To mark publication of the 50th and final volume in the series “Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia,” there will be a book launch at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle (Saale), Main Seminar Room, Thursday 23 January 2025, 16:00-17:30 CET. This is an in-person event but those unable to participate in person may do so via this link: https://mpi-eth.webex.com/mpi-eth/j.php?MTID=mc71ecd9ada4b2c70a6b1d7c95e31250a.You will need to register with Anke Meyer: meyer@eth.mpg.de

Jack Goody (1919–2015) was a giant of social anthropology, who worked for sixty years to transcend the view that anthropology was the study of “other cultures”. He wanted to move it in the direction of a more sociological, postcolonial, comparative social science. The most important precondition for this science was the freeing of world history from centuries of Eurocentric bias. From his base in Cambridge, Goody’s influence and inspiration spread out internationally. In Germany, as a long-term adviser to the Max Planck Society, he played a key role in the establishment of the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology in Halle (Saale) in 1999. Many of his 46 books were translated into French, Italian, Turkish, etc.

The book presents twelve Goody Lectures delivered in Halle between 2011 and 2022, an unpublished lecture given in Halle in 2004 by Jack Goody himself, as well as three biographical and bibliographical essays by the editors. For further details and the Table of Contents, see the attached poster.

Chris Hann and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.) Jack Goody between Social Anthropology and World History. Berlin/Münster: LIT Verlag (Halle Studies in the Anthropology of Eurasia 50), 2024. x + 397 pp. ISBN 978-3-643-91598-6.

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.

History of the Human Sciences – the international journal of peer-reviewed research, which provides a leading forum for work in the social sciences, humanities, human psychology, and biology that reflexively examines its own historical origins and interdisciplinary influences – is delighted to announce details of its annual prize for early career scholars. The intention of the annual award is to recognize a researcher whose work best represents the journal’s aim to critically examine traditional assumptions and preoccupations about human beings, their societies and their histories in light of developments that cut across disciplinary boundaries. In the pursuit of these goals, History of the Human Sciences publishes traditional humanistic studies as well work in the social sciences, including the fields of sociology, psychology, political science, the history and philosophy of science, anthropology, classical studies, and literary theory. Scholars working in any of these fields are encouraged to apply.

Guidelines for the Award

Scholars who wish to be considered for the award are asked to submit an up-to-date two-page C.V. (including a statement that confirms eligibility for the award) and an essay that is a maximum of 12,000 words long (including notes and references). The essay should be unpublished and not under consideration elsewhere, based on original research, written in English, and follow History of the Human Science’s style guide. Scholars are advised to read the journal’s description of its aims and scope, as well as its submission guidelines.

Entries will be judged by a panel drawn from the journal’s editorial team and board. They will identify the essay that best fits the journal’s aims and scope.

Eligibility

Scholars of any nationality who have either not yet been awarded a Ph.D. or are no more than five years from its award are welcome to apply. The judging panel will use the definition of “active years”, with time away from academia for parental leave, health problems, or other relevant reasons being disregarded in the calculation. They will also be sensitive to the disruption that the Covid 19 pandemic has had on career progression and will take such factors into account in their decision making. Candidates are encouraged to include details relating to any of these issues in their supporting documents.

Scholars who have submitted an essay for consideration in previous years are welcome to do so again. However, new manuscripts must not be substantially the same as any they have submitted in the past.  

Prize

The winning scholar will be awarded £250 and have their essay published in History of the Human Sciences (subject to the essay passing through the journal’s peer review process). The intention is to award the prize to a single entrant but the judging panel may choose to recognise more than one essay in the event of a particularly strong field.

Deadlines

Entries should be made by Friday, March 28, 2025. The panel aims to make a decision by the end of May 2025. The winning entry will be submitted for peer review automatically. The article, clearly identified as the winner of the History of the Human Sciences Early Career Prize, will then be published in the journal as soon as the production schedule allows. The winning scholar and article will also be promoted by History of the Human Sciences, including on its website, which hosts content separate to the journal.

Previous Winners

2023-24: Libby O’Neil (Yale University), ‘Thinking in Systems: Problems of Organization at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences and the Society for General Systems Research, 1950-1957’; Alfred Freeborn (Max Planck Institute for the History of Science), ‘Testing Psychiatrists to Diagnose Schizophrenia: Crisis, Consensus and Computers in post-war Psychiatry’

2022-23: Freddy Foks (Manchester), “Finding modernity in England’s past: social anthropology and the transformation of social history in Britain, 1959-1977”

2021-22: Harry Parker (Cambridge), “The regional survey movement and popular autoethnography in early 20th century Britain”. Special commendation: Ohad Reiss Sorokin (Princeton), “”‘Intelligence’ before ‘Intelligence Tests’: Alfred Binet’s Experiments on his Daughters (1890-1903)”.

2020-21: Liana Glew (Penn State), “Documenting insanity: Paperwork and patient narratives in psychiatric history”, and Simon Torracinta (Yale), “Maps of desire: Edward Tolman’s Drive Theory of Wants”. Special commendation: Erik Baker (Harvard), “The ultimate think tank: The rise of the Santa Fe Institute Libertarian”.

2019-20: Danielle Carr (Columbia), “Ghastly Marionettes and the political metaphysics of cognitive liberalism: Anti-behaviourism, language, and The Origins of Totalitarianism”. Special commendation: Katie Joice (Birkbeck), “Mothering in the Frame: cinematic microanalysis and the pathogenic mother, 1945-67”.

You can read more about these essays in interviews with the authors on the journal’s website.

To Apply

Entrants should e-mail an anonymized copy of their essay, along with an up-to-date C.V., to hhs@histhum.com. 

Further Inquiries

If you have any questions about the prize, or anything relating to the journal, please email hhs@histhum.com.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article on American Cultural Anthropologist Paul Radin and his triadic approach to the study of culture.

Szoke, Zsofia Johanna, 2024. “Through the Speculum of the Psyche: Paul Radin at the Eranos ‘Tagungen’”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Paul Radin (1883–1959) was an American cultural anthropologist. Son of a rabbi, he was born in Poland in 1883, and he studied anthropology at Columbia University under Franz Boas. After completing his PhD in 1911, he became a prolific ethnographer who devoted a lifetime study to the Winnebago (Ho-Chunk). He was particularly interested in the matters of the mind, myth, ritual drama, religious experience, language, history and the role of the individual in “primitive” societies, a label he utilized with considerable caution. Radin became a fellow of the Bollingen Foundation, in part devoted to the dissemination of Carl Jung’s work. He was also an invited lecturer at the Eranos meetings in Ascona, Switzerland. In 1952 he moved to Lugano and lived there until 1956. During this time, he lectured at Oxford, Cambridge, Manchester and at the Carl Jung Institute in Zürich. Then he joined Brandeis University in 1957, where he worked until his death in 1959. He never deserted his research on the Winnebago Tribe.

The HAR Editors are pleased to spread the word about the upcoming event “FAIRly Obscure: An Edit-a-thon Exploring Anthropology, Communities, and Wikipedia Representation.” The event is presented by The University of Maryland Center for Archival Futures, the National Anthropological Archives, Smithsonian Institution; George Washington University’s Center for the Advanced Study of Human Paleobiology; The Bentley Historical Library and University of Michigan School of Information; the University of Missouri’s College of Information Studies; and the Council for the Preservation of Anthropological Records (CoPAR), and Wikimedia DC. It will take place, in a hybrid format, on Friday, December 13 from 11:30 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. EST.

Are you interested in the history of anthropology? In archival description, outreach, and linked data? In FAIR and CARE principles for social science and scientific information? Join a co-sponsored edit-a-thon event to support the ethical description of anthropological knowledge and anthropological records focused on reworking and expanding related Wikipedia and Wikidata entries. This edit-a-thon will focus on editing, adding, and checking information on these publicly available and publicly maintained databases relating to anthropologists and anthropology. Interested audience may include community members, anthropologists, graduate students in anthropology, graduate students in information science, linked data nerds, and others!

No Wikipedia editing experience is necessary. Opening ceremonial event will begin at 11:30 a.m. Training will be provided, taking place 12:00 p.m. to 1:00 p.m. (EST). Open editing time will run from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EST). At 2:30 p.m. there will be a Wikidata demo. If you’ve never edited before, please plan to attend the training session. 

Find out more by visiting the Wiki page and register using Eventbrite.

Event Locations

Primary site: University of Michigan: Whiting Room, Bentley Historical Library, 1150 Beal Avenue, Ann Arbor, MI 48109, USA

Satellite site: Room 2119, Hornbake Library-South, College of Information, University of Maryland, 4130 Campus Dr., College Park, MD 20740

Or online!

Event Preparation

Laptops are required. Please bring your own. Please create a Wikipedia account prior to the event. 

Please read or refresh on the following:

1. Wiki guide from Australia
2. Living persons guidance
3. Protocols for Native Archival Materials
4. CARE Principles for Indigenous Data Governance  
5. FAIR Principles for Scientific Data Management and Stewardship 
6. On editing Wikipedia for history: Roy Rosenzweig, “Can History Be Open Source? Wikipedia and the Future of the Past,” Journal of American History 93, no. 1 (June 2006): 117-146. DOI: https://doi.org/10.2307/4486062.  

Further Information

Training will be provided, and lunch will be provided for in-person participants who RSVP in advance, taking place December 13, 11:00 a.m.-12:00 p.m. at the two host sites. Open editing time will run from 1:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m. (EST). If you’ve never edited before, please plan to attend the training session. 

Please fill out this quick Google Form to RSVP for lunch and indicate your interest in Wikipedia or Wikidata.

Organized by Nickolas Surawy-Stepney, Jennifer Fraser, Thandeka Cochrane & Shagufta Bhangu (King’s College London), for the Royal Anthropological Society Health, Environment, and AnThropology (HEAT) 2025 two-day conference.

April 23-24, 2025

Durham University, U.K.

The climatic and environmental changes brought about by the forces of industrialisation, capitalism, empire, and global ‘development’ are becoming increasingly visible. But vital too are changes wrought that are less visible – the chemical alterations induced in water, soil, air, crops, animal and human bodies that are having profound effects on health and wellbeing. Responsibility and consequences are distributed in deeply unequal ways (Choy 2016). In this panel we focus specifically on the carcinogenic effects of this toxicity. While scientific investigation into links between industrial environmental contamination and carcinogenesis has been underdeveloped in favour of that which foregrounds personal agency and individual choice, a growing body of anthropological scholarship has begun to reorient this research agenda. Drawing on examples such as peanut production in Senegal (Tousignant 2022), open-pit mining in Spain (Fernández-Navarro et al., 2012), nuclear waste disposal in the USA (Cram 2023 & Masco 2021), and agricultural pesticide use in Kenya (Prince 2021), scholars have started to probe the connections between corporate and industrial interests and the ‘epidemic’ of cancer, in an effort to think through the relationship between the living and its milieu in novel ways (Canguilhem 2001). We invite papers that advance these analyses of ‘carcinogenic accountability’, and examine how risks of carcinogenic exposure are made visible and invisible, embraced and resisted, and studied. We are particularly interested in research which undertakes semiotic and material cultural analyses of the following concepts: ‘exposed’, ‘toxic’, ‘safe’, ‘carcinogenic’, and/or interrogate the ethical, epistemic, and regulatory conjunctures within which these categories operate.

To propose a paper please use the Abstract Management system linked here. The call for papers ends Monday, January 13, 2025. You do not have to be an RAI or ASA member to propose a paper.

Proposals should consist of:

• The title of the panel
• The title of the paper you wish to present
• An abstract of no more than 250 words.
  Paper proposals must be submitted via the submission system and will be reviewed by panel convenors.

The 2024 American Anthropological Association meeting will be taking place this week from the 20th to the 23rd in Tampa, Florida. For those who plan on attending, we would like to highlight a workshop that is likely to pique the interest of those working on the history of anthropology. The full program can be found here.

3775 Archival Search & Research 101

Friday, November 22, 2024 

2:30 PM-4:00 PM

TCC 104

To be held at the University of Amsterdam, the Netherlands, 6-7 June 2025.

This two-day conference of the Society for the History of Recent Social Science (HISRESS), at the University of Amsterdam in the Netherlands, will bring together researchers working on the history of post-World War II social science. It will provide a forum for the latest research on the cross-disciplinary history of the post-war social sciences, including but not limited to anthropology, economics, psychology, political science, and sociology as well as related fields like area studies, communication studies, design, history, international relations, law, linguistics, and urban studies. The conference, hosted by the Department of European Studies at the University of Amsterdam, aims to build upon the recent emergence of work and conversation on cross-disciplinary themes in the postwar history of the social sciences.

Submissions are welcome in such areas including, but not restricted to:

• The interchange of social science concepts and figures among the academy and wider intellectual and popular spheres
• Comparative institutional histories of departments and programs
• Border disputes and boundary work between disciplines as well as academic cultures
• Themes and concepts developed in the history and sociology of the natural sciences, reconceptualized for the social science context
• Professional and applied training programs and schools, and the quasi-disciplinary fields (like business administration) that typically housed them
• The traffic of social science into science and technology programs
• The role of social science in post-colonial state-building governance
• Social science adaptations to the changing media landscape
• The role and prominence of disciplinary memory in a comparative context
• Engagements with matters of gender, sexuality, race, religion, nationality, disability and other markers of identity and difference

The two-day conference will be organized as a series of one-hour, single-paper sessions attended by all participants. Ample time will be set aside for intellectual exchange between presenters and attendees, as all participants are expected to prepare unpublished papers (not longer than 10,000 words, excluding footnotes and references) for circulation to other participants and read all pre-circulated papers in advance.

Proposals should contain no more than 1000 words, indicating the originality of the paper. The deadline for receipt of abstracts is February 3, 2025. Final notification will be given in March 2025 after proposals have been reviewed. Completed papers will be expected by May 15, 2025.

Please note that published or forthcoming papers are not eligible, owing to the workshop format.

The conference sponsor, HISRESS (the Society for the History of Recent Social Science), is launching a new journal (History of Social Science), to be published by the University of Pennsylvania Press. The journal is accepting submissions for its initial volumes.

The organizing committee consists of Jamie Cohen-Cole (George Washington University), Bregje van Eekelen (TU Delft & Erasmus University Rotterdam), Philippe Fontaine (École normale supérieure Paris-Saclay), Leah Gordon (Brandeis University), Jeff Pooley (University of Pennsylvania), and P.W. Zuidhof (University of Amsterdam).

We are happy to announce and share the program of the conference, Exploring the Ethnographic Archive: Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century.

The two day event will take place online, December 5th and 6th, 2024, at the following link: https://cnrs.zoom.us/j/94484479007?pwd=cTf7ZPWGp9nBpOA7g4gt4okgPioq4z.1

The Conference is part of the Research Project Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century (2024-2026), coordinated by:

• Han F. Vermeulen (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany)
• Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti – Pescara, Italy)
• Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (Centro di Ricerca Mobilità Diversità Inclusione sociale, MODI – University of Bologna, Italy).

• What characterized ethnography in various intellectual traditions and over time?
• How was ethnography related to other fields of inquiry, including history, archaeology, geography, natural history, anthropology, law studies, statistics, and folklore studies?
• Which intellectual traditions contributed to the development of ethnographic knowledge in various national or transnational contexts?
• When was ethnography conceptualized as a separate field of inquiry?
• To what extent were ethnographic accounts interlaced with ars apodemica, travel reports, and other literary genres?
• How did ethnographers conceptualize data collection and what were their research methods?
• Was fieldwork considered a defining criterion of ethnography in various national traditions?
• Was ethnographic research prepared with the help of training, instructions, or questionnaires?
• How was ethnographic research funded? Possibilities include funding by individuals, learned societies, academies of sciences, museums, other institutions.

The project is supported by the History of Anthropology Review (HAR), EASA’s History of Anthropology Network (HOAN), and BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology. BEROSE is hosting the conference.

Exploring the Ethnographic Archive (5-6 December 2024) Conference Program: click below [updated Nov 28, 2024]

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.

A workshop to be held at the Institute of European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis at LMU Munich on May 22 and 23, 2025, in collaboration with the Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara and with the support of BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology.

Organised by: Frauke Ahrens (Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, LMU Munich), Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Department of Letters, Arts and Social Sciences, Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara), and Christiane Schwab (Institute for European Ethnology and Cultural Analysis, LMU Munich)

The HAR Editorial Board is pleased to announce the opening of a new exhibition, “Crania Americana and the Archive of Scientific Racism,” at the Library Company of Philadelphia, curated by HAR editor Paul Wolff Mitchell. The exhibition will be on display through October 2024.

There will be a free, public opening event for the exhibition on Tuesday, September 17 at 5:30 p.m. This exhibition comprises part of Project Obtuse, a collaboration between the Library Company, Mitchell, and Jicarilla Apache artist Zachariah Julian, whose composition will premiere the following evening. Together, Mitchell and Julian examined the work of Samuel George Morton (1799-1851), whose papers reside, in part, at the Library Company. Morton is known today as among the most influential architects of scientific racism in the United States, both for his publications – most notably Crania Americana (1839) – and for his collection of nearly one thousand human skulls from across the world, amassed and measured during his lifetime to supply the “data” for these works. In this exhibition, Mitchell contextualizes the work of Morton and explores how Morton’s thinking developed and how his theories still affect us today. During the opening reception and viewing event, guests will have the opportunity to meet Mitchell and Julian and ask questions about their work.

For more information on this event and directions to the Library Company of Philadelphia, please visit the Library Company’s website.

Congratulations, Paul!

A transnational and interdisciplinary research project from March 2024 to December 2026

– coordinated by Han F. Vermeulen (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Fabiana Dimpflmeier (Gabriele d’Annunzio University of Chieti-Pescara), and Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (Centro di Ricerca Mobilità Diversità Inclusione sociale (MODI)–Università di Bologna)

– supported by the History of Anthropology Review (HAR), the EASA’s History of Anthropology Network (HOAN), and BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology.

Project Statement

This project focuses on ethnographic accounts from the Long Nineteenth Century, either based on fieldwork or borrowing descriptive and comparative data on “peoples and nations” from first-hand reports by travelers and other in situobservers. Adopting a widely inclusive transnational perspective, this project explores European and extra-European intellectual traditions. It envisages early ethnographic studies as a fundamental part of the history of anthropology and ethnography.

First ISA-RC08 Online Conference
October 16, 2024 – 11:00-17:00 CET

The International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee on the History of Sociology (RC08) proposes an ongoing series of online conferences with three main objectives in mind: (1) creating a new, institutional venue to stimulate new research and new researchers in the history of global sociologies; (2) keeping every member of RC08 up-to-date about the most recent developments in research; (3) maintaining and strengthening scientific and social ties between RC08 members, and creating the preconditions for shared research projects.

A maximum of five papers will be selected for each half-day conference to save time for exchanges and debate. No fee will be charged for the online conference. The first ISA-RC08 online conference will focus on methods. Explicit reflection on research methods is still at an embryonic stage in
the history of sociology, especially when the latter is practiced by sociologists, whose methodological training is focused on techniques for the collection and treatment of contemporary data. We thus invite our colleagues to submit proposals on the following topics:

1) Selecting our objects and avoiding (or embracing) a whiggish understanding of the discipline(s);
2) Selecting a unit of analysis (actors, ideas, institutions, instruments, contexts), model cases, or samples;
3) Working in the archive;
4) Utilizing various kinds of sources (fieldnotes, diaries, letters, unpublished papers, questionnaires, interviews, machines, data matrixes, etc.);
5) Using oral histories and interviews collected by others;
6) The use of unconventional (especially digital or visual) sources;
7) Re-furbishing and re-calculating quantitative data;
8) Preparing comparative work. In particular, we would like to discuss with our junior and senior
colleagues about their work, research design, and troubleshooting: the selections they made, the difficulties they found, the decisions they took when finding themselves collecting and analysing historical data.

Timeline:
July 31, 2024 – Deadline for submitting title and abstract (max 250 words).

August 31, 2024 – Selected papers announced.
October 16, 2024 – Online conference.

Titles and abstracts (max 250 words) must be submitted by the deadline of July 31, 2024 to both organizers:
Matteo Bortolini: matteo.bortolini@unipd.it
Giovanni Zampieri: giovanni.zampieri.3@phd.unipd.it

The 6th HOAN (History of Anthropology Network) Meeting will be held on May 24 at 5:00 pm CET. No registration is required; just use this Zoom Link.

The 6th HOAN Meeting will be opened by a keynote speech from John Tresch (Warburg Institute, University of London, History of Anthropology Review). The title of his talk is From Cosmologies to Cosmograms: Updating a Concept from the History of Anthropology and the abstract of his talk is available at the HOAN Meetings page.

Program of the Meeting:

17:00 Welcome by HOAN convenors, Fabiana Dimpflmeier and Hande Birkalan-Gedik

17:05 Keynote speaker: John Tresch (Warburg Institute; University of London)
From Cosmologies to Cosmograms: Updating a Concept from the History of Anthropology

17:25 Open forum for questions and comments

17:30 HOAN Correspondents presentation: Michael Edwards (Australia)

17:35 Dorothy L. Zinn (Free University of Bozen-Bolzano): presentation of Ernesto De Martino The End of the World: Cultural Apocalypse and Transcendence, University of Chicago Press, 2023.

17:45 Han Vermeulen (Max-Planck Institute for Social Anthropology), Beatrice Di Brizio (MODI – University of Bologna): presentation of the research project Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century (2024-2026)

17:55 Open forum for questions and comments

18:00 Closing and farewell words by HOAN convenors 

The Forum for the History of Human Science of the History of Science Society is pleased to announce the call for its annual awards. The deadline for both awards is June 1.

Dissertation Prize: The Forum for History of Human Science awards a biennial prize of US $250 for the best recent doctoral dissertation on some aspect of the history of the human sciences.The competition takes place during even-numbered years. The winner of the prize is announced at the annual History of Science Society meeting. Entries are encouraged from authors in any discipline, as long as the work is related to the history of the human sciences, broadly construed. To be eligible, the dissertation must be in English and have been formally filed within the three years previous to the year of the award. A dissertation may be submitted more than once, as long as it meets the submission requirements.

Burnham Award: The Forum for History of Human Science (FHHS) and the Journal of the History of the Behavioral Science (JHBS) encourage researchers in their early careers to submit unpublished manuscripts for the annual John C. Burnham Early Career Award, named in honor of this prominent historian of the human sciences and past-editor of JHBS. The publisher provides the author of the paper an honorarium of US $500 at the time the manuscript is accepted for publication by JHBS. (see details below). Unpublished manuscripts in English dealing with any aspect of the history of the human sciences are eligible. The paper should meet the publishing guidelines of the JHBS. Eligible scholars are those who do not hold tenured university positions (or equivalent) and are not more than seven years beyond the Ph.D. Graduate students and independent scholars are encouraged to submit. Manuscripts may be re-submitted for the prize, as long as they have not been published or submitted to another journal and the submitting scholar is still in early career. The manuscript cannot be submitted to any other journal and still qualify for this award. Please also submit a CV. Past winners are not eligible to submit again.

Full details about the awards can be found on the Forum’s website. Submissions should be sent in PDF format to eherman@uoregon.edu.

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.