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.

With reference to Paul Radin’s connection to the Eranos project, this article addresses a peculiar paradox: How can the place of this maverick anthropologist be obscured in disciplinary history while at the same time his core ideas and methods thrive in another milieu? Zsofia Johanna Szoke asserts that this contradiction is the result of the complex way in which Paul Radin’s ideas and praxis interacted with anticanonical academic paradigms, aimed at attaining an integral understanding of what constitutes essential human nature. She reveals that Paul Radin regarded this anthropological pursuit as the primary aim of all investigations of culture. In his own program he advanced a triadic methodology to accomplish the analysis, an approach that definitely set him apart from his fellow Boasians. The author argues that anthropologists adhering to a modern, secularized and particularistic methodological framework likewise reject the level of analysis which Paul Radin’s triadic approach entails. It is hardly a surprise then that there is a tendency in the history of anthropology to obscure this scholarly mission, one that is intertwined with apparently defeated paradigms, striving to achieve an integral perception of man’s basic existential condition.

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.

October 10-11, 2024
American Philosophical Society (APS)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

Coinciding with the 10th anniversary of the founding of the Center for Native American and Indigenous Research (CNAIR) at the APS’s Library & Museum, this hybrid conference will be an opportunity for people to gather together and share their experiences, insights, and visions for the future surrounding collaborative, community-engaged work in language and cultural revitalization, particularly the relationships between Indigenous knowledge and archives. 

Submission Deadline: May 31, 2024

The conference committee welcomes proposals for presentations from Indigenous and non-Indigenous participants throughout North America, Latin America, and beyond. They hope this event will facilitate a space to create new connections and reaffirm long-standing relationships and reflect upon what they can teach for cultivating newer ones, to give mutual encouragement and inspiration, and to spotlight emerging new initiatives and approaches.

For this hybrid conference, we welcome proposals for in-person or virtual presentations. This gathering is intended especially to highlight the work happening within and by Indigenous communities. We envision this conference being attended by members of Indigenous communities working in many capacities, museum and archives professionals, academic researchers, and anyone else with an interest in these topics.

Suggested topics include:

• Current work by Indigenous archives and cultural centers
• Language revitalization: Current work in teaching Indigenous languages, or the use of archives for language reclamation.
• Beyond paper: how Indigenous knowledge in archives is activated in everyday life, or how it relates to land, ethnobotany, art-making, material culture, law, and more.
• Reflections and relationships: conversations with former fellows or interns, or how archival materials impact relationships within communities, and beyond.
• Relational reciprocity in scholarship: what are some best practices, models of successful partnerships, or the place of archives in such work
• Projects that engage with collections at the APS

The committee welcomes a wide variety of creative and unique presentation styles such as:

• Group conversation or panel discussion
• Workshop, training, or class
• Talk story or show-and-tell
• Performance, reading, or art sharing
• Listening session
• Tour
• Presentation
• Community sharing
• Propose your own format! 

Anyone interested is encouraged to reach out to staff at CNAIR (cnair@amphilsoc.org) to discuss their idea for presenting.

Applicants should submit a title and a 250-word proposal related to these themes by May 31, 2024 via Interfolio: https://apply.interfolio.com/145175

Proposals will be accepted in English, Spanish, French, and Portuguese. Proposals in Indigenous languages are also welcome as long as a translation into one of the above languages is provided. Spanish interpretation will be offered for all of the conference sessions online.

Decisions will be announced in July. 

All in-person presenters will receive travel subsidies and hotel accommodations. Accepted presenters will be asked to prepare remarks appropriate for a broad range of audiences and for video streaming. Presenters who wish to create a scholarly journal-style version of their presentation will have the opportunity to publish such a version of their presentation in the APS’s Transactions. 

For more information contact CNAIR at cnair@amphilsoc.org.

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), Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (Centro di Ricerca Mobilità Diversità Inclusione sociale (MODI)–Università di Bologna)

– supported by the History of Anthropology Review (HAR), the History of Anthropology Network (HOAN), and BEROSE International Encyclopedia 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 firsthand reports by travelers and other in situ observers. 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.

Call for Bibliographical References: Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century

In Primitive Culture, Edward B. Tylor recognized the crucial role of ethnographers, as they provided the empirical basis for the generalizations and historical reconstructions produced by a “science of culture” and vouchsafed the credibility of its data. If Primitive Culture (1871) envisaged the “ethnographer’s business” as comparative and classificatory research work, mainly conducted in the study, other essays by Tylor paid tribute to in situ observers of modern populations (Tylor 1884). After Tylor, Alfred Cort Haddon credited missionaries, early explorers, travelers, and colonial officers for their fieldwork contributions to the growth of ethnography, “the foundation on which the science of ethnology has been and is being laboriously built” (Haddon, 2nd ed. 1934: 103).

Notwithstanding these early acknowledgments, ethnographic research, particularly before the early twentieth century – whether field-based or performed in the library – has long been neglected by historians of anthropology. For example, the three editions of Haddon’s History of Anthropology (1910, 1934, 1949) focus on the theoretical development of the discipline, giving limited attention to collectors of ethnographic material. The same may be said of the majority of narratives on the history of anthropology, such as Marvin Harris, The Rise of Anthropological Theory (1968) or T. H. Eriksen and F. S. Nielsen, A History of Anthropology (2nd ed. 2013).

A significant departure from this historiographical posture was made by James Urry (1973) and George W. Stocking Jr., who worked on the history of fieldwork (Stocking 1983), on the ethnographic data of British nineteenth-century ethnology (Stocking 1987), on fieldwork-based anthropology before and after World War I (Stocking 1995), and on the very notion of ethnography (Stocking 1971, 1984). More recently, Efram Sera-Shriar (2011, 2013, 2015) and Han F. Vermeulen (2015) have drawn attention to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century ethnographies, while specialists exploring the history of colonial anthropology and the development of area studies have highlighted the relevance of pre-Malinowskian ethnographies based on fieldwork (Sibeud 2002; Gardner & Kenny 2016). Their significance for the disciplinary development of anthropology has been recognized by scholarly encyclopedias and reviews, notably BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology and the History of Anthropology Review (see the dossiers on early ethnographers in the section “Anthropologists and Ethnographers” of BEROSE, and articles on the history of ethnography in HAR).

Building on this expanded historiographical sensitivity to ethnography, Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen (2022a-c) prepared a selective bibliography of 365 ethnographic accounts, dating from the period ca. 1870-ca. 1922 – that is, recorded during the fifty years preceding the publication of Bronislaw Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1922) and Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s The Andaman Islanders (1922). Produced by 220 authors belonging to various national research traditions and written in various languages, these were fieldwork-based monographs “on a single group or various groups within a relatively circumscribed cultural region” and “compilations of oral texts, or corpora inscriptionum” (Vermeulen and Rosa 2022: 476).

In order to complement and enlarge Rosa and Vermeulen’s bibliography of the period 1870-1922, we propose to prepare a bibliography of ethnographic works written or published in the long nineteenth century (1789-1914). While this period partly overlaps with that of Rosa and Vermeulen and adopts their transnational perspective, it significantly expands their timeframe. Accordingly, we will consider works written by English- and non-English-speaking authors, belonging to the most diverse national research traditions, and include works resulting from their authors’ empirical research in the field, either at home or abroad, both overseas and in Europe. Moreover, since the history of the term ethnography reveals that equating ethnography with fieldwork leads to a marginalization of “other kinds of Völker-Beschreibung (description of peoples and nations), from statistical questionnaires to armchair compilations” (Vermeulen and Rosa 2022: 476), we also take into account library studies, whose descriptive and comparative data on “peoples and nations” were culled from firsthand reports by travelers and other categories of in situ observers.

Such a vast bibliographical endeavor, aiming at a comprehensive but inevitably selective inventory of the ethnographic archive, can best be realized as a collaborative project. We are therefore launching a Call for References. We invite researchers to share references of ethnographic accounts recorded during the long nineteenth century, either based on firsthand observation or compiled by so called “armchair anthropologists” who derived their empirical data from published and/or manuscript sources. All contributions will be credited in the list of contributors associated to the final version of our bibliography. The underlying assumption of this collective and collaborative pursuit will be that early ethnographies, though long neglected and sidelined, are “a fundamental part of the history of ethnography and anthropology” (Vermeulen and Rosa 2022: 476).

The Research Project “Early Ethnographers in the Long Nineteenth Century” will unfold over a 3-year period ending in 2026 and will result in the publication of a selected bibliography of ethnographic accounts and a special issue or an edited volume collecting the results.

Divided into four stages, the project is designed as follows:

• A Call for References will be issued in March 2024, followed by a Call for Papers in May 2024;
• A Conference will be held on 6 December 2024 to present and discuss case studies;
• A Workshop will be organized in September 2025 to present and discuss papers;
• The papers will be included in a special issue or an edited volume to be published in 2026.

The result will be a vital contribution to the history of anthropology and to studies of the ethnographic archive. As part of the first stage, we invite the international community of scholars to communicate bibliographical references from the ethnographic archive dating back to the long nineteenth century, providing perspectives on early ethnographers from European and extra-European traditions, at home or abroad.

Please submit your bibliographical entries to: early.ethnographers@gmail.com. The Call for References will be open until 31 December 2024.

Style samples of entries:

Book:

Haddon, Alfred Cort 1910. History of Anthropology. London: Watt’s & Co.

Article in journal:

Tylor, Edward Burnett 1884. “How the Problems of American Anthropology Present Themselves to the English Mind.” Science, vol. 4, pp. 545-551.

Article in book:

Stocking, George Ward, Jr. 1983. “The Ethnographer’s Magic: Fieldwork in British Anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski.” In George Ward Stocking, Jr. (ed.) The Ethnographer’s Magic: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 70-120.

References Cited

Eriksen, Thomas Hylland and Finn Sivert Nielsen 2013. A History of Anthropology. 2nd ed. London: Pluto Press (1st ed. 2001).

Gardner, Helen and Robert Kenny 2016. “Before the Field: Colonial Anthropology Reassessed.” Oceania, vol. 86, issue 3, pp. 218-224.

Haddon, Alfred Cort 1910. History of Anthropology. London: Watt’s & Co (2nd rev. ed. 1934; 3rd impression 1949).

Harris, Marvin 1968. The Rise of Anthropological Theory: A History of Theories of Culture. London: Routledge & Kegan Paul.

Malinowski, Bronislaw Kaspar 1922. Argonauts of the Western Pacific: An Account of Native Enterprise and Adventure in the Archipelagoes of Melanesian New Guinea. Preface by Sir James George Frazer. London: George Routledge & Sons.

Rosa, Frederico Delgado and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.) 2022a. Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922. Foreword by Thomas Hylland Eriksen. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books (EASA Series 44).

Rosa, Frederico Delgado and Han F. Vermeulen 2022b. “Online Interactive Archive: Ethnographic Monographs before Argonauts of the Western Pacific (1870-1922)” in History of Anthropology Review 46 (2022), Online 21 November 2022: https://histanthro.org/bibliography/ethnographic-monographs/ [introducing an expandable research bibliography of 365 monographs by 220 ethnographers working in the fifty years preceding the publication of Malinowski’s classic monograph, 1870-1922.]

———. 2022c. “Opening the Archive: Selected Bibliography of Ethnographic Accounts, ca. 1870-1922” in Bérose – Encyclopédie internationale des histoires de l’anthropologie, Paris. 31 pp. Online 23 November 2022. https://www.berose.fr/article2716.html

Sera-Shriar, Efram 2011. “Observing ‘Man’ in situ: Edward Burnett Tylor’s Travels through Mexico.” History of Anthropology Newsletter, vol. 38, no. 2, pp. 3-8.

——— 2013. The Making of British Anthropology, 1813-1871. London: Pickering & Chatto.

——— 2015. “Arctic Observers: Richard King, Monogenism and the Historicisation of Inuit through Travel Narratives.” Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences, vol. 51, pp. 23-31.

Sibeud, Emmanuelle 2002. Une Science impériale pour l’Afrique? La construction des savoirs africanistes en France, 1878-1930. Paris: Éditions de l’EHESS.

Stocking, George Ward, Jr. (ed.) 1971. “What’s in a Name? The Origins of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1837-1871.” Man (n.s.) vol. 6, issue 3: 369-390.

——— 1983. “The Ethnographer’s Magic: Fieldwork in British Anthropology from Tylor to Malinowski.” In George Ward Stocking Jr. (ed.) The Ethnographer’s Magic: Essays on Ethnographic Fieldwork. Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, pp. 70-120.

——— 1984. “Qu’est-ce qui est en jeu dans un nom? (‘What’s in a Name?’ II). La ‘Société d’Ethnographie’ et l’historiographie de l’‘anthropologie’ en France.” In: Britta Rupp-Eisenreich (ed.) Histoires de l’Anthropologie (XVI^e-XIX^e siècles). Paris: Klincksieck, pp. 421-431.

——— 1987. Victorian Anthropology. New York: The Free Press.

——— 1995. After Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press.

Tylor, Edward Burnett1871. Primitive Culture: Researches into the Development of Mythology, Philosophy, Religion, Art, and Custom. 2 vols. London: John Murray. German translation 1873.

——— 1884. “How the Problems of American Anthropology Present Themselves to the English Mind.” Science, vol. 4, pp. 545-551.

Urry, James 1973. “Notes and Queries on Anthropology and the Development of Field Methods in British Anthropology, 1870-1920”. Proceedings of the Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland, issue 1972, pp. 45-57.

Vermeulen, Han F. 2015. Before Boas: The Genesis of Ethnography and Ethnology in the German Enlightenment. Lincoln and London, NE: University of Nebraska Press (Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology).

Vermeulen, Han F. and Frederico Delgado Rosa 2022. “Appendix. Selected Bibliography of Ethnographic Accounts, ca. 1870-1922.” In: Frederico Delgado Rosa and Han F. Vermeulen (eds.) Ethnographers Before Malinowski: Pioneers of Anthropological Fieldwork, 1870-1922. New York/Oxford: Berghahn Books, pp. 474-501.

This exhibition at CRASSH (Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Cambridge), curated and researched by Paula López Caballero, displays photographs and ethnographic fieldnotes produced by Cambridge-based anthropologist Susan Drucker-Brown (1936-2023) in the Mixtec-speaking village of Jamiltepec (Oaxaca, Mexico) in 1957 and 1958. She was one of the first women anthropologists in Mexico, and a pioneer in the study of women’s clothing and the changes clothes were undergoing, with the replacement of handmade (loom) garments by industrial ones.

The exhibition not only presents this little-known aspect of Drucker-Brown’s work, it also invites us to reflect on three topics: firstly, the processes of mestizaje, indigeneity and modernization experienced in Mexico in the mid-twentieth century at an indigenous and rural locality. Secondly, the everyday life of ethnographic research and, in particular, the role of women in fieldwork. And thirdly, the afterlives of the materials produced during fieldwork, either as collections in museums or archives, or as part of restitution efforts to the villages where the anthropologists worked.

HAR readers may be familiar with the exhibition’s curator, López Caballero’s, recent HAR piece on medical practices in Zinacantán, Mexico, in the 1940s.

The exhibition on Drucker-Brown’s work will be open from April 22 to May 31, 2024 at CRASSH. An opening reception will be held on April 22, along with the related symposium ‘Rethinking anthropological fieldwork in historical perspective,’ held by CRASSH and the Cambridge Department of Social Anthropology on the same date. For more information about the exhibition and these events, please see the exhibition page.

This exhibition is organized with the support of Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México, Biblioteca de Investigación Juan de Córdova, Fundación Harp Helú, Centre for Latin American Studies, University of Cambridge, Department of Social Anthropology, CRASSH, University of Cambridge, Brown Family.

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.