hysical characteristics of the people. But perhaps his most important findings û or it might be more properly labeled a conclusion û is at the center of this paper: Boas would conclude that no truly pure race exists, and that no race is innately superior to any other (Boas and Stocking, 1989, p. 21).
Before examining how BoasÆs own ideas on race shifted throughout his lifetime, some basic discussion of what race means as a concept is in order, for race is an idea that both appears to be transparent and obvious and yet is in fact constructed in complex and ever shifting ways.
It is simplest to look at the idea of races within a (as purely as possible) biological framework. As such it is the identification within a species of subpopulations whose members share with one another a greater degree of common inheritance than they share with individuals from other such subpopulations. This is a neutral definition so far (except for the fact that it doe tend to assume that such identifications are meaningful and useful to make) (Jantz, 1995, p. 346).
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