The discipline’s history seems to be full of eluded encounters among anthropologists from the dominant centers of academic production and local scholars, informants, and above all local communities, usually left without any form of restitution. Regarding Southern Italy, for instance, Maria Minicuci (2003) highlighted this dynamic in reference to the missing encounter between British and North American anthropologists and Italian ones working in the same field in the postwar period. Some years earlier, in the 1920s, Bronislaw Malinowski’s first wife Elsie Masson was an early example of a partner who remained a “hidden scholar”, helping her husband without public recognition. This panel focuses on both missed others and processes of missing others within the official history of the discipline. In contemporary anthropology the issue has been addressed by the important Brazilian Anthropological Association (ABA) motion in 2020 regarding cognitive extractivism and diversity of knowledge. Adopting the ABA motion’s vantage in a historical perspective, and extending it to embrace situations of partnership and co-working relations, we can look at dynamics of exclusion and elusion in relation to gender asymmetries, colonial-type power relationships, and global hierarchies of knowledge production to help “de-center” anthropology, do multiple and less unequal histories, and thereby imagine a plural, more inclusive future for the discipline. Following axes of gender, coloniality, precarity, and non-dominant research traditions, we call for papers on critical biographies, forgotten ancestors and helpers, and “peripheral” contributions by scholars, local scholarships, and communities that were sometimes “incorporated” without recognition, and more often deliberately ignored.
Convenors: Dorothy L. Zinn (Free University of Bolzano/Bozen), Daniela Salvucci (Free University of Bolzano/Bozen).
Tuesday, 5 December 2023
Session I [Watch here!]
Whose line is it anyway? Examples of Collaboration and Hiddenness in the History of South American Ethnology — Erik Petschelies
Erik Petschelies (University of Sao Paulo, Brasil)
Whose line is it anyway? Examples of Collaboration and Hiddenness in the History of South American Ethnology
At a meeting of a research group, a Brazilian anthropologist stated provocatively that acknowledging the importance of native collaborators is something anthropologists have been doing for a while. He might be right: Carlos Castaneda described his relation to his informant and teacher Don Juan back in the in the 1960s. However, do historians of anthropology recognize the importance of indigenous collaborators in the construction of past anthropological knowledge? In this presentation I intend to discuss two cases in the history of South American indigenous ethnology. Firstly, the contribution of Antonio Bakairi to the work of Karl von den Steinen. Antônio accompanied von den Steinen during his two field trips to the Xingu River basin in the 1880s. He wrote a book about the Bakairi language, that consists of interlinear translations from phrases said by Antônio. The second case is that of José-Mayuluaípu, a Pemon man, who told Theodor Koch-Grünberg myths during his expedition in 1911-1913, that were later gathered in his work Vom Roraima zum Orinoco, upon which the Brazilian writer Mario de Andrade based his modernist book Macunaíma. I conclude that although both anthropologists recognized the importance of their collaborators, this has been erased over the years, in an historical process that melts the lines of anthropologist and collaborators, leaving public recognition only for the scientist, hiding the indigenous contribution. At the end, I will expose a few examples from archive research in São Paulo, that can shed light on the entanglement between history of indigenous peoples and of science.
Juan Martín Collío: A Hidden Cultural Broker in Mapuche Studies — Roberto Campbell
Roberto Campbell (Pontifical Catholic University of Chile, Chile)
Juan Martín Collío: A Hidden Cultural Broker in Mapuche Studies
Not just anyone can become a cultural broker. It requires a unique combination of personal and structural conditions. One individual who exemplifies this is Juan Martín Collío (1898-1990), a Mapuche native from southern Chile. The Mapuche people maintained their political autonomy for over 300 years, first from Spain and later from Chile. However, this changed in the late 19th century when Chile conquered their territory and confined the Mapuche to reservations. Collío was born into a world with different actors, rules, and opportunities. In this context, Collío played a significant role in the first half of the 20th century, engaging in public debates about the integration of the Mapuche into Chilean society and contributing to the emerging field of anthropological studies focused on the Mapuche people. Remarkably, he successfully established connections, shared information, and formed friendships with a wide network of renowned US anthropologists, including Boas, Speck, Hallowell, Tantaquidgeon, Farabee, Titiev, and Brand. However, it is worth noting that none of these anthropologists are primarily associated with research on southern South America. This fact, combined with the disconnection between the academic circles in Chile and the United States, has likely hindered the recognition of Collío’s significant contributions to the history of Mapuche studies, even until today.
Johannes Salilah (1898-1985): western research and Dayak interests — Sjoerd Kompier
Sjoerd Kompier (Leiden University, The Netherlands)
Johannes Salilah (1898-1985): western research and Dayak interests
From 1935 until the 1980s, the Ngaju-Dayak Johannes Salilah (1898-1985) from Borneo shared his knowledge of Ngaju-medicine, religion, cosmology, language and customary law with a diverse group of European and American researchers. Although being recognized in the titles, prefaces and footnotes of the resulting publications, he remained ‘hidden’ within the global hierarchy of knowledge production. By centring Salilah’s experiences, this paper follows a growing body of literature which sheds light on the roles of local interlocutors within the history of anthropology. In doing so, it goes beyond describing and recognizing Salilah’s scholarly contributions by asking why Salilah participated in these processes of knowledge production and which forces shaped his involvement. The influence of Dutch colonialism on Central-Kalimantan intensified in the late nineteenth century, which catalysed a range of societal transitions in Ngaju-Dayak society. The colonial government enforced her own legal and bureaucratic order and the accompanying societal hierarchies posed both challenges and opportunities for Ngaju-Dayaks such as Salilah. Additionally, the protestant mission spread its religious notions and introduced Euro-American medical practices and education as a tool of conversion. In postcolonial Indonesia, the Ngaju-Dayak remained a marginalized group, whose (self-proclaimed) representatives laboured for political, religious and cultural acceptance and recognition. This paper argues that Salilah’s participation in the abovementioned processes of knowledge production formed a part of his strategy of facing these societal transitions. Both in colonial and postcolonial times, Salilah was able to grasp opportunities to further both his own interests and those of Ngaju-Dayak communities.
The men behind the notion of eidos: photography and “hidden” Indigenous contributions in Gregory Bateson’s anthropology — Enzo Hamel
Enzo Hamel (University of East Anglia, UK)
The men behind the notion of eidos: photography and “hidden” Indigenous contributions in Gregory Bateson’s anthropology
In 1936, Gregory Bateson published the book Naven as the result of his ethnographic research among the Iatmul communities in the East Sepik Province of what is now known as Papua New Guinea. While this work and its theoretical contribution specifically around the notions of ethos, eidos and schismogenesis have been discussed in relation to important figures of British social and American cultural anthropology such as Margaret Mead or Alfred C. Haddon, the central contributions of Indigenous collaborators have often been eluded in the history of anthropology. Drawing on Bateson’s photographic collections at the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge (UK), this paper examines the specificities of the photographic medium in providing a space for recovering and acknowledging these Indigenous contributions. Through the cross-reading of archival photography and field notes, I will explore the Indigenous agencies in these ethnographic encounters. Following this approach, I will present the field as a place of negotiations in which knowledge and images can be seen as coproduced. I will discuss the involvement of Iatmul men in the daily context of ethnography and will particularly highlight the central role of Malikindjin in the definition of the Iatmul eidos, Bateson’s core concept defined as “the expression of the standardised cognitive aspects of the individuals” (1936: 33). From this perspective, this paper aims at decentring this part of the history of anthropology and include the voices of Bateson’s Indigenous collaborators who are at the core of his understanding of Iatmul culture and his theoretical contribution.
Encounters, missed encounters and avoidances in the anthropological study of southern Europe — Pier Paolo Viazzo
Pier Paolo Viazzo (University of Turin, Italy)
Encounters, missed encounters and avoidances in the anthropological study of southern Europe
There is no reason to doubt that the relationships between the ‘Anglo-Saxon’ anthropologists who worked in southern Europe in the second half of the twentieth century and ‘native’ scholars were often strained. However, we should be weary of easy generalizations that lump together the different settings, and the different times, in which encounters did or did not occur. Deliberate avoidances should be distinguished from accidentally missed encounters, and we cannot ignore that cases of possibly difficult but ultimately successful encounters are attested. The aim of the proposed paper is to reassess these relationships by comparatively exploring the histories of two southern European research fields, namely Alpine anthropology and Mediterranean(ist) anthropology. There is a general feeling that relations were less strained in the Alps than in Spain, Portugal and southern Italy, but this hunch needs to be substantiated and, if correct, to be explained and articulated. And so are variations from one scholarly and socio-political context to another and over time. Two other neglected issues the paper will try to address are, on the one hand, the effects that different attitudes to the presence of ‘Anglo-Saxon’ ethnographers and their methods had within ‘native’ anthropologies; and, on the other, the relationships that existed and still (mostly posthumously) exist between Anglo-Saxon anthropologists, the works they published and the communities they studied.
Wednesday, 6 December 2023
Session II [Watch here!] — Session III [Watch here!]
Before Lady Frazer: Glimpses of Mrs Lilly Grove, F.R.G.S. — Luis Felipe Sobral
Luis Felipe Sobral (University of Sao Paulo, Brasil)
Before Lady Frazer: Glimpses of Mrs Lilly Grove, F.R.G.S.
Who does not know Sir James G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough (1890)? Although this Victorian book has been out of date among anthropologists for many decades, it has continued to circulate and resonate over the years in other fields such as historiography, literature and cinema, and so has the name of its author.
Far less known is the major role that Lady Frazer (1855-1941) played in this process. She made the dissemination of her husband’s works her life’s work, overseeing their publication and promotion, and directing their translation, particularly in France. Her work was not merely secretarial, but intellectual. Looking back at the period of her life before she married Frazer, it is clear that her intellectual ambition was already there. She gave conferences in Europe on the geography of South America, where she had lived for about ten years, was one of the first women elected fellow of the Royal Geographical Society, and wrote a book on the history of dance, in which she argued, following the evolutionist paradigm, that its origins were religious. This paper proposes to shed light on this period of her life when she was not yet Lady Frazer. The result of years of research in archives and libraries in France and Britain, it will be the first chapter of a book on her role in the dissemination of Frazer’s works in France, to be published in the collection “Les Carnets de Bérose”.
Rosemary Firth: An Anthropologist in the Shadow of Raymond Firth and Edmund Leach — Hugh Firth, Loulou Brown
Hugh Firth, Loulou Brown (Independent scholars)
Rosemary Firth: An Anthropologist in the Shadow of Raymond Firth and Edmund Leach
Rosemary Firth was an anthropologist who suffered because of gendered assumptions about the role of wives. Rosemary met Edmund Leach in 1928; they were lovers from 1931-33. She met Raymond Firth in 1935; they married in 1936. In 1937, it was Rosemary who introduced Edmund to Raymond. Rosemary attended Malinowski seminars and joined Raymond in 1939-40 in fieldwork studying the economics of the Kelantan fishing community, because ‘the obvious thing to do seemed to be to learn the language and habits of the group into which I was marrying.’ She published her results on women, food and housekeeping in 1943. During the war Rosemary worked in the civil service researching supply problems amongst bombed cities, but following the gendered post-war presumptions, in 1946 she stopped working to raise her son. It proved difficult to take up her career again. Only after Rosemary and Raymond revisited Malaya in 1963 did she gain a university post. In her teaching (almost exclusively to non-anthropologists), she was passionate about anthropology as a vehicle to enable people to ‘see’ their own society differently. Audrey Richards was both role model and friend; Rosemary formed close friendships with other married women anthropologists: Greta Redfield, Judith Djamour, Margaret Hardiman. Rosemary and Raymond had a stormy marriage, but shared ideas and commented on each other’s drafts. Edmund Leach disparaged her lack of doctoral training, but Rosemary engaged vigorously with Edmund’s oversimplifications, whether of ethnography as ‘fiction’, or his reduction of colleagues work as the product of their social backgrounds.
Through the Eyes of Dina: Gender, Ethnography, and Literature in 1930s Brazil — Fernanda Azeredo de Moraes
Fernanda Azeredo de Moraes (EHESS / Musée du Quai Branly, France)
Through the Eyes of Dina: Gender, Ethnography, and Literature in 1930s Brazil
Dina Dreyfus Lévi-Strauss is one of the few female anthropologists to have conducted field research in the Americas before World War Two. Born to a French Jewish father and a Catholic Italian mother, Dina studied with Paul Rivet and Marcel Mauss in Paris before going to Brazil in 1935. Once there, she conducted extensive investigations in physical and cultural anthropology among both urban and native populations. As a result of this work, she published a textbook on the subject in 1936. Despite her significant contributions to the foundation of ethnographic studies in Brazil, her work remains largely unknown. Most of her ethnographic and personal writings from this period were never published. However, as my doctoral research has shown, some of these papers were in fact preserved and used by her first husband, Claude Lévi-Strauss, in his work. This paper seeks to present and analyze this documentation in order to shed light on the ethnographic and literary work accomplished by Dina Dreyfus Lévi-Strauss—a work that was incorporated without recognition in one of anthropology’s most canonical works. Apart from its significance for the history of anthropology itself, her writings also offer us a glimpse of another Brazil, a country that she sees as a “photo negative” in terms of the colors of its landscape and people. Finally, her embodied position, expressed in her writings, indicates a more reflexive ethnographic perspective, differently shaped by the racial and late colonial context of the 1930’s Atlantic world.
Lélia Gonzalez and anthropology — Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz
Valeria Ribeiro Corossacz (Roma Tre University, Italy)
Lélia Gonzalez and anthropology
Lélia Gonzalez (1935-1994) is known as an activist of Movimento Negro and as a Black Brazilian feminist for her early contribution to the analysis of the articulation of racism, sexism and class oppression in Brazilian history and society, and her concept of Amefricanidade. Today she is considered one of the most important figures of decolonial feminism in Abya Yala. Many Brazilian Black researchers (Ratts, Pons Cardoso, Lima and Rios) have contributed to recover her work in the last 15 years, and in 2019 The Latin American Studies Association dedicated a Forum to her thought (El pensamiento de Lélia Gonzalez, un legado y un horizonte). Although Gonzalez presented herself as anthropologist, and she taught anthropology at the Pontifícia Universidade Católica, less attention has been paid to her figure as anthropologist. Gonzalez reflected on what it meant to be a Black working-class woman in an all-White university. In this presentation I’m interested in analyzing the characteristics of Gonzalez’s anthropology, especially regarding the concept of Amefricanidade, and in discussing her place within Brazilian Anthropology, her status of “hidden scholar”. Ratts studied how Gonzalez progressively got interested in anthropology in her study of Afro-Brazilian cultural repertoires in oral tradition and daily gestures. Re-reading her texts, we can observe how Gonzalez anticipated some of the contemporary debates not only in Brazilian anthropology, but also in world anthropology. She problematized the position of the object of study forced to be “regarded and talked” by the subject who is producing “scientific” knowledge. She is an example of how analysis emerging from political struggles and from the interconnections between social movements and educational institutions challenge hierarchical and colonial knowledge production.
The limits of acculturation. Tensions in Latin American applied anthropology from the Ecuadorian fieldwork of Gladys Villavicencio (1968-73) — Javier González Díez
Javier González Díez (University of Turin, Italy)
The limits of acculturation. Tensions in Latin American applied anthropology from the Ecuadorian fieldwork of Gladys Villavicencio (1968-73)
In the paper I will discuss the connections that existed in the 1960s between Mexico and Ecuador in the field of indigenist applied anthropology. I will do it based on the fieldwork of Gladys Villavicencio, the first woman in Ecuador to study Anthropology. After her experience as a social worker, Villavicencio studied Social Anthropology in Mexico, at the National School of Anthropology and History (ENAH), in 1962-64 and 1968-1972, under the supervision of Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrán. Her fieldwork was carried out in Otavalo, in the north of Ecuador, and resulted in the book Relaciones interetnicas en Otavalo – Ecuador. ¿Una nacionalidad indígena en formación?, published by the Instituto Indigenista Interamericano (III) in 1973. Although the starting point of the book was Aguirre Beltrán’s theoretical perspective on “Regions of Refuge”, she presented interesting ideas on the processes of ethnogenesis in the Ecuadorian Andes, and she made proposals that departed from the policies of acculturation of the indigenist movement. My research is based on documentation from the ENAH and III archives, particularly her field notes and letters. These documents allow us to understand the methods that Villavicencio used to carry out her fieldwork and write her book. A more attentive reading of her fieldwork through these documents reveals how, even if she initially read the Ecuadorian “indigenous problem” through concepts of Mexican origin, she also originated her own reflections putting the theoretical core of indigenist politics in tension through the specificities of the Andean context.
A Polish “Missed Other”: Józef Obrębski’s Trials and Tribulations After WWII — Anna Engelking
Anna Engelking (Polish Academy of Sciences, Poland)
A Polish “Missed Other”: Józef Obrębski’s Trials and Tribulations After WWII
This paper is an attempt at expounding the fate of an émigré Polish anthropologist in the context of power relations in the field of social science. Józef Obrębski (1905-1967) left Poland in 1946, on the eve of the takeover of the Polish field of social science by the Communists, according to the Soviet pattern. His colleagues from Malinowski’s seminar at the LSE, in which he participated in the early 1930s, invited Obrębski to deliver lectures in Oxford and afterwards to conduct fieldwork in Jamaica. This project could have resulted in establishing his position in the field of Western anthropology. But it never came to fruition due to colonial-type power relationships between the project leaders and the Polish anthropologist. Instead, Obrębski worked at the UN in New York. His position in the field of social science after WWII seems to have been marginal and mediating at the same time. He maintained close contacts with his colleagues in Poland and considered returning to Warsaw after the 1956 revolution. Only in 1964 did he receive US citizenship. For the last decade of his life he taught sociology and anthropology at several NYU colleges, but he never found himself in a situation of partnership relations with American anthropologists. In this paper I am analysing the phenomenon of Obrębski’s marginality in connection with the breakdown of his academic trajectory. This analysis can be seen as a contribution to examining the processes of missing others within the official history of anthropology.
Becoming Visible, Invisible, and Visible Again: Emilie Snethlage, Curt Nimuendajú, and the Vicissitudes of History of Anthropology in Brazil — Peter Schröder
Peter Schröder (Federal University of Pernambuco, Brasil)
Becoming Visible, Invisible, and Visible Again: Emilie Snethlage, Curt Nimuendajú, and the Vicissitudes of History of Anthropology in Brazil
Nowadays, the Brazilian ethnologist of German origin Curt Nimuendajú (1883-1945) is considered one of the central figures in the constitution of anthropology as a scientific discipline in Brazil, but his biography could have taken quite a different course. Only being an immigrant with no academic background and a servant of the Brazilian Indigenous Protection Service before publishing his first scientific study in 1914, how did he get access to high-level academic periodicals of that period? The answer can be found in the mediating activities of the director of the Goeldi Museum in Belém do Pará, Emilie Snethlage (1868-1929), an ornithologist and part-time ethnologist. It seems that without Snethlage’s support Nimuendajú would never have initiated its ethnological career. They stayed unconditional allies until both were dismissed from the museum in 1922. Ironically, Snethlage, who died prematurely in 1929, became an almost forgotten figure in the history of Brazilian anthropology although she himself had conducted some important field expeditions before the First World War. Only since the last decade the memory of her life and work has become gradually recovered for the history of anthropology, together with the exceptional ethnological work of his nephew Emil-Heinrich Snethlage (1897-1939). In this paper we will present the history of the alliance between Nimuendajú and Snethlage using it as a starting point for a discussion about visibilities and invisibilities in a major anthropological tradition and its importance for the current trends in the teaching of history and theory in anthropology.
Tromsø, June 1879: On Stephen Sommier’s contribution to Mantegazza’s ethnological expedition in Sápmi — Erika De Vivo
Erika De Vivo (University of Edinburgh, UK)
Tromsø, June 1879: On Stephen Sommier’s contribution to Mantegazza’s ethnological expedition in Sápmi
Considered the father of Anthropology in Italy, Paolo Mantegazza has long attracted academic interest, and so did his wide academic/popular production. Nonetheless, his works on Sámi cultures has received little scholarly attention. Even less attention has been payed to Stephen Sommier, Mantegazza’s friend and protégée. They travelled together to Sápmi in 1879, spending three months in Tromsø, where they carried out research on local Sámi individuals. While Mantegazza returned to Italy at the end of summer, Sommier stayed in Norway for a few more months, proceeding towards Guovdageaidnu, where he carried out further research. Sommier’s fieldwork studies were crucial to Mantegazza’s works on Sámi peoples, as the famous anthropologist partially acknowledged in his own writings. Sommier’s subordinate position though meant that Mantegazza’s narrative became the standard one, obscuring Sommier’s insights and his reflections on the interactions with members of local Sámi communities. Furthermore, Sommier’s decisive contribution to Mantegazza’s theories and works has not been appropriately addressed, nor accounted for, resulting in Sommier’s exclusion from historical studies concerning late XIX century Italian anthropology. Based on a close reading of both scholars’ academic and popular accounts, this contribution sheds light on Sommier’s contribution to Mantegazza’s ethnological studies. Furthermore, it examines the different approaches the two had towards their research “subjects”, showing how Sommier’s extensive fieldworks – as opposed to Mantegazza’s short stay – allowed the former to appreciate Sámi cultures to a deeper level, acknowledging existing power asymmetries while also recognising the contribution of his own local guides/informants to the success of his own expedition.
Nicolás León and the beginnings of Mexican sociocultural anthropology. The teaching of ethnology in the classroom and the field (1906-1907) — David Robichaux
David Robichaux (Ibero-American University of Mexico City, Mexico)
Nicolás León and the beginnings of Mexican sociocultural anthropology. The teaching of ethnology in the classroom and the field (1906-1907)
Nicolás León (1859-1929), a medical doctor by training, is well-known in anthropological circles in Mexico as the founder of biological anthropology in that country. Although he is also recognized as having organized the ethnology and anthropology sections in the National Museum, having held the first chair in ethnology and having taken students into the field, little has been published regarding the content of the ethnology course he taught in 1906 and 1907 and his teaching methods. Based on an analysis of his class notes and other archival works, this paper aims to shed light on the contents of his course, its bibliographical references and incorporation of international developments in contemporary sociocultural anthropology, and León’s ideas regarding training of students in anthropology. The paper will also examine course content in the light of León’s extensive research in other fields, including history, linguistics and physical anthropology, in an attempt to define his own particular view of ethnology. Among the tentative conclusions of the paper is that, despite the difficulties ensuing from the economic crisis and political turmoil of the 1910 revolution, the idea of including fieldwork as an integral part of the training of anthropologists is a lasting part of León’s legacy that was incorporated in later academic programs in anthropology in Mexico, enduring to this day.
The Other of Biography and the Anthropologist as a Poet: the explosive encounter between Bronislaw Malinowski and Stanislas Witkiewicz — Amalia Dragani
Amalia Dragani (University of Florida, US // KU Leuven, Belgium)
The Other of Biography and the Anthropologist as a Poet: the explosive encounter between Bronislaw Malinowski and Stanislas Witkiewicz
Malinowski, born in Poland to a father who was a philologist and a polyglot mother of noble origins, became friend with the young writers and artists of his time, who were all destined to become emblematic figures in the history of Polish literature and art. Firstly, my communication aims to present the social and literary context of Krakow when the young Malinowski was writing poetry in Polish language (Dragani 2018). The young Malinowski wrote poetry that did not conform to the aesthetic “bohemian” canon of the time: some poems of correspondence, addressed to friends and a few love poems remain from his youthful poetic work. Secondly, I will focus on his intense relationship with the creative playwrite, philosopher and painter Stanislaw Ignacy Witkiewicz, one of the most important Polish artist and Malinowski’s best friend, who travelled to the Trobiand Islands with him, in a journey that would have a crucial impact on the history of anthropology. Witkiewicz was recruited by Malinowski as a photograph in order to create an archive of pictures during Malinowski’s mission. How he has contributed with his presence, his reflections, his intellectual and artistic background to Malinowski’s fieldwork and, more in general, to the birth of anthropology?