Today, few people remember the anthropologist Alexander Goldenweiser. Those who do tend to fall back on disciplinary folklore, which remembers him as a brilliant student of Boas, inclined to theory rather than fieldwork, and whose career was undone by his scandalous lifestyle, especially his affairs with women. In this new biography, the first ever of Goldenweiser, Sergei Kan paints a much fuller picture of the man he calls a “maverick Boasian.” This slim but skillful book reveals Goldenweiser to be far more important to history than most recognize, a fieldworker far more skilled than he is usually given credit for—and a scholar whose career was derailed by scandal exactly as disciplinary memory recalls.
Kan’s biography is extremely well-executed. It is clearly written and easy to read. It is also well structured: each chapter outlines the events in Goldenweiser’s life, then reviews his scholarly publications from the period. The chapters close with an account of his popular writings on culture and politics, and make note of his personal views on hot-button issues of his day such as immigration, American intervention in World Wars I and II, and race.
Kan’s research for the volume was obviously very thorough. We are especially lucky that he had the language skills and historical knowledge to return to Ukraine, where Goldenweiser was raised, and conduct archival work. As a result, we have a far fuller picture of Goldenweiser and his background than we would if this biography had been produced by a monolingual English speaker. Other areas of Goldenweiser’s career are equally well-researched. It is clear that a lot of knowledge went into writing this volume. Despite this fact, the book never feels dense or turgid. Overall, Kan should be congratulated for producing a concise, clear, but also very deeply researched book.
In fact, this is one of the few books I've read that I wish were longer than it actually is. The Goldenweiser that emerges from these pages is a fascinating character and an important part of the intellectual history of folklore and anthropology. As a result, I wanted to learn even more about him. Robert Brightman insightfully remarked once that all Boasians can be placed on a spectrum from “bohemian” to “bourgeois,” and Goldenweiser epitomized the bohemian end of the spectrum. In fact, his life was something of a dumpster fire. He cheated on his wife often enough that she told his university that she would come to his lecture and shoot him. He fled to Mexico with his secretary, got divorced, dumped the secretary, and married a third woman. And this is not even to mention his debts and other scandalous behavior. I must admit, therefore, that I was hoping for more lurid detail. Kan, unfortunately, handles these matters very even-handedly. He also refrains from psychological speculation regarding what drove Goldenweiser to such self-destructive behavior. These are legitimate choices, of course, but I selfishly would have preferred a more intimate portrait of Goldenweiser and all his flaws.
Kan might also have pursued a deeper analysis of Goldenweiser’s relationship with his students and colleagues. Goldenweiser taught at the New School, where anyone could take classes, and he recruited many people to anthropology, including future presidents of the American Anthropological Association such as Ruth Benedict and Leslie White. As such, he was pivotal in the history of anthropology. I would have appreciated more details of his relationship with these people, and a broader account of the context in which he worked. Kan does an excellent job of situating Goldenweiser’s research with Iroquois people, and in demonstrating the quality of his fieldwork—something which had been played down by Margaret Mead and others. I would have preferred that Kan take the same approach with his account of Goldenweiser’s professional and cultural situation.
Finally, and most tantalizingly, Kan shows us the road not taken. One common narrative of anthropology’s history is that Boas, a particularist, was replaced by the more theoretically-inclined humanists Mead and Benedict. They then were replaced by the more masculine and scientific school of evolutionary theory associated with Leslie White, Julian Steward, and others. Depending on which side you take, this story is either a tragedy or a triumph. In fact, Boas's actual plan was very different. He hoped Gladys Reichard would teach at Barnard, and Goldenweiser, Sapir, and Kroeber would lead the department at Columbia. Reichard did teach at Barnard, but Sapir and Kroeber were hired by Yale and Berkeley, while Goldenweiser self-destructed.
Kan invites us to imagine a very different world, one in which Boas admired theory and hoped his students Sapir and Goldenweiser would develop more of it, perhaps with the help of their students Robert Redfield, Ruth Benedict, and Leslie White. As we now know, things did not turn out this way, but as we imagine new ways to narrate and teach the history of anthropology, Kan’s work provides a great service in presenting us with some compelling ways to think against the historical grain.
In sum, Kan’s excellent biography is deeply researched, easy to read, and economically written. It does a good job of telling the story of an important but little-known figure in the history of folklore and anthropology. I commend it to the reader.
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[Review length: 871 words • Review posted on December 11, 2023]