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 Soviet anthropology in the 1960s–1970s.

Alymov, Sergei, 2024. “How Moscow Did Not Become a World Centre of Marxist Anthropology: Liudmila V. Danilova and the Fate of Soviet ‘Revisionism’ in the 1960s‑1970s,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

The article analyzes the trajectory of Liudmila Valerianovna Danilova (1923–2012), a Soviet/Russian historian who specialized in the history of medieval Russia and agrarian history, and a Marxist theoretician of history and social evolution. She worked at the Institute of History of the Academy of Sciences of the USSR/Russia for more than half a century from 1952 onward. Author of two monographs, Essays on the History of Land Ownership and Economy in the Novgorod Land in the 14th-15th Centuries (1955) and Rural Community in Medieval Russia (1994). In the mid-1960s, she was part of the collective group of the department of the methodology of history at the Institute of History, who tried to reinvigorate Soviet Marxism and challenge its Stalinist interpretations. The article analyzes the theoretical and methodological discussions in Russian ethnography and historiography of the 1960s, which were focused on the critique of the Stalinist dogma of the five-stage scheme of world history and gave way to “revisionist” ideas concerning the number and sequence of Marxist socioeconomic formations. As one of the leaders of this collective, Danilova edited the collection of articles Problems of the History of Pre-capitalist Societies (1968), a manifesto of Soviet “revisionist” historical Marxism of the 1960s. This heterodox text received a wide response among historians and anthropologists both in the USSR and worldwide; it attracted a number of commentaries and reviews, including those of British anthropologist Ernest Gellner. Danilova planned to expand this volume into a series which would include authors from Eastern and Western Europe and focus on Marxist interpretation of the whole world history as well as “primitive society.” Danilova’s alternative Marxism negatively affected her academic career. Her main work, Theoretical Problems of Feudalism in Soviet Historiography, remained unpublished during her lifetime, as well as the following volumes of the projected series “Problems of the History of Pre-capitalist Societies.” 

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.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on Leo Frobenius’ Australian anthropology.

Kuba, Richard, 2024. “Frobenius’ Culture History in Australia: Dead Ends and New Insights,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Leo Frobenius is one of the most famous and influential German anthropologists of the 20th century. While his collection of ethnographic data and oral traditions enjoyed general recognition, as well as his comprehensive documentation of African rock art, in which he saw a kind of “Picture Book of Cultural History,” Frobenius was already an intensely controversial figure during his lifetime. One of the first Europeans to recognize the historicity of African cultures, he became a principal reference for the protagonists of “Négritude,” who aimed at re-establishing the cultural self-awareness of African peoples. This article explores the less-known Australian side of Frobenius’ anthropology, namely the scientific and political contexts of the final research expedition initiated by him in 1938–1939, when he sent five members of the Institut für Kulturmorphologie (directed and founded by him; today Frobenius-Institut) to the Kimberley region in northwestern Australia. This expedition followed the tradition of nearly two dozen others that Frobenius had led or initiated since 1904, primarily in Africa, with the aim of documenting what were perceived as “ancient” cultures threatened by imminent disappearance. In the Kimberley, the expedition was among the earliest ethnographic research efforts in the area, focusing particularly on documenting rock art along with related myths and narratives. The specific theoretical and practical approaches developed by Frobenius over more than 25 years significantly shaped the resulting documentation—whether visual, written, phonographic, or through the selection of collected objects. The article reconstructs the context and course of the expedition, primarily based on archival sources. While Frobenius’s distinct anthropological approach, characterized by the “ethnographic expedition” and an idiosyncratic emphasis on “culture,” continued to influence his collaborators and successors for a few decades after his death, the gap between Frobenius’s approach and international trends in anthropology was perceptible from the 1930s onwards. This contrast would only grow, reinforcing the “maverick”—or, for that matter, anachronistic—aspect of his endeavors. Richard Kuba (Frobenius Institute for Research in Cultural Anthropology, Frankfurt), however, examines the Frobenius-Institut Australian expedition’s aftermath, drawing on historical publications by its members and insights from a recent collaborative research project. Eighty-five years later, the extensive materials from this expedition are being rediscovered, reassessed, and digitally returned to the source communities, giving new relevance and meaning to the historical archive.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English) on a 1951 expedition to Mauritania by Swiss anthropologist Jean Gabus and painter Hans Erni.

Reubi, Serge, 2024. “Anthropology, Photography, and Painting: Jean Gabus and Hans Erni in Mauritania 1951‑1952”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Swiss scholar Jean Gabus (1908–1992) received an education in humanities and worked first as a journalist and explorer. After an expedition to Canada in 1938–1939, he wrote a dissertation on the Inuit, under the supervision of Wilhelm Schmidt. In 1945, he was appointed director of the Musée d’ethnographie of Neuchâtel (until 1978) and professor of geography and ethnography at the University of Neuchâtel (until 1974). He spent most of his career studying the nomad populations of Mauritania, Niger and Algeria, but his most important achievements were museological: he radically modernized the Neuchâtel museum and was an international renowned expert for museums for UNESCO from 1958 to the 1980s, popularizing the concept of objet-témoin. This article discusses the category of minor anthropological traditions and suggests that it is better understood as a historiographical artefact, not an undisputed fact. Intellectual practices that do not fit hegemonic narratives should not be positioned in terms of backwardness in time—or forwardness, for that matter; instead, one should accept the synchronic diversity of scientific activities. To demonstrate this, Serge Reubi (Musée National d’Histoire Naturelle, Centre Alexandre Koyré, Paris) uses the conceptual lens of Daston and Galison’s objectivity theory and examines the 1951 expedition to Mauritania that Gabus organized with the painter Hans Erni, during which he tried to combine the use of mechanical means of recording (photo, records, films, artefacts) with the more subjective approach of an artist. By doing so, he believed that the expedition would be able to grasp both singular and specific events of the local populations and general human behaviors.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Spanish) on anachronistic and dyschronic motives in disciplinary history, focused on José Imbelloni—a controversial representative of 20th-century Argentinian anthropology. The English version is forthcoming.

Lazzari, Axel, 2024. “En torno al argumento del anacronismo y la Escuela Histórico‑Cultural en la Argentina: hacia un abordaje discrónico,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Born in Italy, José Imbelloni (1885–1967) emigrated to Argentina in 1908, where he began his career as an anthropologist in 1921, with previous training in the natural sciences. His anthropological work of a craniological and historical-philological nature contributed to the debates on the settlement of the American continent and the diffusion of cultural cycles. During the 1930s, as head of the Physical Anthropology Section of the Museo de Ciencias Naturales, Imbelloni gained greater visibility with the publication of Epítome de Culturología (1936), where he summarized the doctrine and method of the cultural-historical school and contributed his own empirical studies. In 1948 he took over the direction of the Museo Etnográfico, created the Instituto de Ciencias Antropológicas at the University of Buenos Aires, and the journal Runa. During these years he established strong ties with academic sectors of Peron’s regime and became one of the world’s leading figures in Americanist anthropology. Imbelloni developed a culturalist-racialist approach that was not free of polemic tones, but his career is fundamental for understanding the development of Argentine anthropology.

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.

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.

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.

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.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Spanish) on the history of Andean kinship studies.

Sendón, Pablo F., 2024. “Revisitando los estudios de parentesco en los Andes: entre la historia de la antropología y el análisis computacional de fuentes parroquiales,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

This article reassesses the anthropological studies on kinship in the Andes in the light of new research on the ayllu among contemporary Indigenous peasant and Quechua-speaking populations of the southern Peruvian Andes. Through the prism offered by computational tools, the ayllu (groupings of individuals who are related to each other as kin and share a common territory) is reframed as an institution that, far from being strictly Indigenous, is inseparable from the local history of Christianity. Additionally, some salient characteristics of the earlier studies in question are highlighted, not with the intention of questioning the exceptional quality of what has been done in the past, but rather to contribute to a reflection on the ways in which ongoing anthropological research in the Andes may affect the writing of a particular chapter in the history of the discipline. The case study in question suggests an approach to the problem of the ayllu from the present to the past, and not the other way around, as has classically been done by postulating more or less hypothetical models of social morphology. The temporal information recorded in the new databases allows us to follow the trail of this institution until at least the middle of the 19th century. Two major records shape the corpus—genealogies and parish registers available in peasant villages in the southern Peruvian Andes—and allow us to offer a fresh characterization not only of the ayllu but also of its historical vicissitudes. Far from being a timeless entity, the ayllu transforms itself in the diachrony not only from exogenous and conjunctural factors but also from endogenous and structural regularities that also explain its continuity over time. Due to the volume of basic information, as well as the complexity of the combination of weighted variables, this dialogue with the history of anthropology would be impossible and unmanageable without the use of computational tools.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in English), on Victorian anthropologists of British India 1850–1871.

Fuller, Chris, 2024. “Victorian Ethnology in British India: The Study of Tribes, Castes and Society, circa 1850–1871,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Between 1850 and 1871, when the decennial censuses of India began, the most influential colonial ethnologist was George Campbell, a member of the Indian Civil Service. Campbell’s history, Modern India (1852), briefly described Indian society, but a long article (1866) set out an “ethnological skeleton” for classifying India’s “races and classes” according to five criteria: physical appearance (indicating racial division), followed by languages, religions, laws, and manners plus mental characteristics. The Indian population was divided into the “black aboriginal tribes of the interior hills and jungles,” “modern Indians” belonging to various Hindu and Muslim tribes and castes, who made up the vast majority, and a small category of tribal groups of mixed descent on the northern frontiers. The principal division was primarily racial, rather than linguistic, because tribal people spoke both Dravidian and “Kolarian” (Ho-Munda) languages, and the majority population both Dravidian and Aryan. Campbell’s article, which included a short ethnographic survey of tribal groups and a longer one of caste groups, was more comprehensive than any previous. 

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article (in Portuguese), on the Anthropological Exhibition that took place at the Museu Nacional of Rio Janeiro in 1882.

Agostinho, Michele de Barcelos, 2024. “A Exposição Antropológica Brasileira de 1882: história, ciência e poder no Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

The Museu Nacional of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro is a bicentennial scientific institution, the first in Brazil, which had one of the largest collections of natural and anthropological sciences in Latin America, much of which disappeared in the fire that struck its historical building on September 2, 2018. Initially called the Royal Museum, then the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro, its trajectory occupies a prominent place in the country’s history insofar as the disciplinary knowledge produced there was closely linked to state policies aimed at managing territories and populations. At the end of the 19th century, the concern with consolidating and legitimizing anthropological science in Brazil, inscribing indigenous peoples in national history, and demanding a museum from the imperial government which specialized in ethnography motivated the then director of the Museu, Ladislau Netto, to hold the Brazilian Anthropological Exhibition of 1882, the first and only of its kind in Brazil. The exhibition lasted three months, displayed hundreds of indigenous objects and received thousands of visitors. This study analyzes the intentions of those who conceived it, the practices of representation that constituted the exhibition order and its repercussions with the public. In this lavishly illustrated article, Michele Agostinho takes readers on a true guided tour, which is also a travel in time.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article published in three languages (Italian, French, and Spanish), on Italian anthropologist Raffaelle Corso.

Coppola, Maurizio, 2024. “Uno ‘folklorista di ieri’? Un ritratto di Raffaele Corso, tra etnografia legale, erotica ed esotica,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Coppola, Maurizio, 2024. “Un ‘folkloriste d’hier’? Raffaele Corso entre ethnographie juridique, érotique et exotique,”in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Coppola, Maurizio, 2024. “¿Un ‘folklorista de ayer’? Un retrato de Raffaele Corso, entre etnografía jurídica, erótica y exótica,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

Raffaele Corso (1883–1965) was one of the leading figures in the history of anthropological disciplines in Italy in the first half of the 20^th century. Both in Italy and abroad, particularly during the 1920s and 1930s, he was a renowned scholar in the domain of “folklore”, which he defined as the study of the popolino, that is, the urban or rural working classes of so-called “civilized” societies; but he also dedicated himself to “ethnography”, understood as the study of non-European peoples.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: two articles in English and Portuguese, respectively, that overview the history – and the historiography – of Portuguese anthropology.

Almeida, Sónia Vespeira de & Rita Cachado, 2023. “Beyond the “Carnation Revolution”: An Overview of Contemporary Histories of Portuguese Anthropology,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3078.html

Saraiva, Clara, 2023. “Histórias e Memórias da Antropologia Portuguesa,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article2906.html

The history of anthropology in Portugal began to be systematized after the 1974 “Carnation Revolution,” which put an end to the longest fascist-type dictatorship in Europe. In the first paper, Almeida and Cachado look at how the history of Portuguese anthropology has been studied. Historical perspectives on Portuguese anthropology before the revolution tend to emphasize the connections between anthropologists’ work and the dictatorship project, while the work of anthropologists after the revolution is viewed as being more in tune with international or cosmopolitan anthropologies. An attentive reading of this literature shows that there were more than two historically distinctive ways of practicing anthropology. The article explores both the history and the historiography of the discipline in Portugal, highlighting some of the fundamental contributions that have been made to understand and contextualize this peculiar anthropological tradition within and beyond old nation- and empire-building motives. On the one hand, the main ideas and discussions contained in that bibliography – mostly written in Portuguese – are analyzed and synthesized, while on the other hand suggesting possible paths which the historiography of anthropology in Portugal could take in the future. 

In the second article entitled “Histories and Memories of Portuguese Anthropology,” Saraiva reviews some of the major publications on the history of Portuguese anthropology and adds a more personal perspective related to the author’s path from her training in Lisbon and the United States to her presidency of the Portuguese Anthropological Association (APA) – including her close association with key figures in the recent history of Portuguese anthropology. The text underlines the continuities and ruptures that occurred at different moments and reveals the ambivalences of the discipline during the dictatorship of the Estado Novo, as well as the tensions or connections between the nation-building and empire-building projects. Along with the intellectual and political changes resulting from the “Carnation Revolution” of 1974, new forms of institutionalization emerged, both in the universe of academia and at the professional level with the creation of the APAin 1989. The text takes us to the summer of 2021, two years before the 50th anniversary of the death of Jorge Dias, a leading figure in modern Portuguese anthropology.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article in English that historicizes local and community-oriented museal institutions in the reservation of Standing Rock.

Grillot, Thomas, 2023. “Familiar in Many Shapes: A Historical (and Contemporary) Overview of Museums in Native American Country,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3160.html

Discussions of the role of museums in Native lives and communities often overestimate their alienness in Native American country. In fact this institution is, Grillot proposes, quietly familiar, and should be studied as such. A view of the problem from the Dakota/Lakota reservation of Standing Rock emphasizes the very diverse presence of the museum in Native lives as a means of producing culture and identities. It shows how networks of local actors developed museum-like forms of exhibiting Native cultural artifacts that nourished reservation life. From powwows to school outings, from window cases in shops to exhibits inside Native homes, from employment in museums to the building of private collections by tribal members, museums in Dakota/Lakota country inspire and sponsor myriad practices, some intimate, others very much public-oriented. Familiar, even if regularly contested, these museum-like practices have always been appropriated from within relationships that tie together craftspeople and artists and their families, on the one hand, and discrete institutions, rather than “museums” in general, on the other. In this study based both on fieldwork experience and archival sources, Grillot reconstitutes this history through vignettes centered on the Standing Rock reservation that emphasize the importance of replacing museums in regional geographies, and the living tradition of creating local and community-oriented museal institutions in Native country.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in English, on Polish ethnographer and anthropologist Jan Czekanowski.

Bar, Joanna & Michał Tymowski, 2023. “Jan Czekanowski, a Polish Anthropologist between Two Eras of European Cultural History,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article2971.html

This article recaptures the trajectory and describes the ethnographic and anthropological work of Polish Africanist and Slavicist Jan Czekanowski (1882–1965). After developing a new method in the study of racial classification, he took part in the German Central-African Expedition of 1907–1909, during which he conducted fieldwork in the interlacustrine region of Africa. The article analyses the results of his anthropological and ethnographic researches in central Africa—including his comprehensive photographic documentation—which were published between 1911 and 1927 in a five-volume work, Forschungen im Nil-Kongo-Zwischengebiet. The article also highlights Czekanowski’s studies on the ethnogenesis of the Slavs, which he conducted after and under the effect of World War I, as well as his role as creator of the Lwów school of physical anthropology, concomitant with his academic career as a professor at the University of Lwów from 1913 to 1941. Based on both published sources and archival materials largely ignored outside of Poland, the article reassesses Czekanowski’s place in disciplinary history as a cosmopolitan anthropologist connected to numerous European scholarly societies.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article in French on the correspondence between Marcel Mauss and Dutch scholars.

Beaufils, Thomas, 2023. “Marcel Mauss, la Hollande et les Hollandais. Correspondance de 1898 à 1938,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3115.html

The sheer volume of articles and books devoted to both the published texts and the manuscripts of Marcel Mauss (1872–1959) over the decades suggests that all facets of the French scholar’s personality and intellectual activity have been widely explored. However, although a very serious and patient effort has been made in recent years to assemble and describe the relevant archives, the task of locating unpublished documents has not yet been completed. In fact, Mauss’s work is characterized by the extreme dispersion of the writings he bequeathed; and all his known correspondence has yet to be fully transcribed. The present piece is a contribution to this tireless work of compilation and translation, in order to give as accurate a picture as possible of the scientific output of the “father of French anthropology.” The correspondence transcribed here comprises mostly letters exchanged between Mauss and Dutch scholars, and also with the Amsterdam rabbinate, including one in German. The collection spans the period from 1898, when Mauss was only 26 and still a student, to 1938, when the great scholar was at the height of his fame. The aim of this dossier is to draw up an inventory of the links that existed between Marcel Mauss and the Netherlands during this period. The content of this correspondence is often personal, and therefore not exclusively scientific. This piece appears within the BEROSE encyclopedic dossier dedicated to Marcel Mauss, which comprises over fifty resources, both primary and secondary sources. 

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in English, on Ernestine Friedl as an accidental feminist anthropologist.

Allen, Peter S., 2023. “From New York to Vasilika: Ernestine Friedl, an Accidental Feminist in a Greek Village,” in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris. 

URL BEROSE: article3117.html

This article is a comprehensive account of the life and work of Ernestine Friedl (1920–2014), a professional anthropologist, teacher, and university administrator. Born in Hungary, she immigrated to New York and settled in the Bronx. Her academic career began with her graduation from Hunter College and a PhD from Columbia University, where her doctoral dissertation concerned the Chippewa, whom she had studied on their reservation in Wisconsin. Friedl then taught at Queens College of the State University of New York for more than 20 years before becoming the chair of the Anthropology Department at Duke University in 1973. Meanwhile, she accompanied her husband, classicist Harry Levy, to Greece where she conducted fieldwork in a small village, resulting in her monograph, Vasilika: A Village in Modern Greece (1967), a pioneering work of European ethnography. She was the first American female anthropologist to conduct modern—if not innovative—ethnographic fieldwork in Greece beyond folklore studies, and one of the first to do so in a European society. The article outlines Friedl’s peculiar place in a broader history of anthropological research on Europe, while focusing on feminism and discrimination within her academic and scientific milieu. A special section reveals the ethnographer in the field, her coping with local ways, and the privileged but not necessarily easy interactions of an “American wife” with Greek interlocutors, both female and male. Friedl’s stature in the discipline is testified to by her presidencies of the American Ethnological Society (1967) and the American Anthropological Association (1975), her service on the Board of the National Science Foundation (1980–1988), and her editorship of the Journal of Modern Greek Studies (1986–1990). Friedl concluded her career by spending five years as the dean of arts and sciences at Duke and several years teaching at Princeton University.

HAR is pleased to announce one of the latest releases from BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology: an article, in French, on the Belgian explorer, ethnographer and visual anthropologist Robert de Wavrin.

Moderbacher, Christine & Grace Winter, 2023. “La vie et l’œuvre du Marquis Robert de Wavrin, un des premiers anthropologues visuels”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

URL BEROSE: article2908.html

Born into a noble family from Belgian Flanders, Robert de Wavrin (1888–1971) was an explorer, ethnographer and visual anthropologist who spent most of his life in Latin America. Financially independent (thanks to the family fortune from coal mines), he lived in Paraguay, Venezuela, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. His first contacts with Amerindian populations, around 1915, led him to join learned societies of geography and anthropology in Brussels and Paris, where his empirical observations were appreciated in line with the theoretical views of the time. From his first trip, he used photography to illustrate the Indigenous way of life, which he actually shared. He was soon introduced to the film camera and, from 1919 onwards, visually recorded the daily life of various communities. His 2,000 photographs and four films represent an important contribution to the history of visual anthropology. He is also the author of 14 books and numerous articles.

In this pioneering article, Moderbacher and Winter trace the life and work of Wavrin, with a focus on his film work as a contribution to the history of visual anthropology. Although fragments of his work are known to some researchers in South America, Wavrin is almost entirely absent from historical studies and largely forgotten in the anthropological and Americanist fields. Although his work cannot be studied outside the colonial context of this discipline and the legacy of Eurocentrism, according to Moderbacher and Winter his visual contribution provides remarkable historical insights and deserves the attention of researchers.

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 impact of the Declaration of Barbados of 1971 in Brazilian anthropology.

Oliveira, João Pacheco de, “‘Not mere objects of study’: The Declaration of Barbados (1971) and the Remaking of Brazilian Anthropology”, in BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology, Paris.

URL BEROSE: article2897.html

In 1971, young anthropologists who were gathered on the island of Barbados denounced the dramatic situation in which Indigenous peoples lived. With its context in the histories of social sciences in Latin America, the resulting manifesto criticized conservative governments and Christian missions, while calling for a new attitude in anthropology. Social studies should not be based solely on the theoretical agendas of hegemonic sociologies and anthropologies, it argued; they should address ethical and political issues related to processes of liberation and decolonization of Indigenous populations. In the following decades, military coups and intense political repression meant that teaching and research in the social sciences were placed under tight surveillance in various Latin American countries. Pushed to the margins of the intellectual and political scene, the Barbados message had a limited impact in many academic spaces, but there were a few exceptions – including Brazil.

In this illuminating article, Pacheco de Oliveira explores the trajectories of the political legacy of the Barbados statement in Brazilian anthropology, through lasting debates and practices around themes such as Indigenous agency, decolonization, and dialogic anthropologies. The current plurality of anthropology demands a fresh reading of the 1971 document as both a historical landmark and an inspirational statement for generations to come.