Anthropology and Antihumanism in Imperial Germany

by Zimmerman, Andrew

• ISBN13: 9780226983424
• ISBN10: 0226983420
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-10-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

With the rise of imperialism, the centuries-old European tradition of humanist scholarship as the key to understanding the world was jeopardized. 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. Drawing on sources ranging from scientific papers and government correspondence to photographs, pamphlets, and police reports of "freak shows," Zimmerman demonstrates how German imperialism opened the door to antihumanism. 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. Scholars of anthropology, European and intellectual history, museum studies, the history of science, popular culture, and colonial studies will welcome this book.

Author Biography

Andrew Zimmerman is an assistant professor of history at George Washington University.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
List of Abbreviations	ix
Introduction	1	(14)
PART I
Exotic Spectacles and the Global Context of German Anthropology	15	(23)
Kultur and Kulturkampf: The Studia Humanitas and the People without History	38	(24)
Nature and the Boundaries of the Human: Monkeys, Monsters, and Natural Peoples	62	(24)
Measuring Skulls: The Social Role of the Antihumanist	86	(25)
PART II
A German Republic of Science and a German Idea of Truth: Empiricism and Sociability in Anthropology	111	(24)
Anthropological Patriotism: The Schulstatistik and the Racial Composition of Germany	135	(14)
PART III
The Secret of Primitive Accumulation: The Political Economy of Anthropological Objects	149	(23)
Commodities, Curiosities, and the Display of Anthropological Objects	172	(29)
PART IV
History without Humanism: Culture-Historical Anthropology and the Triumph of the Museum	201	(16)
Colonialism and the Limits of the Human: The Failure of Fieldwork	217	(22)
Conclusion	239	(10)
Notes	249	(80)
Bibliography	329	(28)
Index	357