FROM ETHNOGRAPHY TO ETHNOLOGY: A STUDY OF THE CONFLICT OF INTERPRETATIONS OF THE SOUTHERN KWAKIUTL POTLATCH

In the course of his career Boas collected, edited, and published an unusually large number of verbatim texts of the Southern Kwakiutl of Vancouver Island. Boas' sixty-year association with and study of this particular tribe created what has been described as the "single greatest ethnographic treasure" which is available for study. In this dissertation I examine the development of Boas' ethnographic and ethnological work which led to the development of a style of fieldwork of which the primary reliance has been upon the collection of texts. Boas published a total of 4500 pages of texts and their translations from this one tribe. However, this ethnographic treasure has allowed for, by its nature as texts, a conflict of interpretation of the definitive meaning of the texts.;I have chosen one topic from the texts which has yielded perhaps the most significant conflict of interpretation in modern anthropology. The potlatch of the Southern Kwakiutl, the ritual distribution of property, has been interpreted in a number of conflicting ways. The potlatch has been interpreted as a personality trait of this tribe, as warfare substitution, as an example of the universal aspect of gift-giving, and as a means of economic redistribution. In the course of this dissertation I examine the basis of each of the interpretations of the potlatch which have been based upon the texts which Boas collected. I compare those interpretations with the method which is implied in the historical development of Boas' ethnographic and ethnological collection. I reach conclusions concerning the nature of the anthropological endeavor and anthropological method.