Description
Indonesia is home to diverse peoples who differ from one another in terms of physical appearance as well as social and cultural practices. The way such matters are understood is partly rooted in ideas developed by racial scientists working in the Netherlands Indies beginning in the late nineteenth century, who tried to develop systematic ways to define and identify distinctive races. Their work helped spread the idea that race had a scientific basis in anthropometry and craniology, and was central to people's identity, but their encounters in the archipelago also challenged their ideas about race.
In The Archipelago of Difference, Fenneke Sysling draws on published works and private papers to describe to way Dutch racial scientists tried to make sense of the human diversity in the Indonesian archipelago. The making of racial knowledge, it contends, cannot be explained solely in terms of internal European intellectual developments but it was 'on the ground', that ideas about race weremade and unmade with a set of knowledge strategies that did not always combine well. Sysling describes how skulls were assembled through the colonial infrastructure, how measuring sessions were resisted, what role photography and plaster casting played in racial science and shows how these aspects of science in practice wereentangled with the Dutch colonial Empire.
About the Author
Dr. Fenneke Sysling is a historian of science and colonialism. She holds a PhD from the VU University of Amsterdam, Netherlands and has publishedon the history of museum collections, environmental history and the making of race. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands.
Reviews
"Sysling's meticulously researched, well written, and clearly argued book fits well with recent scholarship on the history of the 'racial sciences'. As elsewhere, anthropologists in Southeast Asia amassed mountains of data but struggled to read much meaningful, let alone 'useful', out of it. With its many references to relatively unknown sources and archives, the book has a lot to offer historians of science, empire, and Southeast Asia alike." - H/Soz/Kult
Book Information
ISBN 9789814722070
Author Fenneke Sysling
Format Paperback
Page Count 322
Imprint NUS Press
Publisher NUS Press
Weight(grams) 467g
In The Archipelago of Difference, Fenneke Sysling draws on published works and private papers to describe to way Dutch racial scientists tried to make sense of the human diversity in the Indonesian archipelago. The making of racial knowledge, it contends, cannot be explained solely in terms of internal European intellectual developments but it was 'on the ground', that ideas about race weremade and unmade with a set of knowledge strategies that did not always combine well. Sysling describes how skulls were assembled through the colonial infrastructure, how measuring sessions were resisted, what role photography and plaster casting played in racial science and shows how these aspects of science in practice wereentangled with the Dutch colonial Empire.
About the Author
Dr. Fenneke Sysling is a historian of science and colonialism. She holds a PhD from the VU University of Amsterdam, Netherlands and has publishedon the history of museum collections, environmental history and the making of race. She is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Utrecht, Netherlands.
Reviews
"Sysling's meticulously researched, well written, and clearly argued book fits well with recent scholarship on the history of the 'racial sciences'. As elsewhere, anthropologists in Southeast Asia amassed mountains of data but struggled to read much meaningful, let alone 'useful', out of it. With its many references to relatively unknown sources and archives, the book has a lot to offer historians of science, empire, and Southeast Asia alike." - H/Soz/Kult
Book Information
ISBN 9789814722070
Author Fenneke Sysling
Format Paperback
Page Count 322
Imprint NUS Press
Publisher NUS Press
Weight(grams) 467g
