Description
National Races explores how politics interacted with transnational science in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries to produce powerful, racialized national identity discourses. These essays demonstrate that the "national races" constructed by physical anthropologists had a vital historical role in racism, race science, and nationalism.
Contributors address a central tension in anthropological race classification. On one hand, classifiers were nationalists who explicitly or implicitly used race narratives to promote political agendas. On the other hand, the transnational community of race scholars resisted the centrifugal forces of nationalism. Their interdisciplinary project was a vital episode in the development of the social sciences, using biological race classification to explain the history, geography, relationships, and psychologies of nations.
National Races delves to the heart of tensions between nationalism and transnationalism, politics and science, by examining transnational science from the perspective of its peripheries. Contributors to the book supplement the traditional focus of historians on France, Britain, and Germany, with myriad case studies and examples of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century racial and national identities in countries such as Russia, Italy, Poland, Greece, and Yugoslavia, and among Jewish anthropologists.
About the Author
Richard McMahon teaches European Union politics at University College London. He is the author of The Races of Europe: Construction of National Identities in the Social Sciences, 1839-1939.
Reviews
"This major scholarly collection explores the history of physical anthropology from intentionally unusual angles that challenge intuitive assumptions. It also charts engagements and altercations with humanistic ethnological scholarship, including folklore, amid a host of revealingly varied nationalist aspirations."-Michael Herzfeld, Journal of Folklore Research
"A rich collection about the rise of physical anthropology, ethnology, and race science in the 19th century, National Races emphasizes the importance of placing these disciplines in a transnational, national, and imperial context. By highlighting forgotten mid-19th-century debates about mono- and polygenism, and employing case studies focused on Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, Korea, and Yugoslavia to decenter the Western European core-focused narratives of these disciplines' emergence, the volume recovers a rich set of liberal, transnational, and local ideas in their development, thus challenging teleological narratives of a straight road from turn-of-the-century craniometry and serology to the eugenic practices and exclusionary biological racism of interwar fascist regimes."-A. Vari, Choice
"In important ways, both implicitly and explicitly, Richard McMahon demonstrates that the fear of immigration and anti-immigration policies in Europe and the United States are tied to previous fears and anxiety about the construction of national races. McMahon provides an extensive overview and impeccable research to describe the transnational science of racial classification during a pivotal century in the modern era."-Lee Baker, Mrs. Alexander Hehmeyer Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University
"National Races is innovative and promising-and fills a significant gap in the international literature. It builds on studies of physical anthropology, nationalism (or national identity politics), imperialism, modernity, and warfare and attempts to bring these into connection. There is every reason to believe that the book will be a standard work in an interdisciplinary and transnational field of studies that has hardly been circumscribed and never been covered in any detail."-Han F. Vermeulen, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Book Information
ISBN 9781496225849
Author Richard McMahon
Format Paperback
Page Count 402
Imprint University of Nebraska Press
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
Contributors address a central tension in anthropological race classification. On one hand, classifiers were nationalists who explicitly or implicitly used race narratives to promote political agendas. On the other hand, the transnational community of race scholars resisted the centrifugal forces of nationalism. Their interdisciplinary project was a vital episode in the development of the social sciences, using biological race classification to explain the history, geography, relationships, and psychologies of nations.
National Races delves to the heart of tensions between nationalism and transnationalism, politics and science, by examining transnational science from the perspective of its peripheries. Contributors to the book supplement the traditional focus of historians on France, Britain, and Germany, with myriad case studies and examples of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century racial and national identities in countries such as Russia, Italy, Poland, Greece, and Yugoslavia, and among Jewish anthropologists.
About the Author
Richard McMahon teaches European Union politics at University College London. He is the author of The Races of Europe: Construction of National Identities in the Social Sciences, 1839-1939.
Reviews
"This major scholarly collection explores the history of physical anthropology from intentionally unusual angles that challenge intuitive assumptions. It also charts engagements and altercations with humanistic ethnological scholarship, including folklore, amid a host of revealingly varied nationalist aspirations."-Michael Herzfeld, Journal of Folklore Research
"A rich collection about the rise of physical anthropology, ethnology, and race science in the 19th century, National Races emphasizes the importance of placing these disciplines in a transnational, national, and imperial context. By highlighting forgotten mid-19th-century debates about mono- and polygenism, and employing case studies focused on Italy, Greece, Poland, Russia, Korea, and Yugoslavia to decenter the Western European core-focused narratives of these disciplines' emergence, the volume recovers a rich set of liberal, transnational, and local ideas in their development, thus challenging teleological narratives of a straight road from turn-of-the-century craniometry and serology to the eugenic practices and exclusionary biological racism of interwar fascist regimes."-A. Vari, Choice
"In important ways, both implicitly and explicitly, Richard McMahon demonstrates that the fear of immigration and anti-immigration policies in Europe and the United States are tied to previous fears and anxiety about the construction of national races. McMahon provides an extensive overview and impeccable research to describe the transnational science of racial classification during a pivotal century in the modern era."-Lee Baker, Mrs. Alexander Hehmeyer Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Duke University
"National Races is innovative and promising-and fills a significant gap in the international literature. It builds on studies of physical anthropology, nationalism (or national identity politics), imperialism, modernity, and warfare and attempts to bring these into connection. There is every reason to believe that the book will be a standard work in an interdisciplinary and transnational field of studies that has hardly been circumscribed and never been covered in any detail."-Han F. Vermeulen, Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Book Information
ISBN 9781496225849
Author Richard McMahon
Format Paperback
Page Count 402
Imprint University of Nebraska Press
Publisher University of Nebraska Press
