Anthropology, Standardization and Measurement: Rudolf Martin and Anthropometric Photography (2013)
Abstract Recent scholarship on the history of German anthropology has tended to describe its trajectory between 1900 and the Nazi period as characterized by a paradigmatic shift from the liberal to the anti-humanistic. This article reconstructs key moments in the history of anthropometric photography between 1900 and 1925, paying particular attention to the role of the influential liberal anthropologist Rudolf Martin (1864-1925) in the standardization of anthropological method and technique. It is shown that Rudolf Martin's primary significance was social and institutional. The article reconstructs key stages in Martin's writing on and uses of photography and analyses the peculiar form of scientific debate surrounding the development of anthropometric photography, which centred on local and practical questions. Against the political backdrop of German colonialism in Africa and studies of prisoners of war during the First World War, two key tensions in this history surface: between anthropological method and its politicization, and between the international scientific ethos and nationalist impulses. By adopting a practical-epistemic perspective, the article also destabilizes the conventional differentiation between the German liberal and anti-humanist anthropological traditions. Finally, the article suggests that there is a certain historical irony in the fact that the liberal Martin was central in the process that endowed physical anthropology with prestige precisely in the period when major parts of German society increasingly came to view 'race' as offering powerful, scientific answers to social and political questions. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]
...MoreSimilar Citations
Article
Morris-Reich, Amos;
(2013)
Anthropology, Standardization and Measurement: Rudolf Martin and Anthropometric Photography
(/isis/citation/CBB001213509/)
Article
Efram Sera-Shriar;
(2021)
Constructing the “Jewish Type”: Anthropometric Measurement, Composite Photography, and Anthropology in the Late Victorian Age
(/isis/citation/CBB754748521/)
Article
Andrew D. Evans;
(2020)
“Most Unusual” Beauty Contests: Nordic Photographic Competitions and the Construction of a Public for German Race Science, 1926–1935
(/isis/citation/CBB538668723/)
Article
Kröner, Hans-Peter;
(1999)
Von der Vaterschaftsbestimmung zum Rassegutachten: Der erbbiologische Ahnlichkeitsvergleich als “österreichisch-deutsches Projekt” 1926-1945
(/isis/citation/CBB000111948/)
Article
Iris Clever;
(2022)
Miriam Tildesley and the Anthropological Politics of Standardizing Racial Measurements
(/isis/citation/CBB730027228/)
Book
Schröder, Wilfried;
(2002)
Ich reiste wie ein Buschmann: zum Leben und Wirken des Australienforschers Erhard Eylmann
(/isis/citation/CBB000470233/)
Thesis
Juzda, E;
(cited 2011)
The Rise and Fall of British Craniometry, 1860--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001567345/)
Chapter
Blanckaert, Claude;
(2001)
La crise de l'anthropométrie: des arts anthropotechniques aux dérives militantes (1860-1920)
(/isis/citation/CBB000102786/)
Article
Sera-Shriar, Efram;
(2015)
Anthropometric Portraiture and Victorian Anthropology: Situating Francis Galton's Photographic Work in the Late 1870s
(/isis/citation/CBB001553619/)
Article
Ballestero, Diego A.;
(2011)
Los “fueguinos”, Robert Lehmann-Nitsche y el estudio de los onas en la Exposición Nacional de Buenos Aires (1898)
(/isis/citation/CBB001420539/)
Article
Morris-Reich, Amos;
(2006)
Race, Ideas, and Ideals: A Comparison of Franz Boas and Hans F. K. Gunther
(/isis/citation/CBB000760667/)
Article
Evans, Andrew D.;
(2008)
Race Made Visible: The Transformation of Museum Exhibits in Early-Twentieth-Century German Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB001035136/)
Book
Baker, Lee D.;
(2010)
Anthropology and the Racial Politics of Culture
(/isis/citation/CBB001035564/)
Book
Reynaud Paligot, Carole;
(2006)
La république raciale: paradigme racial et idéologie républicaine, 1860--1930
(/isis/citation/CBB000772831/)
Chapter
Degni, Silvia;
(2009)
La psicologia applicata nell'opera di G. Sergi. La “carta biografica” nella scuola: tra misurazioni antropometriche e misurazioni psicologiche
(/isis/citation/CBB001221015/)
Article
Farland, Maria;
(2006)
W. E. B. DuBois, Anthropometric Science, and the Limits of Racial Uplift
(/isis/citation/CBB001030907/)
Book
Rosemary Lévy Zumwalt;
(2019)
Franz Boas: The Emergence of the Anthropologist
(/isis/citation/CBB468285066/)
Chapter
Evans, Andrew D.;
(2003)
Anthropology at War: Racial Studies of POWs during World War I
(/isis/citation/CBB000501093/)
Thesis
Evans, Andrew David;
(2002)
Anthropology at War: World War I and the Science of Race in Germany
(/isis/citation/CBB001562495/)
Article
James J. Harris;
(2020)
The “Tribal Spirit” in Modern Britain: Evolution, Nationality, and Race in the Anthropology of Sir Arthur Keith
(/isis/citation/CBB950685485/)
Be the first to comment!