The Making of British Anthropology, 1813-1871

by Efram Sera-Shriar

Overview

Victorian anthropology has been derided as an "armchair practice," distinct from the scientific discipline of the twentieth century. But the observational practices that characterized the study of human diversity developed from the established sciences of natural history, geography and medicine. Sera-Shriar argues that anthropology at this time went through a process of innovation which built on scientifically grounded observational study. Far from being an evolutionary dead end, nineteenth-century anthropology laid the foundations for the field-based science of anthropology today.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780822966487
Publisher:	University of Pittsburgh Press
Publication date:	12/01/2020
Series:	Sci & Culture in the Nineteenth Century Series , #87
Edition description:	1
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Efram Sera-Shriar is a historical anthropologist who specializes in Victorian science. He is associate professor in English studies at the University of Copenhagen, where he teaches the history and culture of the English-speaking world. Sera-Shriar is the author of Psychic Investigators: Anthropology, Modern Spiritualism, and Credible Witnessing in the Late Victorian Age and The Making of British Anthropology, 1813-1871 and senior editor for The Correspondence of John Tyndall series.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgements ix

List of Figures xi

Introduction 1

1 Founding the Sciences of Man: The Observational Practices of James Cowles Prichard and William Lawrence 21

2 Ethnology in Transit: Informants, Questionnaires and the Formation of the Ethnological Society of London 53

3 Ethnology at Home: Robert Gordon Latham, Robert Knox and Competing Observational Practices 81

4 The Battle for Mankind: James Hunt, Thomas Huxley and the Emergence of British Anthropology 109

5 Synthesizing the Discipline: Charles Darwin, Edward Burnett Tylor and Developmental Anthropology in the Early 1870s 147

Conclusion 177

Notes 191

Works Cited 227

Index 245

Editorial Reviews

"An impressive book, providing a new slant on Victorian anthropology and an interesting case study of scientific observation."
—Social History of Medicine


"A valuable contribution to the history of the 'study of man' over the long nineteenth century. Sera-Shriar gives us an intellectual lineage from Prichard to Tylor, opening up new ways of thinking about a form of thought that undoubtedly lay at the heart of imperial expansion and governance."
—Sujit Sivasundaram, University of Cambridge


"What makes for trustworthy observations? And who counts as a trustworthy observer? In this important book, Sera-Shriar reveals how far public disagreement over these questions shaped ethnology and anthropology in Britain during a period often dismissed as the age of the 'armchair observer.' In so doing he not only enriches our understanding of the history of anthropology but also shows by example how to historicize the apparently timeless arts of scientific observation."
—Gregory Radick, University of Leeds


“A welcome addition to recent historical work on nineteenth-century anthropology that, as with Qureshi’s Peoples on Parade, develops and refines the territory first mapped out in George W. Stocking’s seminal Victorian Anthropology (1987).”
—British Journal for the History of Science
 

From the Publisher