This panel brings historians of anthropology together to discuss what defines the histories of anthropologies. It also investigates how histories were cultivated in the past and how they should be practised in the future. Due to their interdisciplinary nature, the histories of anthropologies rely on both historical (re)construction and anthropological sensitivity – so much so that more than 40 years ago, George W. Stocking envisioned a “historically sophisticated and anthropologically informed history of anthropology” (1982, XVIII). But how much training in archival research and historical methodology, as well as in fieldwork are fundamental prerequisites to practise the histories of anthropologies? Can anyone “do histories” of anthropologies? Or should historians of anthropologies be anthropologists themselves? Furthermore, how should we write the histories of anthropologies? Using which major paradigms, theoretical approaches, and research methodologies? Is the distinction between “presentism” and “historicism” still relevant, or is it the social uses of scientific discourses that matter (Graham-Lepenies-Weingart 1983)? How does the post-colonial critique of anthropology relate to historical/anthropological discourses (Kucklick 2008) and how shall we proceed in elaborating more widely acceptable historiographies? What can we learn from theories and perspectives brought from history, both the history of sciences and the history of ideas, about knowledge production and transfer? Eventually, how do methodologies need to change to be able to allow historians of anthropologies to respond to current epistemological and social challenges better?
Convenors: Fabiana Dimpflmeier (“Gabriele d’Annunzio” University of Chieti-Pescara), Ildikó Sz. Kristóf (Hungarian Academy of Sciences / Eötvös Loránd Research Network).
Wednesday, 6 December 2023
Session I [Watch here!] — Session II [Watch here!]
Early Ethnographers Before 1870 — Han F. Vermeulen
Han F. Vermeulen (Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Germany)
Early Ethnographers Before 1870
Histories of anthropology usually present big names and inspiring stories but ethnography, one of anthropology’s most enduring incarnations, is mainly discussed in handbooks on method. To counter this tendency, a recent volume has published twelve case studies of Ethnographers Before Malinowski (Rosa and Vermeulen 2022). The result was surprising: no less than 220 ethnographers worldwide produced (at least) 365 ethnographic accounts of 100 pages or more during the fifty years before 1922. But what about ethnographic studies before 1870? A starting point was the early eighteenth century when Gerhard Friedrich Müller launched a program for describing and comparing peoples; by 1767 this study was called ethnographia. A dozen such studies were produced in Enlightenment Russia (Vermeulen 2015). In the mid-nineteenth century, Albert Gallatin, Henry Rowe Schoolcraft, Horatio Hale, and Lewis Henry Morgan spurred ethnographic research in the USA on. In France, anthropology began with the Idéologues and the Société des Observateurs de l’Homme, founded in 1799. Were the instructions for observing “savage peoples” issued by Joseph-Marie Degérando in 1800 taken up by others? Thanks to the Grimm brothers, and next to Wilhelm Mannhardt, several “Grimmian” folklorists were collecting fairy tales and legends in Saxony, Bavaria, Swabia, and Bohemia (1846-1862). Similar research was carried out in Slovenia and Hungary. What about ethnography in Portugal, Spain, Italy, Britain, and their colonies? The period 1800-1870 is a huge gap in the literature. This paper presents early ethnographic studies and invites colleagues to share cases from the ethnographic archive.
From Iconoclasm to Anicony and Restoration: the Uses of Concepts in Anthropology — João Leal
João Leal (NOVA University of Lisbon / CRIA, Portugal)
From Iconoclasm to Anicony and Restoration: the Uses of Concepts in Anthropology
This paper argues that concepts – viewed as compressed theorizations that allow anthropology to move from description to interpretation, and from the particular to the general – were not only fundamental in the historical development of the discipline, but are also central in the critical dialogues that contemporary anthropologists establish with the discipline’s past. In order to analyse these conceptual conversations between the present and the past, I argue for the usefulness of interdisciplinary dialogues with history, particularly with history of art. Based on the similarities between the categories of concept and image (as argued in the Italian philosophical tradition), I suggest that tropes such as iconoclasm, iconophilia, anicony or restoration might prove productive for the analysis of the conceptual entanglements between past and present in anthropology. The examples explored range from more ambitious concepts, such as culture, to more specific concepts, such as animism or syncretism. In all these cases we are faced with “classical” anthropological concepts that gained different “second lives” in contemporary anthropology which can be fruitfully analysed using the categories mentioned above. The implications of this analysis for a more flexible combination of historicism and presentism in the history of anthropology will be also argued.
Historicizing anthropological observation: Edward Burnett Tylor’s methods of data collection and processing — Maria Beatrice Di Brizio
Maria Beatrice Di Brizio (HOAN / EASA, France)
Historicizing anthropological observation: Edward Burnett Tylor’s methods of data collection and processing
Focusing on the methods of data collection and processing adopted by Edward Burnett Tylor (1832-1917), this communication questions anachronistic readings of Tylorian anthropology as speculative knowledge. Still evidenced today in P.M. Logan’s works (2009), these interpretations have been challenged by E. Sera-Shriar’s historical inquiries (2013), highlighting Tylor’s 1856 travels and fieldwork in Mexico. I propose to demonstrate that not only Tylor’s in situ observation of Mexican society and antiquities, but also his armchair research practices – culling of data from written sources, strategies for checking and classifying borrowed data – attest to a sustained effort to establish anthropology as an empirical and inductive science. By adopting an approach which will give priority to the contextualization of Tylor’s methods, my aim will be, on the one hand, to recognize the historical variability of scientific observation techniques and modes of constructing objectivity (Daston, Galison, 1992) and, on the other, to propose an « historicist » (Stocking, 1965) interpretation of Tylorian research practices. By referring to Tylor’s election to the Royal Society in 1871, I will contend that far from being perceived as devoid of empirical foundations, Tylorian anthropology was recognized as scientific knowledge by British Victorian institutions. Relying on the analyis of Tylor’s methods, I will finally suggest that the histories of anthropologies should be approached with conceptual tools offered by both anthropology and the history of sciences: that is, by combining the anthropological sensitivity to cultural otherness and context, with the historiographical sense of the diversity of the past (Foucault, 1969).
Out of the Archive and into the Field: from the History of Anthropology to the Anthropology of Anthropology — Daria Moskvina
Daria Moskvina (HSE University of Saint Petersburg, Russia)
Out of the Archive and into the Field: from the History of Anthropology to the Anthropology of Anthropology
What does it mean to approach the history of anthropology as an anthropological problem? Regna Darnell reports that Irving Hallowell once suggested that «anthropologists writing the history of their discipline have rightly used the same standards they used in their fieldwork among ‘primitive’ peoples» (1977: 400). However, this suggestion has not been the subject of methodological elaboration. My question is what happens in practice. I started as a historian of Soviet ethnography working with archives who once found herself becoming an employee of one of the oldest ethnographic institutions in Russia (the Kunstkamera). Therefore, I apparently turned into an anthropologist of anthropology. In my research, I demonstrate the productivity of approaching the history of Soviet ethnography anthropologically. I draw on my initial attempt to explore the history of fieldwork methodology of the 1960s through the text of a Soviet ethnographic field guide which finally turned into interviewing Soviet ethnographers who had learned to conduct fieldwork in the 1960s. Based on the aforementioned case study and my recent ethnographic observations I will address the following problem: if the history of anthropology is seen as an anthropological problem, what is its field and what does the anthropologist do in this field? In my paper, I will address this issue in general as well as touch upon a few narrow questions. What is the distinction between «field» and «non-field» if one is an anthropologist doing history of anthropology while working in an anthropological institution? How does the shift between «field» and «non-field» occur? How do anthropologists interview other anthropologists (but see Jackson 1990)? Does the status and authority of the interviewer within the anthropological community affect the outcome of an interview?
Reconsidering the “Two Cultures”. New perspectives from the History of Anthropology — Fedra Alessandra, Pizzato
Fedra Alessandra, Pizzato (University of Verona, Italy)
Reconsidering the “Two Cultures”. New perspectives from the History of Anthropology
This paper supports the potential of the History of anthropology in addressing a classic topic in the History of science, namely the issue of the “two cultures.” The term “two cultures” was first used by Charles Percy Snow during a memorable Rede Lecture at the University of Cambridge in May 1959, and generally refers to the idea that “scientific culture” is structurally divided and distinct from “humanistic culture” – i.e. that science and humanities proceed, at least in the contemporary world, along separate and even opposing paths. Following the critical turn in the History of science that since the last decades of the 20th century has increasingly pointed at the limits of such a dichotomy, I intend to demonstrate here how the History of anthropology constitutes a particularly intriguing field of study to approach and overcome the conceptual divide between “scientific” and “humanistic culture” in the History of science. Presenting the case studies of the Italian and French anthropologists Giuseppe Sergi and André Leroi-Gourhan, I will demonstrate how themes, approaches, and methods from the social and biological sciences (in a broad sense) have intertwined at different times in the history of anthropology, raising and addressing issues that involve different knowledge traditions (Renn 2007), also leading to significantly divergent outcomes.
Case study Richard Thurnwald: Some reflections on his position in the Nazi period — Peter Rohrbacher
Peter Rohrbacher (Austrian Academy of Sciences, Austria)
Case study Richard Thurnwald: Some reflections on his position in the Nazi period
Richard Thurnwald (1868-1954), a native of Vienna, is considered one of the most influential anthropologists in the German-speaking world. He founded ethnosociology and was a representative of functionalism with an emphasis on social change. After his habilitation at the University of Halle, he taught psychology, sociology, and ethnology in Berlin from 1923, where he was appointed honorary professor in 1935. From 1931 to 1936 he taught in the United States, lecturing at Harvard, Yale, and the University of California. When the University of Berlin reopened in 1946, Thurnwald was appointed professor of ethnology and sociology. In the postwar period, Thurnwald was classified as an opponent of National Socialism. This image has persisted and solidified for decades, and not only in German-speaking countries. As late as 2010, the editors of the prestigious Routledge Encyclopaedia of Social and Cultural Anthropology repeated that Thurnwald had been a staunch Nazi opponent. Since the late 1970s, however, counter-positions had emerged that made it clear, based on Nazi sources, that this view was not coherent. This led to opposing positions that were irreconcilable in their extreme form. The lecture examines these conflicting accounts, contrasts archival sources from the Nazi and postwar periods, and discusses “presentist” and historical as well as “internalist” and “externalist” approaches to relevant aspects of Thurnwald’s life and work.
Vilmos Diószegi’s fieldworks between 1957 and 1964 in Northern Mongolia and Southern Siberia — István Sántha, Tatyjana Szafonova
István Sántha (Institute of Ethnography, Research Center for the Humanities, Budapest, Hungary), Tatyjana Szafonova (Comenius University Bratislava)
Vilmos Diószegi’s fieldworks between 1957 and 1964 in Northern Mongolia and Southern Siberia
We are social anthropologists interested in the history of the field-oriented social anthropology in Hungarian. Our hero here and now is Vilmos Diószegi (1923-1972). On one hand, he continued the tradition of the Hungarian Turanist research idea, initiating research expeditions in the East, to look for the homeland and the kindred peoples of ancient Hungarians, in the East. He made it after World War two, during the socialist system in Hungary when it was forbidden to speak about or refer to this research tradition. It happened because the Turanist idea was compromised by the anti-bolshevist system between the two world wars. On the other hand, Diószegi was a typical socialist researcher working on the origin of primitive society, in his case, on primitive religion, shamanism. He also used the network of the communist regime in order to achieve the goals of his research, for example, to collect shamanic dresses and equipment. The balance between these two sides (the Turanist and socialist research traditions) means the success of his unique research. Only recent, historical anthropological research makes it possible to speak about these links and original attitudes. So, only now do we have the chance to interpret this research in the frames of the historical process of the research tradition silenced before that. The motivation of the research was hidden in particular political periods, such as socialism. We are going to speak about these tendencies and considerations with the aim, that the original goals of the research are significant not only from the point of history of anthropology but also to unfold hidden political contexts.
Doing History of Ethnology/Anthropology in Two Transylvanian Institutions — Alina Branda
Alina Branda (Babeș-Bolyai University, Romania)
Doing History of Ethnology/Anthropology in Two Transylvanian Institutions
The paper aims at focusing on the panel topic through analyzing how the nowadays historians of ethnology and anthropology approach the scientific activity of the founders of the Cluj Folklore Archive and Cluj Ethnographic Museum. Both institutions have been founded in the interwar period, soon after Romania became a national state, the researchers and museographers of those decades conducting fieldwork in various regions of Transylvania in particular. In totalitarian times a substantial part of their works remained unpublished, unknown, or unvalued. In the last few decades, notable efforts to reconsider
these scholars’ activity and scientific contributions revealed interesting, well-grounded and documented texts, a substantial contribution to the development of ethnology and anthropology. Meanwhile, it deserves attention to see how they have approached histories and methodologies of these domains, in relation with other national/regional research traditions. First, my paper analyses the ways these scientists have valued the history of their disciplines, considering what has been previously done in the local academic milieu and elsewhere, focusing on the ways these scholars have integrated the research traditions in their work. Secondly, I aim at analyzing their personal scientific contributions, illustrating how they have “produced history” in these domains. I am going to focus on especially Ion Muslea and Romulus Vuia’s works in this respect. Meanwhile, I intend to discuss how their contributions are seen by contemporary historians of ethnology/ anthropology, why they engage in the process of restitution/reviewing the ancestors’ scientific work.
Anthromanticism: Seeking European Mind, Body, and Community in the Himalaya — Young Hoon Oh
Young Hoon Oh (Seoul National University, Korea)
Anthromanticism: Seeking European Mind, Body, and Community in the Himalaya
In this article I suggest “anthromanticism” to refer to the Eurocentric assumption of human nature that was prevalent within the history of anthropology. The anthromantic perspective is ingrained with the conceptualization of human population in non-western world as a combination of mind as separate from the body, the body as separate from community, and the community as the sum total of the mind-body binaries. As a result, the human groups anthropologists encounter in other parts of the world have been postulated as an object of study about human being that is best illuminated through the established disciplinary divisions of psychology, physiology, and sociology. The case that fittingly exemplifies this penchant of anthromanticism includes the shared historical development of anthropological field research and of the exploratory and mountaineering expedition. Both types of activities were generally undistinguishable between the early 18C and the mid-19C. Even after European mountaineers made clear their distinctive appetite for mountain “problems” as opposed to scientific ones, The tripartite disciplinary approach has been apparent in their pursuits. Moreover, those who put their concerns in the efforts to grasp the eloquent motivations of mountain climbing have also almost unanimously relied on the same tripartite approaches. At the height of anthromantic approaches lies the efforts of cultural psychology, manifested by the changing trend of Sherpa ethnology.
Linnaeus in Lapland: Generating Knowledge in Transit — Staffan Müller-Wille, Elena Isayev
Staffan Müller-Wille (University of Cambridge, UK), Elena Isayev (University of Exeter, UK)
Linnaeus in Lapland: Generating Knowledge in Transit
We present our plans for a collaborative research project that consists of two intertwined elements: a new English on-line edition and translation of Carl Linnaeus’s diary of a journey through Lapland undertaken in 1732, and a re-enactment of that journey. One of the principal subjects Linnaeus enquired about, and took note of, was how natural resources and ways of life contributed to the well-being of local populations. In particular, he exalted Sámi culture as a model of healthy life, while also promoting colonization. He thus objectified Lapland and its inhabitants in a proto-colonial manner, while also being on a guided tour, eagerly collecting information provided by people that were on the move as well, usually spoke more than one language, and helped him find his way. The diary therefore provides a window on past practices of generating biomedical knowledge “in transit,” but also deals with issues of contemporary relevance, ranging from sustainability and wellbeing to indigeneity and sovereignty. By combining re-translation and re-enactment of the journey we envisage an entirely novel methodology of scholarly edition, working in tandem as a catalyst for contemporary public discourse on issues ranging from sustainability and wellbeing to indigeneity and sovereignty.