Anthropology and antihumanism in Imperial Germany / by Andrew Zimmerman.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Zimmerman, Andrew.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Anthropology--Germany--History--19th century.

Anthropology.

Humanism--Germany--History--19th century.

Humanism.

Science--Germany--History--19th century.

Science.

History.

Germany.

Physical Description:

ix, 364 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2001.

Summary:

The rise of imperialism jeopardized the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world. Nowhere was this more true than in nineteenth-century Germany. It was there, Andrew Zimmerman argues, that the battle lines of today's "culture wars" were first drawn when anthropology challenged humanism as a basis for human scientific knowledge. As Germans interacted more frequently with peoples and objects from far-flung cultures, they were forced to reevaluate not just those peoples, but also the construction of German identity itself. Anthropologists successfully argued that their discipline addressed these issues more productively -- and more accessibly -- than humanistic studies. Zimmerman draws on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows" to demonstrate how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.

Contents:

Chapter 1 Exotic Spectacles and the Global Context of German Anthropology 15

Chapter 2 Kultur and Kulturkampf: The Studia Humanitas and the People without History 38

Chapter 3 Nature and the Boundaries of the Human: Monkeys, Monsters, and Natural Peoples 62

Chapter 4 Measuring Skulls: The Social Role of the Antihumanist 86

Chapter 5 A German Republic of Science and a German Idea of Truth: Empiricism and Sociability in Anthropology 111

Chapter 6 Anthropological Patriotism: The Schulstatistik and the Racial Composition of Germany 135

Chapter 7 The Secret of Primitive Accumulation: The Political Economy of Anthropological Objects 149

Chapter 8 Commodities, Curiosities, and the Display of Anthropological Objects 172

Chapter 9 History without Humanism: Culture-Historical Anthropology and the Triumph of the Museum 201

Chapter 10 Colonialism and the Limits of the Human: The Failure of Fieldwork 217.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 329-356) and index.

ISBN:

0226983412

0226983420

OCLC:

46731242