This panel centres on anthropologists, ethnologists, and folklorists who were marginalised or emigrated due to lack of freedom, oppression, and persecution in their home countries. Their biographies and oeuvre will be contextualised within the social and scientific politics of their times. Our emphasis will be on established academics as well as on doctoral students, young scholars, and academics who did not obtain employment in their discipline. What were the reasons for their marginalisation or persecution? To what extent did their approaches conform to the mainstream or how did they differ from it? Who gave up their profession? Who left or had to leave the country? In the case of exile, the path of emigration is also of interest and the degree to which the scholars were able to establish themselves in their new homeland, whether and to what extent their research interests and approaches changed, how their work was judged in their former and in the new homeland during their lifetime and in retrospect, to what extent (and in which way) they are still being remembered today? By looking at their biographies and their oeuvre and considering them as part of the history of anthropology, we want to confront this exclusion, which in some cases still persists at present. We very much welcome contributions that deal with marginalised ethnologists, anthropologists, and folklorists from different countries all over the world which give us an insight into their oeuvre.
Convenors: Katja Geisenhainer (Frobenius-Institut, Frankfurt and Universität Wien), Udo Mischek (University of Göttingen).
Tuesday, 5 December 2023
Session I [Watch here!] — Session II [Watch here!]
Gerardus Vossius: an Early Modern forerunner of religious anthropology — Michael Joalland
Michael Joalland (Sorbonne University, France)
Gerardus Vossius: an Early Modern forerunner of religious anthropology
In the mid-seventeenth century, the Dutch humanist Gerardus Vossius published a massive two-volume work titled De theologia gentili, et physiologia Christiana, i.e. “Of Pagan Theology and Christian Physics.” The 2,400 page-long treatise was the first scholarly attempt to list and classify all forms of nature worship known to his days. As Vossius scoured ancient sources, medieval chronicles, and travel accounts of travellers, merchants, and missionaries, he managed to set up a complete taxonomy of animistic beliefs and practices identified not only among ancient nations of the Mediterranean basin and the Middle East, but also among the Tartars, the Lithuanians, the Chinese, the Cannibas, the Guineans, the Incas, and many other peoples. Vossius thus successively described the worship of the sun, the moon, the planets, constellations, the four elements, quadrupeds, birds, fish, reptiles, insects, plants, meteors, metals, as well as heroes, virtues, and human artefacts. Convinced that all parts of nature had eventually been deified by men, the theologian framed a theory about the origin and propagation of the veneration of nature. No work of that scope has ever been attempted until George James Frazer published the first volume of his Worship of nature in 1926 – which ne never really completed. While Vossius’s treatise is known to historians of the Reformation, it has been largely ignored by anthropologists of religion. The aim of my presentation is therefore to describe the aim and content of Vossius’s magnum opus, and show that it rightly belongs to the field of religious anthropology.
Memoirs serve as excellent types: C.R. Browne & the Ethnographical Survey of Ireland – An excluded ancestor and an invisible genealogy in the history of Anthropology — Edward McDonald
Edward McDonald (Ethnosciences, Australia)
Memoirs serve as excellent types: C.R. Browne & the Ethnographical Survey of Ireland – An excluded ancestor and an invisible genealogy in the history of Anthropology
At various times in the late 1890s and early 1900s the reports of Charles Robert Browne’s ethnographic studies undertaken in the west of Ireland were described by several authorities as ‘exemplary ethnography’. Yet the Ethnographical Survey of Ireland on which Browne worked for a decade is largely forgotten in anthropology and if remembered, seen only as preliminary to the main business of A.C. Haddon’s anthropological career. It is also incorrectly understood as a mere adjunct to the Ethnographic Survey of the United Kingdom. When it is discussed at all, typically only the initial work of Haddon and Browne on Aran is mentioned. Invariably the ongoing role of Haddon in the enterprise is exaggerated and Browne’s major contribution is totally marginalised. In this paper I explore the anthropological career of Charles Robert Browne, the only person to list his occupation in the 1901 census of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland as ‘anthropologist’, albeit alongside his other profession: ‘general practitioner’. I argue, on the one hand, that the Ethnographical Survey of Ireland is part of an invisible genealogy in the development of modern professional anthropology, with Browne an excluded ancestor and, on the other, that the survey was part of an Imperial Science project that ultimately failed to take root in Ireland as the country moved to Independence.
Was Frank Hamilton Cushing a Current Anthropologist? — Frédéric Saumade
Frédéric Saumade (Aix-Marseille University, France)
Was Frank Hamilton Cushing a Current Anthropologist?
Once considered as the first real participant observer in anthropology, after he spent more than four years among the Zuni Indian (New Mexico, 1879-1883), where he was initiated as a Chief by the Bow Priesthood, Frank H. Cushing, almost a self-taught ethnologist, was transformed into an Indian. Simultaneously, he experimented a practical and theoretical insight of the sociology of the clans, and the transformation of the material in the object production, that prefigured experimental archaeology, structuralism and cognitivism. Acknowledged as a genius by the masters of the classical French school, from Durkheim and Mauss to Lévi-Strauss, but criticized in the United States, and considered a traitor by the Zuni, whose secret knowledge he had divulged, he has since been barely considered a curiosity of the past and a mythomaniac, if not simply ignored. This paper, that reminds Cushing’s extraordinary story, and emphasizes its analyzes of Zuni’s manual concepts, pottery and copper works, proposes to show the extent to which the transformational logic that haunted Cushing, both his body and his mind, opens up theoretical perspectives on the topics of contemporary anthropology.
The Life and Work of Vasyl Denysenko: An Anthropologist’s Mimicry during the Stalinist Repression from the 1930s to the 1950s — Vitalii Shchepanskyi
Vitalii Shchepanskyi (Center for the Study of Religion and Cross-Cultural Encounters, Rivne, Ukraine)
The Life and Work of Vasyl Denysenko: An Anthropologist’s Mimicry during the Stalinist Repression from the 1930s to the 1950s
Vasyl Denysenko (1896-1964) was a prominent Ukrainian historian and ethnographer associated with the academic school of Mykhailo Hrushevsky. His research focused on the material culture, rituals, and folklore of the Ukrainian, Khanty, and Nenets peoples. Denysenko received his education and worked under the mentorship of Hrushevsky in the Department of Primitive Culture and Folk Art at the Research Department of Ukrainian History. Unfortunately, the persecution of Ukrainian scholars hindered his ability to pursue a successful scientific career. From 1929 to 1933, historical institutions established by Hrushevsky witnessed the dissolution, leading to the arrest of many of Denysenko’s colleagues and fellow students. Remarkably, Denysenko was among the few who managed to survive the repressive Stalinist regime.
Disciplanary history, writing and the question to inclusion. The example of Ivar Paulson — Marleen Metslaid
Marleen Metslaid (Estonian National Museum, Estonia)
Disciplanary history, writing and the question to inclusion. The example of Ivar Paulson
How to write disciplinary history? Whom to include, whom to exclude? We are writing a collective monograph on the history of Estonian ethnology and are planning to compile it through the researchers biographies. From the beginning, two separate disciplines have existed in Estonia – ethnology and folkloristics. The bounderies between them have not always been clear, and the research profiles of individual scholars have often included both disciplines or a grey area between them (religious studies, folk medicine). As a result of WW2, many researchers fled to the West, where they continued in their discipline, but often not on Estonian matters. All these aspects pose some problems when writing disciplinary history. in the paper, I will concentrate on ethnologist and religious scholar Ivar Paulson (1922-1966), who started his studies in Tartu but was forced to flee to Germany (1944), where he defended his dissertation in Hamburg in 1946. He later lived in Sweden where he managed to move thanks to fellow refugees, among them professor Gustav Ränk (1902-1998). Paulson worked in Stockholm as a renowed religious scholar. Pulson considered Ränk to be his teacher, even though he had only studied ethnology with the latter for a short time in Tartu. The difficult post-war years and a common interest in the folk religion bound them together. This is reflected in their frequent correspondance, kept in Ränks archive in Tartu. Should Paulson be included in the history of Estonian ethnology?
“Does honour to your natural good sense as well as to your acquired knowledge”: The Marginalization of Colonial Ethnobotanist Maria Riddell and the Intersection of Race and Science in the British Caribbean — Angel Rojas
Angel Rojas (California State University, Fresno, US)
“Does honour to your natural good sense as well as to your acquired knowledge”: The Marginalization of Colonial Ethnobotanist Maria Riddell and the Intersection of Race and Science in the British Caribbean
During the late 18th century in the colonial Caribbean, Maria Riddell, an ethnobotanist, authored a manuscript that meticulously chronicled the natural histories of various islands such as Madeira, Leeward, St. Christopher’s, and Barbados. At the time, numerous intellectual discussions came into play that pushed the field of science into one focused on experimentation, observation, and application of theoretical knowledge. In addition to providing detailed genera and descriptions of plants and animals based on the Linnean and Pennant classification systems, she also made noteworthy observations about the culture and customs of Portuguese settlers in Madeira and enslaved Africans in the Caribbean. Significantly, Riddell documented how these communities effectively utilized the resources discussed in her manuscript. Despite her remarkable contributions, her contemporaries marginalized her voice and only recognized her as a poet of the Romantic era. Her work in ethnography and cultural anthropology remained overshadowed by her male contemporaries, as societal norms limited her involvement in intellectual circles due to her gender. Although her correspondents admired and respected her knowledge, Riddell had to conform to prevailing societal tropes that undermined the significance of her ideas and insights. Riddell’s manuscript represents an early example of ethnographic literature that demonstrates the intersection of race, science, and gender by observing how people use nearby plants and animals as part of their diet and lifestyle. Her place in the history of anthropology highlights Riddell as an example of a woman who contributed to the development of the social sciences.
Don Eugenio? Discovering the figure of E. Frankowski — Anna Lesniewska
Anna Lesniewska (University of Silesia in Katowice, Poland)
Don Eugenio? Discovering the figure of E. Frankowski
The aim of this paper is to present the figure of Eugeniusz Frankowski (1884–1962), a Polish ethnologist, museologist, and precursor of Iberian studies in Poland. The outbreak of the First World War found him in Spain, where – most likely for recreational purposes – he had been staying with his younger brother, Jan Frankowski (Tomicki 2022).
With British Passport to the G.D.R. Via Australia: Rehabilitating Frederick Rose´s contribution to anthropology — Petr Skalnik
Petr Skalnik (Independent researcher)
With British Passport to the G.D.R. Via Australia: Rehabilitating Frederick Rose´s contribution to anthropology
Frederick Rose (1915-1991) spent the last 35 years of his life in the German Democratic Republic and most of his anthropological work was published there. Born in Britain and trained in Cambridge, Rose chose social anthropology as his vocation. While his native Britain was entangled in an existential conflict with Hitler´s Germany, he emigrated to Australia and carried out his moonlighting fieldwork among the Northern Territory Warnindilyakwa Aborigines while earning his livelihood as a government employee. There he invented a new, much more reliable than hitherto, method of studying kinship and marriage. His work did not receive due recognition in his country of emigration. It was rewarded by academic employment and publication of his works only when he, by Cold War coincidence, emigrated for the second time, this time to the improbable German Democratic Republic. Although Australian authorities did not allow him to return to Arnhem Land, he repeatedly visited Australia from the G.D.R. and continued his studies in other locations. His dramatic life was described in detail in Red Professor: The Cold War Life of Fred Rose by Peter Monteath and Valerie Munt (Wakefield Press 2015). His anthropology has yet to receive a fair evaluation. The proposed paper aims to begin rehabilitating the anthropologist Frederick Rose.
“Pues fácil no fue–y tampoco lo es ahora- esta vida doble: la política y la científica” (1935). Paul Kirchhoff’s strife between academia and politics — Mechthild Rutsch
Mechthild Rutsch (National Institute of Anthropology and History, Mexico)
“Pues fácil no fue–y tampoco lo es ahora- esta vida doble: la política y la científica” (1935). Paul Kirchhoff’s strife between academia and politics
In my view, history of anthropology cannot dismiss its sociological aspects but also its political ones. It is precisely the latter ones that are of interest to me in Paul Kirchhoff`s (1900-1972) case, a German ethnohistorian whose contribution to Mexican anthropology was quite important, but whose political activities are still scarcely mentioned in the history of Mexican anthropology. This paper will explore precisely this aspect of his life and how it relates to his academic years of activity, up to 1939 when the Hitler regime stripped him of his nationality.
A questioned percursor: Fernando M. Miranda between archaeology, history and Americanist ethnology — Ezequiel Grisendi
Ezequiel Grisendi (National University of Córdoba, Argentina)
A questioned percursor: Fernando M. Miranda between archaeology, history and Americanist ethnology
This paper proposes an intensive exploration of the career of Fernando Márquez Miranda, a figure that illuminates the contours of the disciplinary development of anthropology in Argentina and its ambiguous academic specialization between the 1930s and the late 1950s. The transition towards the university institutionalization of the discipline in Argentina had its deployment in the chair-institute-museum triad. Unlike some of his colleagues, Márquez Miranda had early access to university teaching and was inserted into academic management positions that shaped his professional options, especially as a “transmitter of tradition” rather than as an innovator with respect to it. His dedication to archaeological and historical research, between trips and archives, reinforced his institutional centrality rather than his prestige as a researcher. The analysis of Márquez Miranda’s professional and intellectual path allows us to listen to this differentiation process, which is not exempt from controversies and alliances, both intellectual and political. In turn, the text seeks to reposition the problem of the degree of disciplinary autonomy of the areas of development of Argentine anthropology mutually connected with its relationship with other sciences (social or natural) and with the variable interaction with international scientific reference spaces. Despite the prestige accumulated by Márquez Miranda as a member of Latin American and European academic societies, his position in Argentina was questioned for scientific reasons (representatives of neo-evolutionism or social anthropology contested his historicism) or for political reasons (Peronists and Marxists criticized his liberalism).