HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on the history of Soviet anthropology in the 1960s–1970s.

Alymov, Sergei, 2024. “How Moscow Did Not Become a World Centre of Marxist Anthropology: Liudmila V. Danilova and the Fate of Soviet ‘Revisionism’ in the 1960s‑1970s,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

The article analyzes the trajectory of Liudmila Valerianovna Danilova (1923–2012), a Soviet/Russian historian who specialized in the history of medieval Russia and agrarian history, and a Marxist theoretician of history and social evolution. She worked at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR/Russia for more than half a century from 1952 onward. Author of two monographs, Essays on the History of Land Ownership and Economy in the Novgorod Land in the 14th-15th Centuries (1955) and Rural Community in Medieval Russia (1994). In the mid-1960s, she was part of the collective group of the department of the methodology of history at the Institute of History, who tried to reinvigorate Soviet Marxism and challenge its Stalinist interpretations. The article analyzes the theoretical and methodological discussions in Russian ethnography and historiography of the 1960s, which were focused on the critique of the Stalinist dogma of the five-stage scheme of world history and gave way to “revisionist” ideas concerning the number and sequence of Marxist socioeconomic formations. As one of the leaders of this collective, Danilova edited the collection of articles Problems of the History of Pre-capitalist Societies (1968), a manifesto of Soviet “revisionist” historical Marxism of the 1960s. This heterodox text received a wide response among historians and anthropologists both in the USSR and worldwide; it attracted a number of commentaries and reviews, including those of British anthropologist Ernest Gellner. Danilova planned to expand this volume into a series which would include authors from Eastern and Western Europe and focus on Marxist interpretation of the whole world history as well as “primitive society.” Danilova’s alternative Marxism negatively affected her academic career. Her main work, Theoretical Problems of Feudalism in Soviet Historiography, remained unpublished during her lifetime, as well as the following volumes of the projected series “Problems of the History of Pre-capitalist Societies.” 

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on the history of Swedish researcher, Erland Nordenskiöld.

Gustavsson, Anne, 2024. “Fieldwork on the Banks of the Pilcomayo River: The Place of Erland Nordenskiöld in Pre-Malinowskian Traditions of Ethnography,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Swedish ethnologist and Americanist scholar Erland Nordenskiöld (1877–1932) was a prominent Nordic anthropologist, internationally renowned as an expert on the indigenous cultures and societies of Latin America. Between 1899 and 1927, he undertook six expeditions to different parts of this region (Patagonia, Bolivia, Peru, Brazil, etc.), reorienting his interest from zoology to ethnography and archaeology following his encounter with the Indigenous populations of the Pilcomayo River in 1902. He contributed significantly to the development of the discipline in his country as head of the Ethnographic Department at the Museum of Gothenburg as well as eventually obtaining a professorship in 1924 in ethnography at the University of Gothenburg, the first of its kind in Sweden. Nordenskiöld became acquainted with the South American Chaco for the first time in 1902 when the Chaco-Cordillera expedition (1901–1902) made an incursion into the northern area of the Pilcomayo River, where various indigenous societies partially maintained their traditional ways of life. This encounter marked him profoundly. It not only reoriented his research interests towards ethnography, archaeology and ethnology but also made him dedicate the rest of his life and work to the study of the “South American Indian.” In this article, Anne Gustavsson (Umeå University, Sweden; Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Argentina) discusses the type of field work Nordenskiöld undertook on the banks of the Pilcomayo River in the border region between Bolivia and Argentina, reflecting upon the place of these practices in pre-Malinowski traditions of ethnography. The analysis is based on Nordenskiöld’s publications as well as archival material (correspondence, field notes, newspaper articles) consulted at the Museum of World Culture and the Royal Library of Sweden.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on Leo Frobenius’ Australian anthropology.

Kuba, Richard, 2024. “Frobenius’ Culture History in Australia: Dead Ends and New Insights,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Leo Frobenius is one of the most famous and influential German anthropologists of the 20th century. While his collection of ethnographic data and oral traditions enjoyed general recognition, as well as his comprehensive documentation of African rock art, in which he saw a kind of “Picture Book of Cultural History,” Frobenius was already an intensely controversial figure during his lifetime. One of the first Europeans to recognize the historicity of African cultures, he became a principal reference for the protagonists of “Négritude,” who aimed at re-establishing the cultural self-awareness of African peoples. This article explores the less-known Australian side of Frobenius’ anthropology, namely the scientific and political contexts of the final research expedition initiated by him in 1938–1939, when he sent five members of the Institut für Kulturmorphologie (directed and founded by him; today Frobenius-Institut) to the Kimberley region in northwestern Australia. This expedition followed the tradition of nearly two dozen others that Frobenius had led or initiated since 1904, primarily in Africa, with the aim of documenting what were perceived as “ancient” cultures threatened by imminent disappearance. In the Kimberley, the expedition was among the earliest ethnographic research efforts in the area, focusing particularly on documenting rock art along with related myths and narratives. The specific theoretical and practical approaches developed by Frobenius over more than 25 years significantly shaped the resulting documentation—whether visual, written, phonographic, or through the selection of collected objects. The article reconstructs the context and course of the expedition, primarily based on archival sources. While Frobenius’s distinct anthropological approach, characterized by the “ethnographic expedition” and an idiosyncratic emphasis on “culture,” continued to influence his collaborators and successors for a few decades after his death, the gap between Frobenius’s approach and international trends in anthropology was perceptible from the 1930s onwards. This contrast would only grow, reinforcing the “maverick”—or, for that matter, anachronistic—aspect of his endeavors. Richard Kuba (Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology, Frankfurt), however, examines the Frobenius-Institut Australian expedition’s aftermath, drawing on historical publications by its members and insights from a recent collaborative research project. Eighty-five years later, the extensive materials from this expedition are being rediscovered, reassessed, and digitally returned to the source communities, giving new relevance and meaning to the historical archive.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on a 1951 expedition to Mauritania by Swiss anthropologist Jean Gabus and painter Hans Erni.

Reubi, Serge, 2024. “Anthropology, Photography, and Painting: Jean Gabus and Hans Erni in Mauritania 1951‑1952”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Swiss scholar Jean Gabus (1908–1992) received an education in humanities and worked first as a journalist and explorer. After an expedition to Canada in 1938–1939, he wrote a dissertation on the Inuit, under the supervision of Wilhelm Schmidt. In 1945, he was appointed director of the Musée d’ethnographie of Neuchâtel (until 1978) and professor of geography and ethnography at the University of Neuchâtel (until 1974). He spent most of his career studying the nomad populations of Mauritania, Niger and Algeria, but his most important achievements were museological: he radically modernized the Neuchâtel museum and was an international renowned expert for museums for UNESCO from 1958 to the 1980s, popularizing the concept of objet-témoin. This article discusses the category of minor anthropological traditions and suggests that it is better understood as a historiographical artefact, not an undisputed fact. Intellectual practices that do not fit hegemonic narratives should not be positioned in terms of backwardness in time—or forwardness, for that matter; instead, one should accept the synchronic diversity of scientific activities. To demonstrate this, Serge Reubi (Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris) uses the conceptual lens of Daston and Galison’s objectivity theory and examines the 1951 expedition to Mauritania that Gabus organized with the painter Hans Erni, during which he tried to combine the use of mechanical means of recording (photo, records, films, artefacts) with the more subjective approach of an artist. By doing so, he believed that the expedition would be able to grasp both singular and specific events of the local populations and general human behaviors.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Spanish) on anachronistic and dyschronic motives in disciplinary history, focused on José Imbelloni—a controversial representative of 20th-century Argentinian anthropology. The English version is forthcoming.

Lazzari, Axel, 2024. “En torno al argumento del anacronismo y la Escuela Histórico‑Cultural en la Argentina: hacia un abordaje discrónico,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Born in Italy, José Imbelloni (1885–1967) emigrated to Argentina in 1908, where he began his career as an anthropologist in 1921, with previous training in the natural sciences. His anthropological work of a craniological and historical-philological nature contributed to the debates on the settlement of the American continent and the diffusion of cultural cycles. During the 1930s, as head of the Physical Anthropology Section of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, Imbelloni gained greater visibility with the publication of Epítome de Culturología (1936), where he summarized the doctrine and method of the cultural-historical school and contributed his own empirical studies. In 1948 he took over the direction of the Museo Etnográfico, created the Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas at the University of Buenos Aires, and the journal Runa. During these years he established strong ties with academic sectors of Peron’s regime and became one of the world’s leading figures in Americanist anthropology. Imbelloni developed a culturalist-racialist approach that was not free of polemic tones, but his career is fundamental for understanding the development of Argentine anthropology.