Science, Race, and Empire:

Author(s)

Andre Gingrich

Abstract

This overview of academic ethnography in the last decades of the Habsburg Empire is given through the example of Vienna as the Empire’s capital. Ethnography is scrutinized in its main dimensions through the four decades from the 1870s till after the end of World War i. Main trends, crucial phases, and key actors are identified and characterized to assess the roles of notions of race and racism. The overall period is marked by the emergence and formal establishment of an internally heterogeneous academic discipline called “Anthropologie und Ethnographie” (anthropology and ethnography).
This took place along three main phases with different priorities and main actors. During that period, “Anthropologie und Ethnographie” was perceived as a more or less unified field of research—in institutional terms at first at the natural history museum since its opening in 1876, and later also at the University of Vienna as of 1912/13.

Organisation(s)

Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology

External organisation(s)

Österreichische Akademie der Wissenschaften (ÖAW)

Journal

East Central Europe

Volume

43

Pages

41-63

No. of pages

23

ISSN

0094-3037

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1163/18763308-04302001

Publication date

09-2016

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

605001 History of humanities

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Arts and Humanities(all), Cultural Studies, History, Sociology and Political Science

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/science-race-and-empire(7dda52f2-3c42-40b1-b33a-758bf66a9d24).html