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.
This article is part of a series of six papers originally delivered in the panel “Historicizing Anachronistic Motives” held during the First International Conference of the Histories of Anthropologies “Doing Histories, Imagining Futures” (4–7 December 2023, online). The conference was co-organized by the EASA’s History of Anthropology Network and the Università di Pisa with the support of Bérose and ten other history of anthropology stakeholders. The panel was convened by David Shankland (Royal Anthropological Institute; University College London, UK), Christine Laurière (CNRS/UMR9022 Héritages, France) and Frederico Delgado Rosa (Universidade Nova de Lisboa, CRIA Centre for Research in Anthropology, Portugal).
The other articles within the “Historicizing Anachronistic Motives” series are:
“En torno al argumento del anacronismo y la Escuela Histórico‑Cultural en la Argentina: hacia un abordaje discrónico,”by Axel Lazzari
“Anthropology, Photography, and Painting: Jean Gabus and Hans Erni in Mauritania 1951‑1952,” by Serge Reubi
“Frobenius’ Culture History in Australia: Dead Ends and New Insights,” by Richard Kuba
“How Moscow Did Not Become a World Centre of Marxist Anthropology: Liudmila V. Danilova and the Fate of Soviet ‘Revisionism’ in the 1960s‑1970s,” by Sergei Alymov
“Through the Speculum of the Psyche: Paul Radin at the Eranos ‘Tagungen’,” by Zsofia Johanna Szoke
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