Paper short abstract:

The paper presents the details of the research conducted by A.C. Haddon and W.H. Rivers during an expedition to the Torres Strait. The author will focus on describing the impact of the expedition on the historical models of relations between categories of race and nation present in British science.

Paper long abstract:

The paper presents the details of the research conducted by A.C. Haddon and W.H. Rivers during an expedition to Torres Strait. Its aim is to answer the question of how some specific concepts of nature of human bodies and procedures of demarcation of the research area helped to crystallize conclusions indicating the cultural, rather than biological, sources of diversity of the studied societies. Paradoxically, these conclusions were possible to reach to due to the application of natural science methods. In the paper, the author will focus on describing the impact of the expedition on the historical models of relations between categories of race and nation. Therefore, an important reference point for his analysis will be Haddon's earlier anthropometric projects and later papers. This choice will allow to present the process of discrediting thinking about the nation in a racial key. The author intends to show that the popularization of the "island" model of social structure combined with explicit conclusions that culture is not a function of race and race is not a function of geography, has strengthened the thesis about the cultural character of the nation. At the same time, as Keith Hart points out, it did not disassemble the existing mental order, but rather allowed for partial reconfiguration of the dominant worldview. The removal of racial terms did not mean the simultaneous elimination of the idea of human hierarchies, and the vision of a world made up of separate societies was compatible with the shape of the world seen through the prism of nation states.

Paper short abstract:

After suggesting in 1907 the massacre of "wild Indians", the influence of museum director Hermann von Ihering (1850-1930), began to be eclipsed. Through this event I want to reflect on the relation between scientific discourse and nationalistic projects in Brazil at turn of the twentieth century.

Paper long abstract:

The German natural scientist Hermann von Ihering (1850-1930) was the director of one of the most important Brazilian scientific institutions, the Museu Paulista in São Paulo, between 1893 and 1916. Besides encouraging researches in natural sciences, anthropology and ethnology, by hiring field researchers and purchasing collections, he dedicated himself to these disciplines by publishing scientific results and debating them as a public intellectual. As one of the most respected intellectuals in the country, he became involved in a controversy that damaged his reputation. In an article published in 1907 he claimed that for the good of civilization "wild Indians" resisting the progress, such as the Kaingang in Southern Brazil, should be slaughtered. On the one hand, his statement was welcomed by Brazilian financial and political elites that attacked indigenous peoples in order to obtain their land; on the other, he was criticized by colleagues as the debate about "indigenous questions" was growing. After he left the museum, its new director, Afonso d'Escragnolle Taunay (1876-1958), not only changed its essence, transforming it from an anthropology and natural sciences museum into one about Brazilian history and the history of São Paulo, but also worked to obliterate von Ihering's influence. Taunay's scientific project was in consonance with the ideology of local elites who wanted to establish São Paulo as the political and symbolic center of Brazil. By analyzing these events, my aim is to reflect on the relation between scientific discourse and national(istic) projects in the turn of the twentieth century in Brazil.

Paper short abstract:

We discuss the case of Transylvania which, in 1918, was united with the mother country, used ethnographic knowledge to demonstrate its belonging to the Romanian people, an exercise that called for field research: collecting ethnographic material, collecting folklore, questionnaire method.

Paper long abstract:

Starting from the concrete facts and figures which, in 1910 (when Transylvania was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire and in the possession of Hungary), showed that over half of the population of Transylvania was Romanian but that this population was overwhelmingly rural and only three nations were recognized (Szeklers, Hungarians and Saxons, the Romanians being a tolerated nation) we will explain the need for Transylvanian ethnographers to assert the identity, cultural and spiritual belonging of Transylvania to the Romanian latinity. After 1918 (Great Union), the cultural country project, aimed to replace the minorities elites with the Romanian ones and to bring the cultural level of the masses of Romanians closer to that of the non-Romanians. In Transylvania, the cultural conquest of the cities was proceeding - university, theater, opera in Cluj. Ethnographic research, based on the solid foundation of the traditional village, on the study of the population speaking neo-Latin and on the applied methods (the collection of ethnographic material, the collection of folklore, the use of the questionnaire method) provided the establishment of the Ethnographic Museum of Transylvania in 1922, of the Archive of Folklore of the Romanian Academy in 1930, of the University Department of Ethnography and Folklore in 1926, in order to represent the Romanian ethnic being in a province coming from the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

Paper short abstract:

I want to present different ways of Polish anthropologists to engage in public debate in a very important period: the time of the rebirth of the Polish state, the establishment of academic and research institutions, and the important role that scientists played then in public sphere.

Paper long abstract:

The problem of anthropology's engagement in the context of nationalism is of special importance. Researchers of the interwar period also succumbed to it themselves and were involved in projects that strengthened Polish nationalism or were critical of it. I will focus on two characters representing different ways of involvement: Bożena Stelmachowska proving the Polishness of Cassubians and Jan Stanisław Bystroń, who criticized the national megalomania (not only Polish anyway).

Despite the difference in attitudes, they shared - what we now call - methodological nationalism. Moreover, science came to the aid of "cultural legitimacy" of political solutions. The objectivist concepts of contemporary anthropology proved to be very helpful. This was well served by the assumption of the objective existence of national and ethnic groups based on common culture, consciousness, ties and territory that was widely shared.

Paper short abstract:

Case studies presented show 3 variants of dealing by anthropologists with nationalistic authorities political expectations: fullfilling (Dworakowski) or opposing them (Chajes, Obrębski). The important factors in these trajectories are the researcher's habitus and social and institutional background.

Paper long abstract:

The paper consists of three case studies depicting different attitudes of anthropologists towards the politics of nationalism promoted by the prerwar Polish state. Ethnographer Stanisław Dworakowski, involved in a govermental Commitee for the Issues of Petty Nobility in Eastern Poland, elaborated a study on this social stratum. Although based on reliable field research, it can hardly be considered scientific work. It has many features of political propaganda, one of the goals of which was the so called "national revindication" of the mostly Orthodox, speaking East Slavic dialects local lesser nobility. Undoubtedly Dworakowski proved to be more of an eager Pole than an impartial anthropologist. Quite opposite is the case of folklorist Joachim Chajes, secretary of the Ethnographical Commission of YIVO. Contemporary Soviet folklore was one of the fields of his research, which Polish nationalistic and antisemitic authorities found suspicious, all the more he was a Jew. Accused of communist activity, he was injustly imprisoned. Social anthropologist Józef Obrębski can be situated between those two extremes. His field research among East Slavic peasants in Eastern Poland, concerning their developing national identity, although conducted within a national scientific program and financed by the state, is an example of intelectual independence. By revealing the negative attitude of the peasants towards Polish authorities, Obrębski achieved an outcome, which did not fullfill the official political expectations. These three models of the anthropologist-state nationalism relation are indicative not only of personal factors, but also different institutional backgrounds and thought collectives the anthropologists belonged to.

Paper short abstract:

During the Warsaw Ghetto, Jewish activists produced and collided material in the Ghetto about the Ghetto, which is nowadays know as the "Ringelblum Archive". This paper explores the work of this group not so much as an "Archive", but more as "The Results of the Oyneg Shabes Action Research Group".

Paper long abstract:

During the existence of the Warsaw Ghetto, a group of Jewish activists produced and collided a body of 35.000 pages of material in the Ghetto about the Ghetto, which is nowadays know as the "Ringelblum Archive". Without negating its context of activism, nor its value as a historical document, this paper explores the work of this group not so much as an "Archive", but more as "The Results of the Oyneg Shabes Action Research Group". The influences on this group can be traced, for example, to the scholarship in the Yidisher Visnshaftlekher Institut (YIVO) founded in Berlin and situated at the time in Vilnius; to engaged US American Sociology and Anthropology in the 1930s, to historical work in real time by Jewish historians and ethnographers on the pogroms in Ukraine 1917-1919, to Yiddish folklore studies, or to Pre-war Marxist social research. These traditions merged in a unique hybrid of realtime-history, ethnography and sociology; of outcry, activism, criminal investigation, and distanced research; of original material and analysis; of collaboration and centralisation; of Marxist framing and liberal practice. As such, it has striking resonances with contemporary transdisciplinary, collaborative, (auto-)ethnographic, activist research. This talk explores such resonances, while trying to evade the pitfalls of projecting contemporary practices into the group, or retrospectively inserting it into an ancestor gallery of sorts. Instead, it aims to explore an example for engaged social research in the trenches of nationalism, and asks what we can learn from it for current engaged anthropology in crisis situations.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the role of historical narratives both in the work of Portuguese mid-20 century anthropologists, who promoted the colonial empire as the cradle of a new humanity, and in the knowledge producing practices of contemporary population genetics.

Paper long abstract:

During the late period of Portuguese colonialism, the nationalist and imperialist rhetoric strategies of the regime became dependent on a new anthropological inspiration that argued for the higher value of miscegenation as a tool to a successful colonization process and to the accomplishment of Portuguese civilizing missions at colonial territories. At the core of this new anthropological perspective was the luso-tropical paradigm defended by some Portuguese anthropologists under the influence of Brasilian sociologist Gilberto Freyre. The nationalistic vision of European superiority and the defence of race admixture practices were then harmoniously articulated in newly crafted anthropological imaginaries. As a new type among mankind, these tropical mixed populations would represent a turn-point in humanity's natural history.

Before long, this idea was being articulated with the rising field of genetics and producing new eugenic visions of miscegenation, as opposed to more orthodox views of a colonial anthropology still operating in the field and looking for racially and ethnically defined populations.

This paper is grounded on the cross study of works by mid-20th century anthropologists and of the works of contemporary geneticists and molecular anthropologists, in order to explore past and present articulations of biological/ genetic data with humanistic knowledge and to analyse the ways historical narratives are used to interpret biological information. I argue that a historiographic informed perspective on contemporary genetics is important to understand the ways geneticists still use historical knowledge and its temporality structures, leading to the reconceptualization of history, identity and imaginaries of belonging.

Paper short abstract:

J.R. Llobera was an outstanding Catalan anthropologist specialized in nationalism. His non-politically positioned perspective let him criticize the romantic construction of Catalan Volkgeist of 19th Century folklorists and also argue on the historical foundations of Catalan national identity.

Paper long abstract:

This communication aims to present the work of J.R. Llobera on Catalan nationalism. The Catalan case is widely known for its long history, which began in the mid-19th century with the romantic vindication of the Catalan language and its cultural nation. It became a political movement in the early 20th century and has survived to the present day, with the rise of independence demands from Spain. However, in Catalan anthropology, there are not figures that have stood out by their explicit action for or against Catalan nationalism. There was only the work of 19th-century Folklorists in the construction of Catalan Volkgeist, but his essentialist approaches were later widely criticized by Catalan anthropologists in the 1980s.

One of the prominent authors in the critique of the romantical gaze of the first Catalan nationalism was Josep Ramón Llobera, a Catalan anthropologist who developed his academic career in London, from where he contributed prominently in the development of Spanish anthropology in the late '70s and the 80s when political debates about how to resolve the different national identities inside Spain were intensive. Possibly because of his Catalan origin and his biography, Llobera stood out in a strictly academical study of nationalism as a phenomenon, but his analysis (which always had the Catalan case as a background), were never explicitly built-in defense or criticism of Catalan nationalism; although in his last works he argued in defense of a legitim Catalan identity as a result of historical processes of Longue durée.

Paper short abstract:

The problems of minorities, ethnicity and cultural diversity of society are areas that are highly politicized. This entangles the anthropologist in the issues of nationalism which we will present on the example of changes in the approach changes in Polish research on this issue from the 1990s.

Paper long abstract:

The problems of minorities, ethnicity and cultural diversity are highly politicised areas that entangle the anthropologist in the issue of nationalism.

The presentation will analyse the approach evolution to cultural diversity among ethnicity researchers in Poland. The change in describing ethnic diversity of Polish society after the 1990s transformation seems particularly interesting. During the communist period, due to the entanglement of science in the official nationalistic discourse promoting Polish society visions as ethnically homogeneous, but also the state monopoly on the creation and dissemination of this vision provided by censorship, researchers of ethnicity usually followed the message postulated by the authorities. In their work on minorities, researchers showed ethnic diversity in terms of assimilation, integration and differences disappearance. The political system transformation has resulted in a shift in a description to emphasizing differences and a more pluralistic approach.

Our speech, based on the analysis of the work on ethnic groups in Poland, including an auto-ethnographic reflection, will analyze the reasons for the turn in research on ethnic diversity after 1989. Main points will include 1) the paradigm shift in science - from the assimilation theory towards approaches emphasizing cultural difference; 2) the replacement of an objective approach with an interpretative one; 3) the very social transformation that triggered ethnic revival in minority communities in the public sphere; 4) the axionormative changes in a democratizing society valuing the difference. These factors influenced the researchers' decisions which began to propose conceptualizations weakening the dominant nationalist discourse.