The history of anthropology has tended towards two extremes in its analyses of the works of Franz Boas: aggrandizement or underestimation. This disparity can be explained by the author's liminal relationship with two research approaches in anthropology: universalist theories (evolutionism, difussionism, racialism, etc.) and culturalist theories, prevalent between the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. With this argument in mind, the article discusses the emergence of the Boasian concept of culture and endeavors to show how this concept proves both possible and impossible within the author's own work.