The Promise of Particularism and the Theology of Culture: Limits and Lessons of “Neo‐Boasianism”

This article compares the status of “culture” as a politically engaged concept in Franz Boas's time and in our own time. Taking a Boasian approach to “neo‐Boasianism,” I examine the limits of this comparability in order to shed light on the nature of public culture‐talk today and to identify dimensions of the Boasian concept of “culture” particularly relevant to a contemporary anthropology.