or her racial characteristics. He discovered that race did not make an individual inadequate for a particular task. Therefore, he came with an inference that race did not determine the behavior of human beings. Additionally, he stated that race did not have a science value that could be classified. Therefore, he concluded that race could not indicate the difference or diversity of individuals in terms of culture, but it is just a small biological difference.
Work Cited
Boas, Franz. “The Shackles of Tradition.” Youtube, 2018, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pcHW5-v4SsM.