Introduction: German Tradition in Latin American Anthropology (original) (raw)
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Revista de Antropologia, 2019
The German ethnologist Theodor Koch-Grünberg (1872-1924) became one of the world’s leading Americanists of his era after having successfully concluded two expeditions to Amazonia. Between 1903 and 1905 he studied indigenous peoples inhabiting the regions of the rivers Rio Negro, Vaupés, and Japurá in northwestern Brazil; between 1911 and 1913 he traveled through northern Brazil and Venezuela investigating local Amerindian communities. He contacted dozens of indigenous peoples, studied their mythology, material culture, and languages. Koch-Grünberg maintained a scientific correspondence with some of the best-informed anthropologists of his time, including Adolf Bastian, Franz Boas, Arnold van Gennep and Paul Rivet. He also exchanged letters with Brazilian colleagues such as João Capistrano de Abreu (1853-1927), Teodoro Sampaio (1855-1937), and Affonso d’Escragnolle Taunay (1876-1958). Through an analysis of primary sources – the correspondence held at the Theodor Koch-Grünberg Archive of the Philipps-Universität Marburg in Germany – this article aims at contributing both to the history of Brazilian social thought and the history of German ethnology by contextualizing these relations within the broader context of social exchanges. Therefore, the history of anthropology should be written in the same way as Koch-Grünberg imagined ethnology: as an international science, based on humanistic principles and grounded on social relations.
The reception of Early German Romanticism in Brazil
2022
This article examines the reception of Early German Romanticism in Brazil. It proposes that it was not simply a case of transposing cultural ideas between Germany and Brazil, but rather a complex and longstanding process of mutual appropriations between the two nations.1 One of the greatest challenges in the ��eld of comparative studies is to determine with a degree of precision how literary, aesthetic, scienti��c and philosophical concepts transit between countries, time periods, cultures, and people. In terms of the circulation of ideas and cultural objects from one country to another, another very important issue is that, as José Luis Jobim suggests, concepts, ideas, and images change completely when they move between places and times. Consequently, a cultural object's meanings »are not the same as those that it will have in the other place that ›imported‹ it. Therefore, attributing a ›universal‹ character to a work may hide the particular, speci��c reasons why it was well or poorly received, in di�ferent places«.2 In the case of the cultural interplay between Brazil and Germany, this is particularly evident, since these countries have a long and rich history of cultural exchanges dating back to the 16th century. This approximation began with the publication of True story. An account of cannibal captivity in Brazil (1557) by the German soldier and explorer Hans Staden (1525-1576), who was captured and almost devoured by cannibalistic indigenous people who inhabited the Brazilian coastline.3 Throughout Brazil's entire colonial past and until the 19th century, many travelers, adventurers, researchers, scientists, artists, and artisans risked 1 I would like to thank Professor Lisa Shaw, from the University of Liverpool, for proofreading the English text. 2 José Luis Jobim: »Literary and Cultural Circulation as a Challenge for Comparative Literature.« In: Revista Brasileira de Literatura Comparada 32 (2017), p. 74-78. 3 Historical documents and Hans Staden's own narrative, published in the century in which he lived, attest not only the cannibalistic ceremonies of the Tupinambas, but also the events cited by the German adventurer.
Latin American Antiquity, 2020
In this article, I take a close look at the objects collected over the last 200 years from the indigenous people of the Upper Rio Negro, northwest of the Brazilian Amazon, that were part of the ethnographic collection of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro. Examination of these objects allows us to explore the main characteristics of the ethnographic archive of the museum, as the Upper Rio Negro collections were connected to different topics associated with indigenous societies and histories in Brazil, including enslavement, forced displacement, religious conversion, and indigenous territorial, artifactual, and cultural knowledge. This article also highlights the professional commitment of Brazilian anthropology to amplifying indigenous voices over the course of the history of the discipline, and by doing so, it pays homage to the women and men whose work built the National Museum collections. Este trabajo discute las principales características de las colecciones etnográficas del Museo Nacional de Río de Janeiro a través de los objetos recuperados durante los últimos 200 años entre los indígenas del Alto Río Negro (URN), quienes habitan en el noroeste de la Amazonia brasileña. Como un ejemplo que permite abordar las principales características del acervo etnográfico del Museo, estas colecciones están vinculadas a diferentes temas que abordan las historias y las sociedades indígenas de Brasil tales como la esclavitud, el desplazamiento forzado, la conversión religiosa y el conocimiento ecológico nativo. Durante la presentación de estos temas, el texto destaca el compromiso profesional de la Antropología Brasileña con la diseminación de las voces indígenas a lo largo de su historia. Al hacerlo, rindo homenaje a las mujeres y hombres cuyo trabajo ha constituido el Museo Nacional.
Karl von den Steinen’s Ethnographic Research among Indigenous Peoples in Brazil, 1884-1888
Revista De Antropologia, 62(1), 97-113., 2019
This article analyses and contextualizes the life and work of the German ethnologist Karl von den Steinen (1855-1929), who conducted ethnographic research in Brazil in 1884 and 1887-88. With a solid education in sciences and the humanities, von den Steinen, a physician and psychiatrist, set out to study social institutions, material and spiritual culture among “stone age” tribal societies along the Amazon. Arriving in Brazil in 1884 he studied the Upper Xingu and the Bororo Indians in the Mato Grosso province. In the Upper Xingu area he obtained a rich ethnographic collection and gathered detailed ethnographic data that continue to be useful for modern-day anthropologists. From a theoretical point of view, von den Steinen endorsed the theory of multilineal development proposed by his mentor Adolf Bastian (1826-1905). Despite many difficulties during his stay among the Bororo Indians, he was able to acquire valuable data to be used by those interested in Bororo social institutions and ceremonial life.
Journal of Contemporary History, 2009
This article analyses the Weimar Republic's cultural relations with Latin America. Based on diplomatic correspondence and the writings of Latin American intellectuals who visited Weimar Germany, the article combines an exploration of the goals and methods of Germany's official foreign cultural policy towards the region with a brief examination of the varied ways in which the supposed recipients of these policies approached German culture. The key argument is that the limited capacities of official cultural policy created space for a large number of actors who pursued divergent interests when appropriating or trying to spread German ideas in Latin America.