“Monkeys, Babies, Idiots” and “Primitives”: Nature-Nurture Debates and Philanthropic Foundation Support for American Anthropology in the 1920s and 1930s (2009)
Biehn, Kersten Jacobson (Author)
Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences
Volume: 45
Pages: 219--235
There has been a long discussion among historians about the impact that foundation policies had on the development of the social sciences during the interwar era. This discussion has centered on the degree to which foundation officers, particularly from the Rockefeller boards, exercised a hegemonic influence on research. In this essay, I argue that the field of American cultural anthropology has been neglected and must be reconsidered as a window into foundation intervention in nature-nurture debates. Despite foundation efforts to craft an anthropology policy that privileged hereditarian explanations, I contend that cultural anthropologists were committed to proving the primacy of nurture, even when that commitment cost them valuable research dollars. It was this commitment that provided an essential bulwark for the discipline. Ironically, it was the need to negotiate with foundations about the purpose of their research that helped cultural anthropologists to articulate their unique, and thus intrinsically valuable, approach to nature-nurture debates. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Jones, Ross L.;
(2013)
Macaws, Elephants and Mahouts: Frederic Wood Jones, the Rockefeller Foundation and the Human Biology Project
Book
Seim, David L.;
(2013)
Rockefeller Philanthropy and Modern Social Science
Article
Hinokawa, Shizue;
(2007)
The Process of Cyclotron Development at Harvard in the 1930s
Article
MacLeod, Roy;
(2003)
Preface
Book
Gemelli, Giuliana;
(2000)
The “unacceptables”: American foundations and refugee scholars between the two wars and after
Article
Biehn, Kersten Jacobson;
(2008)
Psychobiology, Sex Research and Chimpanzees: Philanthropic Foundation Support for the Behavioral Sciences at Yale University, 1923--41
Article
Stapleton, Darwin H.;
(2005)
A Lost Chapter in the Early History of DDT: The Development of Anti-Typhus Technologies by the Rockefeller Foundation's Louse Laboratory, 1942--1944
Article
Baick, John S.;
(2004)
Cracks in the Foundation: Frederick T. Gates, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the China Medical Board
Article
Glick, Thomas F.;
(2005)
Dictating to the Dictator: Augustus Trowbridge, the Rockefeller Foundation, and the Support of Physics in Spain, 1923--1927
Article
Krementsov, Nikolai;
Gross Solomon, Susan;
(2001)
Giving and Taking across Borders: The Rockefeller Foundation and Russia, 1919--1928
Book
Fedunkiw, Marianne P.;
(2005)
Rockefeller Foundation Funding and Medical Education in Toronto, Montreal and Halifax
Book
Farley, John;
(2004)
To Cast Out Disease: A History of the International Health Division of Rockefeller Foundation (1913-1951)
Article
Löwy, Ilana;
Zylberman, Patrick;
(2000)
Medicine as a Social Instrument: Rockefeller Foundation, 1913--45
Chapter
Mejía, Paola;
(2007)
Of Mice, Vaccines and Men: The Yellow Fever Research Program of the Rockefeller Foundation in Colombia, 1932--1948
Article
Jones, Edgar;
Rahman, Shahina;
(2009)
The Maudsley Hospital and the Rockefeller Foundation: The Impact of Philanthropy on Research and Training
Thesis
Kemp, Amy;
(2004)
The Rockefeller Foundation and the Faculdade de Medicina de Sao Paulo: A Case Study in Philanthropy as Policy
Article
Hinokawa, Shizue;
(2006)
The Rockefeller Foundation's Decision-Making Process in Funding the 184-Inch Cyclotron
Book
Cole, Sally Cooper;
(2003)
Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology
Book
L'Estoile, Benoit de;
Neiburg, Federico G.;
Sigaud, Lygia;
(2005)
Empires, Nations, and Natives: Anthropology and State-Making
Thesis
Pinkoski, Marc;
(2007)
Julian Steward and American Anthropology: The Science of Colonialism
Be the first to comment!