Anthropology and Eugenics in the Interwar Period

Anthropology and Eugenics
in the Interwar Period

kwakuitl.gif (30434 bytes)

Photo, c. 1918. Kwakuitl Bear dance, from the movie "In the Land of the Headhunters"

Lecture Outline#18:

1. THE ASSAULT ON EUROPEAN CULTURE: ANTHROPOLOGY IN THE 1920S

A. The decline of the armchair [evolutionist] anthropologist
B. Functionalism and the fieldworker
C. Functionalist Fieldwork and the New Primitivism

2. SHORING UP SUPREMACY: EUGENICS IN THE INTERWAR PERIOD

A. Politics and eugenics in the 1920s
B. The decline and fall of eugenics: from race to population studies

KEYWORDS Franz Boas functionalism Bronislaw Malinowski Margaret Mead Galton eugenics biometry	SITES OF INTEREST Ruth Benedict Margaret Mead The Indian groups of the NW Coast. A history of the NW Coast Anthropologists Madison Grant and the Racialist Movement The Eugenics Movement in the U.S. Galton