HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Portuguese) on Romanian-Brazilian anthropologist of Jewish origin Berta Gleizer Ribeiro and her ecologically-oriented approach to Indigenous materiality.

França, Bianca Luiza Freire de Castro, 2024. “As linguagens visuais da ‘Amazônia urgente’: artes indígenas e saberes ecológicos na vida‑obra de Berta Gleizer Ribeiro”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Berta Gleizer Ribeiro (1924–1997) was an anthropologist of Jewish and Romanian origin, born in Beltz, Bessarabia, in the region of Moldova. After the death of her mother, in 1932 she emigrated to Brazil with her trade unionist father and her sister Genny Gleizer. Graduate in geography and history, she was a practicing anthropologist, ethnographer, and museologist. Berta Ribeiro built collections for Brazilian museums and curated numerous exhibitions. She began her studies while accompanying her husband, anthropologist and politician Darcy Ribeiro, with whom she co-authored several works between 1948 and 1974. In this article published within HITAL Transatlantic History of Latin American Anthropologies/International Research Network, Bianca França (Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Brazil) reveals how Berta Ribeiro contributed to Brazilian anthropology in the 20th century through her studies on the material culture and visual art of Indigenous Brazilians, as well as her studies on human adaptability in the humid tropics, an important topic for the field of ecological anthropology. Berta Ribeiro used her studies on material culture and visual art as a guiding thread to raise questions about the Indigenous contribution to a more sustainable exploitation of natural resources through ethno-knowledge: water and agricultural management, mastery of astronomy, ethnobotany, ethnopharmacology, and mastery of fauna and flora, among other Indigenous technologies linked to the “arts of life,” such as ceramics, spinning, weaving, braiding and plumage. She created the concept of TecEconomia, which deals with the classification of raw materials and techniques, the division of labor and time dedicated to Indigenous handicrafts. Her legacy brings together, on the one side, the scientific knowledge available at the time about the Amazon rainforest and, on the other, the material culture, the visual arts and the human adaptability of its original peoples. It is possible, França concludes, to promote fruitful dialogues between Berta Ribeiro’s work and contemporary studies in the anthropology of materiality, and with contemporary anthropological studies related to plant life. A researcher, writer, and audiovisual producer, Berta Ribeiro campaigned both for Indigenous causes and scientific dissemination.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in French) on Frances Densmore’s Teton Sioux Music. 

Grillot, Thomas, 2024. “À la (re)découverte de Teton Sioux Music (1918): métamorphoses d’une archive sonore collectée par Frances Densmore”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Minnesota-born Frances Densmore (1867–1957), initially trained in classical music, was converted to anthropological work after discovering the pioneering work of Alice C. Fletcher (A Study of Omaha Indian Music, 1893). Beginning in the shadow of the illustrious activist and Omaha specialist, Densmore’s career was both original and linear. Once she had perfected her particular technique of collection and exhibition, which closely combined ethnography and ethnomusicology, she systematically applied it to dozens of Amerindian peoples across the United States. She also remained faithful throughout her life to recording on wax cylinders. Her work has been the subject of harsh criticism concerning her methods of musical notation and analysis, her generalizations about Indian music, and the ideological presuppositions of her research; but the wealth of material she collected makes her a first-rate resource for many Amerindian teachers. In this challenging article, published as part of the research theme “Transnational Circulations and Social Uses of Anthropological Knowledge in the Americas,” Thomas Grillot (Institut d’Histoire du Temps Présent, CNRS, France) reveals how the sound recordings of Amerindian music made by anthropologists, including the Lakota recordings made by Densmore between 1911 and 1914, are today caught up in repatriation dynamics very similar to those experienced concerning human remains and sacred objects. This movement needs to be understood in the long-term context of an often ancient circulation of Amerindian sound. As both a medium of anthropological knowledge and a record of cultural and artistic practices, recordings do not freeze sound: they can serve as inspiration for Indian and non-Indian composers alike, allowing them to become a living archive, both a product of cultural consumption and an instrument of cultural and linguistic renaissance. These metamorphoses are made possible by technical manipulations, aesthetic and intellectual judgements and complex political operations. With them, recording emancipates itself from the conditions of its production, while retrospectively validating the salvage anthropology that gave birth to it a century earlier, albeit in a very different historical setting—and political context.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Portuguese) on Brazilian urban anthropologist, feminist and politician Ruth Cardoso.

Gregori, Maria Filomena, 2024. “Retrato intelectual de Ruth Cardoso: trajetórias entre a antropologia urbana, o feminismo e a política,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Brazilian anthropologist Ruth Cardoso (1930–2008), who attended one of the first classes of social sciences at the University of São Paulo, lectured and conducted research at various national and international educational institutions throughout her life. In 1988, she obtained a postdoctorate degree from Columbia University in New York. In this pathbreaking article published as part of the research theme “Histories of Anthropology in Brazil,” Maria Filomena Gregori (University of Campinas, Brazil), presents Ruth Cardoso as a prominent representative of a golden generation that consolidated urban anthropology in Brazil. Cardoso’s work brings together ethnographic contributions on favelas and low-income communities, as well as analytical approaches to urban social movements. In consistent dialogue with authors such as Manuel Castells and Alain Touraine, her writings have drawn attention to the identity processes that are forged in the social networks that constitute political subjects, pointing out their effects on rethinking citizenship in an intellectual environment still contaminated by theories of marginality, dependency theory and the fears resulting from the authoritarianism that plagued Brazil during two periods: the Estado Novo established by Getúlio Vargas between 1937 and 1945, and the civil-military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. In addition to her academic profile, the article points out Cardoso’s trajectories between feminism and politics, which resulted in her unique performance as First Lady of Brazil between 1995 and 2002, when she conceived and presided over the “Solidarity Community Program”, a project that bears fruit to this day.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on Austrian diffusionist ethnologist Wilhelm Koppers.

Rohrbacher, Peter, 2024. “A Priest Ethnologist in South America and Central India: Life and work of Wilhelm Koppers,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Father Wilhelm Koppers (1886–1961), born in Rill, near Menzelen in Westphalia, was a student of Father Wilhelm Schmidt and an important representative of German-Austrian diffusionism, also known as Kulturkreislehre. He founded the Institute of Ethnology at the University of Vienna in 1929, which he headed—with the exception of the Nazi period (1938–45)— until 1957. Under Koppers’ aegis, the institute developed into one of the most important centers of sociocultural anthropology in Europe. In this article, published as part of the research theme “History of German and Austrian Anthropology and Ethnologies,” Peter Rohrbacher (Institut für Sozialanthropologie der Österreichischen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Vienna) provides an overview of the life and work of Wilhelm Koppers, who was best known for his field research in South America and Central India. During his second field research among the Bhils in central India in 1938–39, Koppers was active as an ethnographic collector, photographer and documentary filmmaker, which is presented in this article with new archive material. A staunch opponent of the Nazi racial doctrine, Koppers was suspended from the University of Vienna after the Anschluss of Austria to Germany in April 1938. Throughout his life, Koppers stood in the shadow of his teacher Schmidt, which is why his outstanding position in the history of anthropology is usually underestimated. Koppers was one of the initiators of the first international congress for anthropology and ethnology in London in 1934, was a permanent member of the congress council and from 1934 to 1961 one of the vice presidents of the International Union of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences. After Schmidt’s death in 1954, Koppers rejected the Kulturkreislehre, but adhered to the cultural-historical method of anthropology.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on Richard Burton’s ethnological explorations in the Sindh region (West India, now in Pakistan).

Boivin, Michel, 2024. “Richard Francis Burton in Sindh: From Orientalism to Ethnology as a Primary Source of Knowledge of India”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

British explorer, polymath and polyglot Richard Francis Burton (1821–1890) is best known for his pilgrimage to Mecca in 1853 disguised as a Persian merchant, for his explorations of East Africa and the Great Lakes region, and for the clash with his associate in the 1857–1859 expedition, John H. Speke (1827–1864), who claimed to be the actual discoverer of the source of the Nile. A distinguished, albeit scandalous member of learned societies, indeed one of the founders of the Anthropological Society of London who participated in the anthropological debates of his time (in particular, the polygenism vs. monogenism debate), Burton was a prolific writer. With over 40 volumes published in different countries, he wrote in to different genres, from travelogues to literary, historical, and ethnological essays within and beyond Orientalism. In addition, he translated works such as the Arabian Nights and the Kama Sutra. He was a diplomat for about thirty years in different parts of the world: Africa, South America, the Middle East, and Europe. A Victorian maverick par excellence, he remains a controversial figure, albeit generally absent from the histories of anthropology. In this article, Boivin (Centre for South Asian and Himalayan Studies, CNRS-EHESS, Paris) focuses on Burton’s less-known seven-year stay (1842–1849) in the Sindh region (West India, now in Pakistan), after having been expelled from Oxford University. A careful reading of Burton’s writings on India provides evidence that he was one of the architects of the transition from Orientalism to ethnology as the primary source of knowledge about India. As an officer in the East India Company army during that period, he acquired a command of several local languages, including Hindustani, Gujarati, Marathi, Sindhi and Punjabi. In addition, he collected fieldwork data, which he published in five books. As an ethnologist, as he called himself, he provided detailed descriptions of the populations of the Sindh region. He proposed one of the first analyses of the social organization of these populations, identifying that the dual principle of purity and impurity prevailed in the acquisition of status in the social hierarchy. A distant forerunner of functionalism, he observed that professional activity most often grants status. Last but not least, he also showed that religious affiliation, particularly adherence to Islam, did not bring this distribution into question.

HAR is pleased to announce three of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: two posthumous articles (in English) by Brazilian historian of anthropology Mariza Corrêa, and an introductory study on her archive:

Serafim, Amanda Gonçalves, 2024. “In Mariza Corrêa’s Archive: A Brief Introduction to Two Key Documents,”in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Corrêa, Mariza, 2024 [1985]. “History of Anthropology in Brazil (1930‑1960): Testimonies,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Corrêa, Mariza, 2024 [1989]. “Women Anthropologists & Anthropology Research Project,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Amanda Serafim introduces two key documents from the archive of Brazilian anthropologist Mariza Corrêa (1945–2016), held by the Arquivo Edgard Leuenroth at the University of Campinas, Brazil. The two manuscripts in question, now transcribed and translated from Portuguese, are themselves made available in BEROSE as a posthumous publication. They summarize Corrêa’s fundamental research projects on “The History of Anthropology in Brazil” and on “Women Anthropologists and Anthropology,” respectively. The original documents were typewritten in 1985 and 1989, and are now accessible in English for the first time. A key figure in the history of Brazilian anthropology, Corrêa dedicated herself to three main areas of research: gender relations, racial issues, and the history of anthropology in Brazil, playing a leading role in pushing disciplinary historiography forward. While coordinating “The History of Anthropology in Brazil Project,” which began in 1984 and lasted for more than two decades, she worked alongside students and researchers to collect testimonies and documents from the earlier generations of anthropologists from the 1930s until the 1970s, when the first postgraduate programs in anthropology were created in Brazil. Corrêa developed an offshoot of this initiative in the “Women Anthropologists & Anthropology Project,” which began in 1989 and aimed at uncovering gender relations in anthropology, the encounters and “misencounters” with female characters who were active but forgotten in the history of the discipline. Her project was intended to be a feminist counterpart to Adam Kuper’s Anthropologists and Anthropology (1973), whose Brazilian translation, Antropólogos e antropologia, may be read as “male anthropologists and anthropology.” In 2003, she eventually published Antropólogas & Antropologia (Women anthropologists and anthropology), a compilation of her own writings as a feminist historian of anthropology. Among her institutional contributions to anthropology in Brazil, her role in creating and participating in the Center for Gender Studies Pagu and her presidency of the Associação Brasileira de Antropologia (Brazilian Anthropological Association) between 1996 and 1998 stand out. Mariza Corrêa pushed writing the history of science forward; but while her legacy is particularly enduring in Brazil, the potential of her insights as a historian of anthropology is yet to be fully grasped on a broader level. The two posthumous articles and Serafim’s brief introduction are also available in Portuguese—along with other resources in the encyclopedic dossier dedicated to Mariza Corrêa.

References cited:

Corrêa, Mariza. 2003. Antropólogas e Antropologia. Belo Horizonte: Editora UFMG.

Kuper, Adam. 1973.  Anthropologists and Anthropology: the British School, 1922-1972. New York: Pica Press.Kuper, Adam. 1978. Antropólogos e Antropologia. Rio de Janeiro, Francisco Alves.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Portuguese) dedicated to a legendary figure in the history of Brazilian anthropology as the first woman who directed the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro.

Domingues, Heloisa Maria Bertol, 2024. “Da arqueologia à etnografia, da museologia ao ativismo: trajetórias cruzadas de Heloisa Alberto Torres e da antropologia brasileira,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

Brazilian anthropologist Heloisa Alberto Torres (1895–1977) played a decisive role in the introduction of cultural anthropology in Brazil. In research, university courses or as director of the Museu Nacional in Rio de Janeiro, where she remained for 17 years, Heloisa Alberto Torres favored studies that highlighted the cultural diversity of the country’s populations, both ancient and contemporary. Not only did she produce compelling scientific work, but she also encouraged the collection of material and immaterial objects with the aim of preserving and learning about cultures. In this beautifully illustrated article, H. Domingues thoroughly analyzes her work and concludes that dona Heloisa – as she was courteously called – also took an incisive political stance, proposing public policies that exalted traditions while contributing to maintaining cultural alterity, relations with the environment and, depending on the wishes of each group, with society in general. Heloisa Torres valued both archaeology and ethnology, relating the past and present of cultures within an entangled historicity of colonization and everyday life. She proclaimed the protection of the “original culture of the Indians,” which she defined geographically and amid migration movements, exchanges and encounters of knowledge between different peoples. By putting forward the concept of “deculturation,” which referred to the ways in which the colonial power sought to impose the same patterns of thought, thus creating social inequality, she fought with all her might for the association of scientific and political goals. According to Domingues, Heloisa’s ideals resurface in Black and Indigenous voices, which are increasingly audible in Brazilian society and academia. 

HAR is pleased to announce two of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: two articles (in English) portraying key figures in the history of anthropological research conducted in Türkiye in the twentieth century, including a self-portrait by Paul Magnarella.

Sipahi, Ali, 2024. “An Ethnographic Moment in Turkey during the Long 1968: Portraits of Anthropologists from the Chicago Circle and Beyond,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

Magnarella, Paul J., 2024. “My Anthropological Adventures in Turkey (1963–present),” with an introduction by Ali Sipahi, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Between 1966 and 1971, seven anthropologists—six American and one Norwegian—conducted a year-long ethnographic research in different places in Turkey, with different questions in mind. The University of Chicago professor, Lloyd A. Fallers and his students Michael E. Meeker, Peter Benedict and Alan Duben composed the so-called “Chicago group.” In addition, Paul J. Magnarella from Harvard, June Starr from Berkeley, and Reidar Grønhaug from Bergen were in the field for dissertation research in the same period. Such a concentration of intensive fieldwork by international scholars in Turkey was exceptional. Five of them were even simultaneously in the field in spring of 1967 although there was no team mission in question. It was a particular moment that brought them together: the encounter between the Cold War social sciences and the critical turn in the late 1960s. Understanding this ethnographic moment contributes to the literatures on Cold War anthropology, politics of fieldwork, and the history of American anthropology. In the first article, Ali Sipahi presents short portraits of the anthropologists of Turkey in the long 1968, starting with the Chicago group. In the second article, Paul J. Magnarella describes in autobiographical mode the familial, residential, and educational experiences that influenced his anthropological research in Turkey. In 1969 he embarked on a broad community study of Susurluk—a town undergoing major industrial, economic, demographic, and social changes. He resided in the town for over a year with a local family and combined participant observation, elaborate questionnaires, local archival research, and extensive interviews with hundreds of residents to portray a rich picture of the town’s history, society, culture, religious practices, economic organization, and politics. Using similar research techniques, he also studied a village that had been settled by Georgian immigrants during the late Ottoman period.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Spanish) on the history of Andean kinship studies.

Sendón, Pablo F., 2024. “Revisitando los estudios de parentesco en los Andes: entre la historia de la antropología y el análisis computacional de fuentes parroquiales,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

This article reassesses the anthropological studies on kinship in the Andes in the light of new research on the ayllu among contemporary Indigenous peasant and Quechua-speaking populations of the southern Peruvian Andes. Through the prism offered by computational tools, the ayllu (groupings of individuals who are related to each other as kin and share a common territory) is reframed as an institution that, far from being strictly Indigenous, is inseparable from the local history of Christianity. Additionally, some salient characteristics of the earlier studies in question are highlighted, not with the intention of questioning the exceptional quality of what has been done in the past, but rather to contribute to a reflection on the ways in which ongoing anthropological research in the Andes may affect the writing of a particular chapter in the history of the discipline. The case study in question suggests an approach to the problem of the ayllu from the present to the past, and not the other way around, as has classically been done by postulating more or less hypothetical models of social morphology. The temporal information recorded in the new databases allows us to follow the trail of this institution until at least the middle of the 19th century. Two major records shape the corpus—genealogies and parish registers available in peasant villages in the southern Peruvian Andes—and allow us to offer a fresh characterization not only of the ayllu but also of its historical vicissitudes. Far from being a timeless entity, the ayllu transforms itself in the diachrony not only from exogenous and conjunctural factors but also from endogenous and structural regularities that also explain its continuity over time. Due to the volume of basic information, as well as the complexity of the combination of weighted variables, this dialogue with the history of anthropology would be impossible and unmanageable without the use of computational tools.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English), on Victorian anthropologists of British India 1850–1871.

Fuller, Chris, 2024. “Victorian Ethnology in British India: The Study of Tribes, Castes and Society, circa 1850–1871,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Between 1850 and 1871, when the decennial censuses of India began, the most influential colonial ethnologist was George Campbell, a member of the Indian Civil Service. Campbell’s history, Modern India (1852), briefly described Indian society, but a long article (1866) set out an “ethnological skeleton” for classifying India’s “races and classes” according to five criteria: physical appearance (indicating racial division), followed by languages, religions, laws, and manners plus mental characteristics. The Indian population was divided into the “black aboriginal tribes of the interior hills and jungles,” “modern Indians” belonging to various Hindu and Muslim tribes and castes, who made up the vast majority, and a small category of tribal groups of mixed descent on the northern frontiers. The principal division was primarily racial, rather than linguistic, because tribal people spoke both Dravidian and “Kolarian” (Ho-Munda) languages, and the majority population both Dravidian and Aryan. Campbell’s article, which included a short ethnographic survey of tribal groups and a longer one of caste groups, was more comprehensive than any previous. 

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Portuguese), on the Anthropological Exhibition that took place at the Museu Nacional of Rio Janeiro in 1882.

Agostinho, Michele de Barcelos, 2024. “A Exposição Antropológica Brasileira de 1882: história, ciência e poder no Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

The Museu Nacional of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro is a bicentennial scientific institution, the first in Brazil, which had one of the largest collections of natural and anthropological sciences in Latin America, much of which disappeared in the fire that struck its historical building on September 2, 2018. Initially called the Royal Museum, then the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, its trajectory occupies a prominent place in the country’s history insofar as the disciplinary knowledge produced there was closely linked to state policies aimed at managing territories and populations. At the end of the 19th century, the concern with consolidating and legitimizing anthropological science in Brazil, inscribing indigenous peoples in national history, and demanding a museum from the imperial government which specialized in ethnography motivated the then director of the Museu, Ladislau Netto, to hold the Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition of 1882, the first and only of its kind in Brazil. The exhibition lasted three months, displayed hundreds of indigenous objects and received thousands of visitors. This study analyzes the intentions of those who conceived it, the practices of representation that constituted the exhibition order and its repercussions with the public. In this lavishly illustrated article, Michele Agostinho takes readers on a true guided tour, which is also a travel in time.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article published in three languages (Italian, French, and Spanish), on Italian anthropologist Raffaelle Corso.

Coppola, Maurizio, 2024. “Uno ‘folklorista di ieri’? Un ritratto di Raffaele Corso, tra etnografia legale, erotica ed esotica,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Coppola, Maurizio, 2024. “Un ‘folkloriste d’hier’? Raffaele Corso entre ethnographie juridique, érotique et exotique,”in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Coppola, Maurizio, 2024. “¿Un ‘folklorista de ayer’? Un retrato de Raffaele Corso, entre etnografía jurídica, erótica y exótica,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Raffaele Corso (1883–1965) was one of the leading figures in the history of anthropological disciplines in Italy in the first half of the 20^th century. Both in Italy and abroad, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s, he was a renowned scholar in the domain of “folklore”, which he defined as the study of the popolino, that is, the urban or rural working classes of so-called “civilized” societies; but he also dedicated himself to “ethnography”, understood as the study of non-European peoples.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: two articles in English and Portuguese, respectively, that overview the history – and the historiography – of Portuguese anthropology.

Almeida, Sónia Vespeira de & Rita Cachado, 2023. “Beyond the “Carnation Revolution”: An Overview of Contemporary Histories of Portuguese Anthropology,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3078.html

Saraiva, Clara, 2023. “Histórias e Memórias da Antropologia Portuguesa,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article2906.html

The history of anthropology in Portugal began to be systematized after the 1974 “Carnation Revolution,” which put an end to the longest fascist-type dictatorship in Europe. In the first paper, Almeida and Cachado look at how the history of Portuguese anthropology has been studied. Historical perspectives on Portuguese anthropology before the revolution tend to emphasize the connections between anthropologists’ work and the dictatorship project, while the work of anthropologists after the revolution is viewed as being more in tune with international or cosmopolitan anthropologies. An attentive reading of this literature shows that there were more than two historically distinctive ways of practicing anthropology. The article explores both the history and the historiography of the discipline in Portugal, highlighting some of the fundamental contributions that have been made to understand and contextualize this peculiar anthropological tradition within and beyond old nation- and empire-building motives. On the one hand, the main ideas and discussions contained in that bibliography – mostly written in Portuguese – are analyzed and synthesized, while on the other hand suggesting possible paths which the historiography of anthropology in Portugal could take in the future. 

In the second article entitled “Histories and Memories of Portuguese Anthropology,” Saraiva reviews some of the major publications on the history of Portuguese anthropology and adds a more personal perspective related to the author’s path from her training in Lisbon and the United States to her presidency of the Portuguese Anthropological Association (APA) – including her close association with key figures in the recent history of Portuguese anthropology. The text underlines the continuities and ruptures that occurred at different moments and reveals the ambivalences of the discipline during the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, as well as the tensions or connections between the nation-building and empire-building projects. Along with the intellectual and political changes resulting from the “Carnation Revolution” of 1974, new forms of institutionalization emerged, both in the universe of academia and at the professional level with the creation of the APAin 1989. The text takes us to the summer of 2021, two years before the 50th anniversary of the death of Jorge Dias, a leading figure in modern Portuguese anthropology.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article in English that historicizes local and community-oriented museal institutions in the reservation of Standing Rock.

Grillot, Thomas, 2023. “Familiar in Many Shapes: A Historical (and Contemporary) Overview of Museums in Native American Country,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3160.html

Discussions of the role of museums in Native lives and communities often overestimate their alienness in Native American country. In fact this institution is, Grillot proposes, quietly familiar, and should be studied as such. A view of the problem from the Dakota/Lakota reservation of Standing Rock emphasizes the very diverse presence of the museum in Native lives as a means of producing culture and identities. It shows how networks of local actors developed museum-like forms of exhibiting Native cultural artifacts that nourished reservation life. From powwows to school outings, from window cases in shops to exhibits inside Native homes, from employment in museums to the building of private collections by tribal members, museums in Dakota/Lakota country inspire and sponsor myriad practices, some intimate, others very much public-oriented. Familiar, even if regularly contested, these museum-like practices have always been appropriated from within relationships that tie together craftspeople and artists and their families, on the one hand, and discrete institutions, rather than “museums” in general, on the other. In this study based both on fieldwork experience and archival sources, Grillot reconstitutes this history through vignettes centered on the Standing Rock reservation that emphasize the importance of replacing museums in regional geographies, and the living tradition of creating local and community-oriented museal institutions in Native country.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in English, on Polish ethnographer and anthropologist Jan Czekanowski.

Bar, Joanna & Michał Tymowski, 2023. “Jan Czekanowski, a Polish Anthropologist between Two Eras of European Cultural History,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article2971.html

This article recaptures the trajectory and describes the ethnographic and anthropological work of Polish Africanist and Slavicist Jan Czekanowski (1882–1965). After developing a new method in the study of racial classification, he took part in the German Central-African Expedition of 1907–1909, during which he conducted fieldwork in the interlacustrine region of Africa. The article analyses the results of his anthropological and ethnographic researches in central Africa—including his comprehensive photographic documentation—which were published between 1911 and 1927 in a five-volume work, Forschungen im Nil-Kongo-Zwischengebiet. The article also highlights Czekanowski’s studies on the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, which he conducted after and under the effect of World War I, as well as his role as creator of the Lwów school of physical anthropology, concomitant with his academic career as a professor at the University of Lwów from 1913 to 1941. Based on both published sources and archival materials largely ignored outside of Poland, the article reassesses Czekanowski’s place in disciplinary history as a cosmopolitan anthropologist connected to numerous European scholarly societies.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article in French on the correspondence between Marcel Mauss and Dutch scholars.

Beaufils, Thomas, 2023. “Marcel Mauss, la Hollande et les Hollandais. Correspondance de 1898 à 1938,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3115.html

The sheer volume of articles and books devoted to both the published texts and the manuscripts of Marcel Mauss (1872–1959) over the decades suggests that all facets of the French scholar’s personality and intellectual activity have been widely explored. However, although a very serious and patient effort has been made in recent years to assemble and describe the relevant archives, the task of locating unpublished documents has not yet been completed. In fact, Mauss’s work is characterized by the extreme dispersion of the writings he bequeathed; and all his known correspondence has yet to be fully transcribed. The present piece is a contribution to this tireless work of compilation and translation, in order to give as accurate a picture as possible of the scientific output of the “father of French anthropology.” The correspondence transcribed here comprises mostly letters exchanged between Mauss and Dutch scholars, and also with the Amsterdam rabbinate, including one in German. The collection spans the period from 1898, when Mauss was only 26 and still a student, to 1938, when the great scholar was at the height of his fame. The aim of this dossier is to draw up an inventory of the links that existed between Marcel Mauss and the Netherlands during this period. The content of this correspondence is often personal, and therefore not exclusively scientific. This piece appears within the BEROSE encyclopedic dossier dedicated to Marcel Mauss, which comprises over fifty resources, both primary and secondary sources. 

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in English, on Ernestine Friedl as an accidental feminist anthropologist.

Allen, Peter S., 2023. “From New York to Vasilika: Ernestine Friedl, an Accidental Feminist in a Greek Village,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3117.html

This article is a comprehensive account of the life and work of Ernestine Friedl (1920–2014), a professional anthropologist, teacher, and university administrator. Born in Hungary, she immigrated to New York and settled in the Bronx. Her academic career began with her graduation from Hunter College and a PhD from Columbia University, where her doctoral dissertation concerned the Chippewa, whom she had studied on their reservation in Wisconsin. Friedl then taught at Queens College of the State University of New York for more than 20 years before becoming the chair of the Anthropology Department at Duke University in 1973. Meanwhile, she accompanied her husband, classicist Harry Levy, to Greece where she conducted fieldwork in a small village, resulting in her monograph, Vasilika: A Village in Modern Greece (1967), a pioneering work of European ethnography. She was the first American female anthropologist to conduct modern—if not innovative—ethnographic fieldwork in Greece beyond folklore studies, and one of the first to do so in a European society. The article outlines Friedl’s peculiar place in a broader history of anthropological research on Europe, while focusing on feminism and discrimination within her academic and scientific milieu. A special section reveals the ethnographer in the field, her coping with local ways, and the privileged but not necessarily easy interactions of an “American wife” with Greek interlocutors, both female and male. Friedl’s stature in the discipline is testified to by her presidencies of the American Ethnological Society (1967) and the American Anthropological Association (1975), her service on the Board of the National Science Foundation (1980–1988), and her editorship of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (1986–1990). Friedl concluded her career by spending five years as the dean of arts and sciences at Duke and several years teaching at Princeton University.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in French, on the Belgian explorer, ethnographer and visual anthropologist Robert de Wavrin.

Moderbacher, Christine & Grace Winter, 2023. “La vie et l’œuvre du Marquis Robert de Wavrin, un des premiers anthropologues visuels”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

URL BEROSE: article2908.html

Born into a noble family from Belgian Flanders, Robert de Wavrin (1888–1971) was an explorer, ethnographer and visual anthropologist who spent most of his life in Latin America. Financially independent (thanks to the family fortune from coal mines), he lived in Paraguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. His first contacts with Amerindian populations, around 1915, led him to join learned societies of geography and anthropology in Brussels and Paris, where his empirical observations were appreciated in line with the theoretical views of the time. From his first trip, he used photography to illustrate the Indigenous way of life, which he actually shared. He was soon introduced to the film camera and, from 1919 onwards, visually recorded the daily life of various communities. His 2,000 photographs and four films represent an important contribution to the history of visual anthropology. He is also the author of 14 books and numerous articles.

In this pioneering article, Moderbacher and Winter trace the life and work of Wavrin, with a focus on his film work as a contribution to the history of visual anthropology. Although fragments of his work are known to some researchers in South America, Wavrin is almost entirely absent from historical studies and largely forgotten in the anthropological and Americanist fields. Although his work cannot be studied outside the colonial context of this discipline and the legacy of Eurocentrism, according to Moderbacher and Winter his visual contribution provides remarkable historical insights and deserves the attention of researchers.

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 impact of the Declaration of Barbados of 1971 in Brazilian anthropology.

Oliveira, João Pacheco de, “‘Not mere objects of study’: The Declaration of Barbados (1971) and the Remaking of Brazilian Anthropology”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

URL BEROSE: article2897.html

In 1971, young anthropologists who were gathered on the island of Barbados denounced the dramatic situation in which Indigenous peoples lived. With its context in the histories of social sciences in Latin America, the resulting manifesto criticized conservative governments and Christian missions, while calling for a new attitude in anthropology. Social studies should not be based solely on the theoretical agendas of hegemonic sociologies and anthropologies, it argued; they should address ethical and political issues related to processes of liberation and decolonization of Indigenous populations. In the following decades, military coups and intense political repression meant that teaching and research in the social sciences were placed under tight surveillance in various Latin American countries. Pushed to the margins of the intellectual and political scene, the Barbados message had a limited impact in many academic spaces, but there were a few exceptions – including Brazil.

In this illuminating article, Pacheco de Oliveira explores the trajectories of the political legacy of the Barbados statement in Brazilian anthropology, through lasting debates and practices around themes such as Indigenous agency, decolonization, and dialogic anthropologies. The current plurality of anthropology demands a fresh reading of the 1971 document as both a historical landmark and an inspirational statement for generations to come.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article in Spanish on Jean-Baptiste Vaudry, a French ethnographer working in Bolivia in the early twentieth century.

Combès, Isabelle, 2023. “Los aportes de Jean-Baptiste Vaudry a la antropología boliviana”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

French civil engineer Jean-Baptiste Vaudry (1875–1938) worked for the Bolivian government between 1902 and 1913 on commissions to delimit the borders with Argentina and Brazil. In the 1920s, he worked for several years in the tin mines of the altiplano. Although widely distributed at the time, the more than 500 photographs he took during those years fell into oblivion until recently. Beyond exoticism, they show Indigenous people from the Chaco, the Chiquitania, the altiplano and the valleys, in the most varied situations: workers on the haciendas or in the mines, in remote communities or in the streets of the cities, giving a realistic and lively testimony of a colorful Bolivia in the early twentieth century. In this profusely illustrated article, Combès minutely explores photographic material that was rediscovered in the 2010s, and explains how Vaudry portrayed a multi-ethnic Bolivia where indigenous people were in contact with each other within national society. Along with both published texts and unpublished manuscripts, Vaudry’s iconography is thus reassessed as that of an accidental “visual anthropologist” who gains a peculiar but important place in disciplinary history, and within Bolivian studies.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in Spanish, on Boasian ethnographer John Alden Mason.

Ocasio, Rafael, 2023. “De la criollización a la compilación del folclore puertorriqueño: el legado de John Alden Mason y de sus colaboradores jíbaros en el campo de Puerto Rico”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

US anthropologist John Alden Mason (1885–1967) was a student of Alfred L. Kroeber with a PhD from the University of California at Berkeley. He did fieldwork under Franz Boas’ supervision, namely within the “Scientific Survey of Porto Rico and the Virgin Islands,” which began in 1914–1915 as a multidisciplinary study under the auspices of the New York Academy of Sciences. The earliest part of the twentieth century after the Spanish American War of 1898 can be characterized as the beginning of an intense exploration in the United States of Puerto Rican culture. This interest led to active scientific fieldwork by representatives of American academic institutions. Boas’ and Mason’s was among the first research trips of this kind. They oversaw the gathering of hundreds of oral riddles, folk poetry, and stories, which were published in The Journal of American Folklore from 1916 through 1929. Mason considered this collection of folk tales as being among the largest from a Spanish-speaking country or territory. Following the publication of Race and Nation in Puerto Rican Folklore: Franz Boas and John Alden Mason in Porto Rico (Ocasio, Rutgers University Press, 2020), this article focuses on Mason’s ethnographic endeavors and discusses some of the special categories of folk tales that Mason – and Boas – presented as exemplary representations of a well grounded Puerto Rican identity. The published folktales favor rural cultural practices of the peasants known as “Jíbaro,” while ignoring folk data gathered in Loíza, a traditional fishing village inhabited by African descendants. Indeed, the choice to highlight Jíbaro oral folklore not only determined the geographical scope of the project (rural and inland culture) but also the types of native characters that stand as representatives of a Puerto Rican identity to this day. The Penn Museum, an institution for which Mason served as curator of the American Section from 1926 until his retirement in 1955, celebrates him as “one of the last of the great generalist anthropologists of the 20th century”, but his legacy is inseparable from his descriptive ethnography and the folk materials he compiled.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International
Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in French, on the influential Brazilian sociologist Florestan Fernandes.

Brochier, Christophe, 2023. “Florestan Fernandes: ‘patron’ de la sociologie pauliste et chercheur engagé”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Florestan Fernandes (1920–1995), of immigrant origin and from a very poor background, was arguably one of the most influential Brazilian sociologists of the second half of the twentieth century and one of its great modernizers, who tirelessly tried to understand the singularities, changes, and challenges of Brazilian society. In this ambitious article, Brochier traces the professional career and scholarly production of Florestan – as he is known in Brazil – starting with an examination of his formative years as an atypical student from the working classes at the University of São Paulo. Florestan’s intellectual brightness was noticed by French anthropologist Roger Bastide, who encouraged him and supervised his first research into folklore and race relations in São Paulo. His doctoral research was then devoted to the historical anthropology of the Tupinambá. The article reveals how the study of functionalism in anthropology was a starting point in Florestan’s development of a series of precepts and ideas concerning the epistemology of the social sciences in the 1950s. The way in which his intellectual and life trajectories were strongly affected by the military coup in 1964 is the theme of the second part of the article: clearly opposed to academic conservatism, Florestan abandoned epistemology and devoted himself to the study of the political and economic transformations of Brazilian society from a critical perspective. Finally, the last phase of his activity is recounted, when he was a deputy of the Partido dos Trabalhadores (Brazilian Labor Party) in the 1980s and 1990s, during which he tried to analyze the Brazilian political situation in real time. In conclusion, a draft assessment of Florestan’s work is proposed, in an effort to create a distance from the hagiographic perspective generally in use. He eventually emerges as a key figure in a wider history of sociology, anthropology, and the social sciences in general.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, published both in Spanish and in French, on Stefano Varese as a key figure of applied anthropology, with a focus on Amazonian activism.

Favier, Irène, 2023. “Utopía y consuelo amazónico. Stefano Varese como antropólogo activista, hitos biográficos” (translated by Isabelle Combès), in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Favier, Irène, 2023. “Utopie et consolation amazonienne. Stefano Varese en anthropologue activiste, jalons biographiques”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Born in Genoa in 1939, anthropologist Stefano Varese left Italy for Peru in 1956. His ethno-historical doctoral researches on the Asháninka of the Gran Pajonal region resulted in La sal de los cerros (1968), a milestone in the history of Peruvian Amazon studies. In the late 1960s, Varese gave up his position at the University of San Marcos to participate in the agrarian reform carried out by the new military government. While pursuing his studies of the Amazonian worlds, he contributed to a decree recognizing the legal existence of native communities as late as 1974. From being an intellectual under construction, Varese found himself propelled to the rank of a figure in the “strange revolution” carried out by the state apparatus between 1968 and 1975. Following the demise of this political experience, he went into exile, first in Mexico, then in the United States. Migration movements in Latin America and the United States became one of his fundamental research topics. In this compelling article, Irène Favier shows how the biographical itinerary of this Italian-Peruvian anthropologist crosses the second half of the twentieth century, while giving an account of the dynamics that affected anthropology at the time. Favier reveals how Varese continued to produce knowledge and to raise awareness of indigenous issues, thus becoming a key figure in the development – and the history – of applied anthropology, to which he gave a stronger political dimension. Apart from teaching – namely at the University of California, Davis, where he helped create the Native American Studies department in 1988 – Varese pursued international activities of expertise on indigenous issues. This article retraces this trajectory by restoring its historical context, and attempts to identify Varese’s legacy in the long and complex history of applied anthropology.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: a special issue, in English, on Keith Hart’s trajectories as reflected in his recent volume (2022).

Shakya, Mallika & Keith Hart (eds.). 2022. “Keith Hart’s Anthropology: Auto-Ethnography, World History and Humanist Philosophy” (with the participation of Arjun Appadurai, Yasmeen Arif, Supriya Singh and John Tresch), BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Born in Manchester, Keith Hart (1943–) studied classics and social anthropology at Cambridge University. His research focuses on economic anthropology, Africa, money in all its forms and the digital revolution. He developed the concept of the informal economy in the field of development studies. He carried out fieldwork in Ghana in 1965–1968. In the 1970s, he advised on development policy in the Cayman Islands, Papua New Guinea, Hong Kong and West Africa. After immersion in the street economy, his experience of participant observation as a high-level adviser of governments and international organizations was crucial for his evolution as an anthropologist. He has taught at a dozen universities (Manchester, Yale, Chicago, Michigan, West Indies, London School of Economics, Pretoria, etc.), including Cambridge University between 1984 and 1998, where he directed the Centre for African Studies for six years. In 1993, with Anna Grimshaw, he created the collection Prickly Pear Pamphlets, which had a dozen issues. Edited by Mallika Shakya and Keith Hart himself, this special issue features two book launches of his Self in the World: Connecting Life’s Extremes (Oxford and New York, Berghahn Books, 2022), held on May 10, 2022, at the London School of Economics, and on June 13, 2022, at Delhi’s South Asian University. Commentary from the Delhi launch by Mallika Shakya, Arjun Appadurai, Yasmeen Arif and Supriya Singh is followed by an open discussion. A review from the LSE launch by John Tresch (first published in History of Anthropology Review) and a summary of his book by the author conclude this presentation. Keith Hart has written and edited several other books including: Money in a Human Economy (2017); Economy For and Against Democracy (2015); The Memory Bank: Money in an Unequal World (2000), The Political Economy of West African Agriculture (1982), Market and Society: The Great Transformation Today (2009) and Economic Anthropology (2011) with Chris Hann and The Human Economy: A Citizen’s Guide (2010) with J-L. Laville & A. D. Cattani). Keith Hart is also a writer of fiction and professional gambler.