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SUMMARY:What is Armchair Anthropology? - Efram Sera-Shriar (York Universit
 y\, Canada)
DTSTART:20121129T133000Z
DTEND:20121129T153000Z
UID:TALK41426@talks.cam.ac.uk
CONTACT:William Carruthers
DESCRIPTION:From the era of Bronislaw Malinowski forward\, the public imag
 e of anthropology
 has been intertwined with the notion of fieldwork. Wi
 thin anthropology as well\, 
fieldwork has so dominated disciplinary mem
 ory that Malinowski’s Victorian
 predecessors have tended to be dismis
 sed as ‘armchair anthropologists’.
Recently however\, historians of 
 anthropology – drawing on wider re-evaluations
 within the history of 
 science – have begun to fill in the apparent gap between
 the armchair
  and the field. Building on these efforts\, this paper offers a new
 int
 erpretation of nineteenth-century British anthropology and its observation
 al
 practices. Looking in particular at figures including James Cowles P
 richard\,
 William Lawrence\, Robert Knox\, Robert Gordon Latham\, James
  Hunt\, Thomas Huxley\,
 Charles Darwin and Edward Burnett Tylor\, this 
 paper shows both that British
 observational practices – when it came 
 to human diversity – emerged out of a 
mix of previously existing scie
 nces\, notably natural history and medicine\, and 
that\, in response to
  criticisms and self-criticisms\, these practices became
 more refined o
 ver the decades. The reforming innovations surveyed in this paper
 inclu
 de methodological lectures and handbooks\, the use of questionnaires and 
 
informants\, the display of extra-European peoples in Britain\, and fie
 ld studies
 avant la lettre.
LOCATION:Seminar Room SG1 Alison Richard Building\, 7 West Road\, Cambridg
 e CB3 9DT
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