This article discusses the relationship between race and physical anthropology in Hungary and Romania between 1900 and 1940. It begins by looking at institutional developments in both countries and how these influenced the most important Hungarian and Romanian anthropologists' professional and research agendas. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources, the article reveals the significant role the concept of race played in articulating anthropological and ethnic narratives of national belonging. It is necessary to understand the appeal of the idea of race in this context. With idealized images of national communities and racial hierarchies creeping back into Eastern European popular culture and politics, one needs to understand the latent and often unrecognized legacies of race in shaping not only scientific disciplines like anthropology, but also the emergence and entrancement of modern Hungarian and Romanian nationalism.
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The “strong nucleus of the Greek race”
Racial nationalism and anthropological science
Sevasti Trubeta
This article deals with the theory of the "strong nucleus of the Greek race" elaborated by the Greek physical anthropologist Ioannis Koumaris (1879-1970), who headed all academic anthropological institutions in Greece between 1915 and 1970. According to this theory human groups were in a state of "fluid constancy," meaning that the "proper" nucleus of the predominant race always persisted in a stable form despite miscegenation, and was hence capable of resurfacing. This theory footed, first, on racial theories challenging the existence of "pure races" in favor of evidencing "racial varieties" and "racial types" and, second, an early Greek national idea according to which Hellenism possessed the ability to acculturate and absorb foreign peoples or nations without losing its innate qualities. The Greek notion fili (meaning both nation and race), and its shifting semantics from religious to national and racial, is similarly instrumental to this analysis. By means of this theory racial purity was not so much rejected as it was relativized, essentially being replaced by the constancy of a race over time. With the shift from purity to constancy, the imperative of the homogeneity of an entity is not violated but, in contrast, supported by race anthropological arguments. Race hygienic theories, in turn, advanced the shift from racial consistency to purification.
Margit Berner
This article focuses on interwar Austrian physical anthropology, tracing its scientific aspirations, gradual institutionalization, and wider popularization during the interwar period. Largely concentrated in Vienna, Austrian physical anthropologists debated racial questions extensively and conducted racial evaluations based on detailed morphological studies and in-depth analysis of facial "racial" traits. This method was considered ideal for genealogical studies. A host of new societies and working groups collaborated to develop new methodologies and create influential links to universities and public institutions. Within this context, a certificate or "proof of paternity" was developed to resolve disputed court cases. Not only did issuing these certificates become a key source of work and income for anthropologists and their organizations, they also marked the discipline's crucial shift from a theoretical to an applied science.
The racial fix
White currency in the gentrification of black and Latino Chicago
Jesse Mumm
how clearly socially produced gentrification is, how obviously not natural or inevitable, given how many players had to be aligned to spark and sustain speculation. Race here is continuously recognized and then denied, seen and unseen, clear and
Contending with school reform
Neoliberal restructuring, racial politics, and resistance in post-Katrina New Orleans
Mathilde Lind Gustavussen
resistance to education privatization. The article concludes by considering the relationship between race and neoliberalization, arguing that neoliberal education reform in post-Katrina New Orleans not only has disproportionate racial implications but is, in
Canon Fire
Decolonizing the Curriculum
Andrew Sanchez
Whiteness, colour and anthropology The introductory note to this special issue begins with a personal story about race and anthropology. I am from the United Kingdom, and my family is made up of people who are White British, Afro
In The Cambridge Journal of Anthropology
- Published (Print):
- 01 Sep 2018
- Article Type:
- Introduction
- Pages:
- 1–6 (6 total)
Adeel Hamza and John Gannon
textual exegesis of the Legend of Abraham. At the same time, it provides insights into the intellectual and discursive milieu of the European interwar period, in particular helping to bring out conflict over the idea of race and Mauss’s place within this
In Durkheimian Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2016
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 47–57 (11 total)
Reclaiming the streets
Black urban insurgency and antisocial security in twenty-first-century Philadelphia
Jeff Maskovsky
Philadelphia, where he is a member, he scolded: “You’ve damaged yourself, you’ve damaged another person, you’ve damaged your peers and, quite honestly, you’ve damaged your own race” (quoted in John-Hall 2011 ). In 2010, then City Council member Jim Kenney
‘Nothing Is Less Universal than the Idea of Race’
Alfred Métraux, American Social Science and UNESCO's Anti-Racist Campaign in 1950s Paris
Alice L. Conklin
accept a position at the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) as head of a new bureau on race relations, and he was wondering what books to buy to help him in his new job. Hardly an expert on race matters himself
In Durkheimian Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2021
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 107–132 (26 total)
Introduction
Whither race? Physical anthropology in post-1945 Central and Southeastern Europe
Marius Turda
Although research on the history of physical anthropology in Central and Southeastern Europe has increased significantly since the 1990s the impact race had on the discipline's conceptual maturity has yet to be fully addressed. Once physical anthropology is recognized as having preserved inter-war racial tropes within scientific discourses about national communities, new insights on how nationalism developed during the 1970s and 1980s will emerge, both in countries belonging to the communist East—Hungary, Bulgaria, and Romania, and in those belonging to the West—Austria and Greece. By looking at the relationship between race and physical anthropology in these countries after 1945 it becomes clear what enabled the recurrent themes of ethnic primordiality, racial continuity, and de-nationalizing of ethnic minorities not only to flourish during the 1980s but also to re-emerge overtly during political changes characterizing the last two decades.