Description
Book SynopsisBy drawing on the social history of the social sciences, the sociology of scientific knowledge, and the ethnography of the State, these essays show how anthropology and state-building should be considered as intertwined processes
Trade Review“
Empires, Nations, and Natives is a refreshing collection, notable for the quality and depth of research into different ‘national anthropologies’ in Europe, the Americas, and South Africa, and for the ability of the authors and editors to bring out the linkages among such intellectual traditions. The book provokes important reflections on questions of empire, colonialism, cultural difference, democratic government, and the possibilities and constraints of the nation-state.”—Frederick Cooper, Professor of History, New York University, and author of
Colonialism in Question: Theory, Knowledge, History“
Empires, Nations, and Natives reflects an original conception of the ethnography of politics, attending imaginatively to the ethnographic and theoretical contexts in which anthropology sometimes enters (and sometimes eludes) the fields of political identity, agency, and change. It is also a valuable critical supplement to state theory.”—Carol Greenhouse, Professor of Anthropology, Princeton University, and coeditor of
Ethnography in Unstable Places: Everyday Lives in Contexts of Dramatic Political Change“[T]his volume is an important contribution to contemporary debates over the part anthropology plays in the public sphere of nation-states. Its broad range highlights the international connections between empires and nation-states as well as between imperial and national anthropologies. It is a necessary reference for those interested in the intellectual and political history of our discipline from an anthropological perspective, for those interested in the anthropology of knowledge, and for those engaged in the critique of the postcolonial forms of neo-colonialism.” -- Steffan Igor Ayora-Diaz * Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Anthropology *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
Introduction: Anthropology and the Government of “Natives,” a Comparative Approach / Benoît de L’Estoile, Federico Neiburg, and Lygia Sigaud 1
Rationalizing Colonial Domination? Anthropology and Native Policy in French-Ruled Africa / Benoît de L’Estoile 30
“The Good-Hearted Portuguese People”: Anthropology of Nation, Anthropology of Empire / Omar Ribeiro Thomaz 58
Vichy France and the End of Scientific Folklore (1937–1954) / Florence Weber 88
From Nation to Empire: War and National Character Studies in the United States / Federico Neiburg and Marcio Goldman 108
Anthropology at the End of Empire: The Rise and Fall of the Colonial Social Sciences Research Council, 1944–1962 / David Mills 135
Bordering on Anthropology: Dialectics of a National Tradition in Mexico / Claudio Lomnitz 167
Indigenism in Brazil: The International Migration of State Policies / Antonio Carlos de Souza Lima 197
The Anthropologist as Expert: Brazilian Ethnology between Indianism and Indigenism / João Pacheco de Oliveira 223
Anthropology, Development, and Nongovernmental Organizations in Latin America / Jorge F. Pantaleón 248
The Ethnologist and the Architect: A Postcolonial Experiment in the French Pacific / Alban Bensa 263
“Today We Have Naming of Parts”: The Work of Anthropologists in Southern Africa / Adam Kuper 277
References 301
Contributors 327
Index 331
