Histories of Anthropology: Interactions Between Centers and Peripheries in the Making of Anthropological Discourses

This edited volume presents, for the first time, a history of anthropology regarding not only the well-known European and American traditions, but also lesser known traditions, extending its scope beyond the Western world. It focuses on the results of these traditions in the present. Taking into account the distinction between empire-building and nation-building anthropology, introduced by G. Stocking and taken up by U. Hannerz, the book investigates different histories of anthropology, especially in ex-colonial and marginal contexts. It highlights how the hegemonic anthropologies have been accepted and assimilated in local contexts, which approaches have been privileged by institutions and academies in different locations, how the anthropological approach has been modelled and adapted according to specific knowledge requirements related to the cultural features of different areas, and which schools emerge as the most consolidated today. Each chapter presents a "cultural history" of one of the historical-cultural and geo-political contexts that influenced and produced the specific disciplinary traditions. The chapters highlight the local contributions to the discipline, the influences that the world centres have on the peripheries, but also the ways in which the peripheries have "learned from the centres" in order to re-elaborate meaningful or otherwise recognisable disciplinary lines.

Table of Contents:
Chapter 1. Introduction: For a History of Anthropology in the Plural.- Chapter 2. People and Ideas from Elsewhere: Notes on Social Anthropology in the UK.- Chapter 3. French Anthropology, Ethnology of France and the Contemporary Turn.- Chapter 4. From Herder to Strecker: Birth and Developments of the Anthropological Notion of Culture in Germany.- Chapter 5. Cultural Anthropology in Italy in the Twentieth Century.- Chapter 6. Chronology of a Discipline: Social and Cultural Anthropology in Spain.- Chapter 7. From the Regime Ethnologists to the Democratic Generation: Histories of Portuguese Anthropology.- Chapter 8. Anthropology in Russia: From Nineteenth-Century Ethnography to the New Post-Soviet Anthropology.- Chapter 9. Indigenous Ethnologists, National Anthropologists, Post-colonial Intellectuals: The Trajectory of Anthropology in French- Speaking West and Equatorial Africa.- Chapter 10. 10 A Nerve Centre of the Discipline on the Periphery of the Empire: South Africa and Anthropology in the Twentieth Century Stefano Allovio.- Chapter 11. American Anthropology: Some Distinctive Features.- Chapter 12. From Hegemony to Fragmentation: North American Cultural Anthropology Over the Past Fifty Years.- Chapter 13. Trajectories and Subjects of Brazilian Anthropology.- Chapter 14. From the Study of Indigenous Cultures to the Critics of Modernity: On Anthropologym ade in Colombia.- Chapter 15. History of Anthropology in Mexico: From Nation Building to the Recognition of Diversity.- Chapter 16. Social Anthropology in India: Studying the Self in the Other.- Chapter 17. The Diverse Accounts of Anthropology in Viet Nam.- Chapter 18. Australian Anthropology in Its Colonial Context.- Chapter. 19 Five Paths for a History of the Pacific Islands.- Chapter 20. Chinese Perspectives on Anthropology and Ethnology.- Chapter 21. The Birth and Development of Anthropology in Arab Countries: A still Controversial and Marginalised Knowledge?.

About the Author :
Gabriella D'Agostino is Full Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Palermo University, Department of Cultures and Societies, Italy. She is author of the book Sous le traces. Anthropologie et contemporanéité (Éditions Pétra 2018), and Editor-in-Chief of the journal Archivio Antropologico Mediterraneo. Vincenzo Matera is Full Professor of Cultural Anthropology at the University of Milan, Department of Languages, Literatures, Cultures and Mediations, Italy. He is also a professor at USI (Università della Svizzera Italiana). He is co-editor of Ethnography: A Theoretically Oriented Practice (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).