IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB001212623

Guardian Angel on a Nation's Path: Contexts and Trajectories of Physical Anthropology in Brazil in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries (2013)

Santos, Ricardo Ventura (Author)

Current Anthropology
Volume: 53, no. S5
Issue: S5
Pages: 17-32
Publication date: 2013
Language: English

Publication Date: 2013
Edition Details: Part of a special section, “Anthropology and National Identity”

Outside Links

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Discipline formation Physical anthropology National identity Academic disciplines 20th century, early 19th century Brazil

In this paper I analyze the trajectory of Brazilian physical anthropology from the late nineteenth century to the early decades of the twentieth century, framing it within the prevailing historical and sociopolitical context. The focus will be on the research and reflections of anthropologists at the Museu Nacional (National Museum) in Rio de Janeiro, one of Brazil's most influential anthropological research centers, from 1870 to 1930. The main aim is to understand why these anthropologists distanced themselves from explanatory approaches that placed mestizos and other non-Europeans on inferior levels in the hierarchy of human races. I argue that the position taken by physical anthropology at the National Museum was the result of far-reaching intellectual and political dynamics operating well beyond academic borders. Anthropologists from the National Museum---and Edgard Roquette-Pinto in particular---shared the nationalist ideals defended by a portion of the early twentieth-century Brazilian intelligentsia. It is also argued that, contrary to some historical interpretations, the antideterministic position of physical anthropology at the National Museum was independent of the Boasian influence. Although there were superficial similarities between the Boasian ideas and those of a segment of the physical anthropology produced in Brazil, the most significant influences came from other, locally produced sources.

...More

Included in

Article Lindee, M. Susan; Santos, Ricardo Ventura (2013) The Biological Anthropology of Living Human Populations: World Histories, National Styles, and International Networks: An Introduction to Supplement 5. Current Anthropology (pp. 3-16). unapi

Citation URI

stagingisis.isiscb.org/p/isis/citation/CBB001212623

This citation is part of the Isis database.

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Book Delisle, Richard G.; (2007)
Debating Humankind's Place in Nature, 1860--2000: The Nature of Paleoanthropology

Article Santos, Gonçalo; (2013)
The Birth of Physical Anthropology in Late Imperial Portugal

Book Jon Røyne Kyllingstad; (2014)
Measuring the Master Race: Physical Anthropology in Norway 1890-1945

Article Young, Cristobal; (2009)
The Emergence of Sociology from Political Economy in the United States: 1890 to 1940

Article Mattes, Johannes; (2015)
Disciplinary Identities and Crossing Boundaries: The Academization of Speleology in the First Half of the Twentieth Century

Book MacLeod, Roy; (2000)
Nature and Empire: Science and the Colonial Enterprise

Book Alves, Ana Maria de Alencar; (2001)
O Ipiranga apropriado: ciência, política e poder: O Museu Paulista, 1893--1922

Article Tamano, Luana Tieko Omena; dos Santos, Poliana; Magalhães, Gildo; Martins, Ana Claudia Aymoré; (2011)
O cientificismo das teorias raciais em O cortiço e Canaã

Article Sánchez Arteaga, Juanma; Niño El-Hani, Charbel; (2010)
Antropologia física e a descrição do “selvagem” na Exposição Antropológica Brasileira de 1882

Article Sánchez Arteaga, Juan Manuel; (2009)
Las ciencias y las razas en Brasil hacia 1900

Article Claudio Pogliano; (2021)
A Tricky Start: The First Decade of Ethnographic Cinema

Article Serge Reubi; (2020)
À quoi sert l’organisation des sciences?

Article Elan D. Louis; (2021)
The Neurological Study Unit: “A Combined Attack on a Single Problem from Many Angles”

Article Sensales, Gilda; Dal Secco, Alessandra; (2014)
The Rise of a Science in the Early Twentieth Century: The Forgotten Voice of Gualtiero Sarfatti and the First “Social Psychology” Volumes in Italy

Article Wundt, Wilhelm; Lamiell, James T.; (2013)
Psychology's Struggle for Existence: Second Edition, 1913

Article Erlingsson, Steindór J.; (2013)
Institutions and Innovation: Experimental Zoology and the Creation of the British Journal of Experimental Biology and the Society for Experimental Biology

Article Ku-Ming (Kevin) Chang; (2020)
Philologie ou linguistique ? Réponses transcontinentales

Article Petraglia Kropf, Simone; Di Liscia, María Silvia; (2010)
Bocio, mal de Chagas e identidad nacional. Enfermedades y polémicas en Argentina y Brasil (1910--1940)

Chapter Carrara, Sérgio; (2005)
Estrategias anti-coloniales: sífilis, raza e identidad nacional en el Brasil de entreguerras

Book Andrade Franco, José Luiz de; Drummond, José Augusto; (2009)
Proteção à natureza e identidade nacional no Brasil, anos 1920--1940