Search citation statements
Paper Sections
Citation Types
Year Published
Publication Types
Relationship
Authors
Journals
The term "anthropology" occurs in the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1768-71), but it gets only a one-line entry: "ANTHROPOLOGY, a discourse upon human nature"; and Johnson's Dictionary (1755) defines it as "The doctrine of anatomy." Clearly, there was no anthropology as we know it in the eighteenth century, but both anthropological ideas and the terminology that would later define the discipline were emerging. To simplify somewhat, what we now call "social anthropology" or "cultural anthropology" was then known variously as "ethnography" (in the eighteenth century, usually but not always at the level of description), "ethnology" or Völkerkunde (in contrast to folklore [Volkskunde], at the level of comparison), or part of "moral philosophy" (especially in Scotland, at the level of theory). 1 Yet anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, and moral philosophy were really quite separate enterprises, and relations between moral philosophy and natural history were frequently ambiguous. Even more problematic were the ideas of "race" and "racism," so taken for granted in nineteenth-and twentieth-century political discourse.Petrus Camper was the leading Dutch anatomist and anatomical illustrator of the mid-eighteenth century. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," or more precisely Menschkunde, which he distinguished from Natuurkunde (natural history). He believed that facial angle coincided with distinctions of "race" and sought to use this criterion to study and classify humankind. However, like many anthropological ideas of the eighteenth century, his were misunderstood and misused, both by his contemporaries and by his successors. Miriam Claude Meijer's book is, to a large measure, an attempt to correct such misunderstandings.
The term "anthropology" occurs in the first edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica (1768-71), but it gets only a one-line entry: "ANTHROPOLOGY, a discourse upon human nature"; and Johnson's Dictionary (1755) defines it as "The doctrine of anatomy." Clearly, there was no anthropology as we know it in the eighteenth century, but both anthropological ideas and the terminology that would later define the discipline were emerging. To simplify somewhat, what we now call "social anthropology" or "cultural anthropology" was then known variously as "ethnography" (in the eighteenth century, usually but not always at the level of description), "ethnology" or Völkerkunde (in contrast to folklore [Volkskunde], at the level of comparison), or part of "moral philosophy" (especially in Scotland, at the level of theory). 1 Yet anthropology, ethnography, ethnology, and moral philosophy were really quite separate enterprises, and relations between moral philosophy and natural history were frequently ambiguous. Even more problematic were the ideas of "race" and "racism," so taken for granted in nineteenth-and twentieth-century political discourse.Petrus Camper was the leading Dutch anatomist and anatomical illustrator of the mid-eighteenth century. He was among the first to mark out an "anthropology," or more precisely Menschkunde, which he distinguished from Natuurkunde (natural history). He believed that facial angle coincided with distinctions of "race" and sought to use this criterion to study and classify humankind. However, like many anthropological ideas of the eighteenth century, his were misunderstood and misused, both by his contemporaries and by his successors. Miriam Claude Meijer's book is, to a large measure, an attempt to correct such misunderstandings.
The essay focuses on the writer Edgar Rice Burroughs (1875–1950)—the creator of Tarzan—and his contemporary and president of the American Museum of Natural History, Henry Fairfield Osborn (1857–1935). These historical figures are of interest as multimedia-versed shapers of collective fantasies of human evolution. Both men created and drew on science and fiction to produce vraisemblance in their reconstructions of human prehistory, and thus to achieve suspension of disbelief. Their main tools were arguably very different: one organized expeditions to collect fossils and installed a staff of artists and technicians at the museum to reconstruct the fossil creatures; the other turned himself into a writing-factory, producing as large an amount of words per day as possible. As is shown, the two cultures nonetheless interacted on the level of structure as well as content when bringing the dinosaurs and cavemen to life in fully equipped prehistoric worlds. The resulting windows into the human deep past were meant to educate the public through entertainment. Osborn and Burroughs engaged in “interesting experiment[s] in the mental laboratory which we call imagination” when they made different races, sexes, and national types compete in prehistoric struggles for existence. The laboratory setups were to reveal natural hierarchies, but they were also intended to transform the reader/viewer. The verbal and visual reconstructions of lost worlds served Burroughs’s and Osborn’s conservatism: the true American/Anglo-Saxon type had to be preserved, if not recovered.
Resumo: Este artigo tem por objetivo analisar de que forma a escrita tem sido utilizada como instrumento reflexivo, de resistência e de expressão identitária e cultural entre descendentes de imigrantes italianos no Rio Grande do Sul (Brasil). Essa prática teve seu início nas últimas décadas do século passado e tem se proliferado quantitativa e qualitativamente, acompanhando a ascensão econômica, social e política dos descendentes. Por meio de pesquisa etnográfica e documental realizada entre eles, pôde-se conhecer e analisar a dimensão desse processo, que cresce entre indivíduos integrantes tanto do mundo rural quanto do urbano, bem como de distintos gêneros e classes sociais. Neste artigo, em especial, enfocarei o processo de produção escrita e sua reflexividade, assim como os pertencimentos presentes nos processos narrativos.Palavras-chave: literatura de descendentes, italianos, memórias, refl exividade, identidade étnica, resistência cultural.Abstract: Th is article aims to examine how writing has been used as a refl ective instrument of resistance and cultural identitary expression among descendants of Italian settlers in Rio Grande do Sul State (Brazil). Th is practice had its beginnings in the last decades of the last century and proliferated quantitatively and qualitatively following their economic, social and political rise. Th rough ethnographic and documental research among these descendants, we can get to know and analyze the dimensions of this process that grows both among individuals from rural and urban areas as well as among diff erent genders and social classes. In this article in particular I will focus on the written production process and its refl exivity as well as on the belonging present in the narrative processes.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.
hi@scite.ai
10624 S. Eastern Ave., Ste. A-614
Henderson, NV 89052, USA
Copyright © 2024 scite LLC. All rights reserved.
Made with 💙 for researchers
Part of the Research Solutions Family.