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Melville J.

Herskovits
Kevin
University of South Florida

and

the

Institutionalization
A.

of

Afro-American

Studies
Yelvington

Abstract

It is now clear that in the history and philosophy of science we can no longer abide by the purely
internalistic and idealistic approaches that focus exclusively on ideas as scientific paradigms.
At the same time, a resort to an externalism prioritizing social context runs the risk of
reductionism. By contrast, an approach to social scientific institutions pays epistemological and
practical dividends. The advantages of such a position are as follows. Institutions can be
conceived of as a point of dialectical contradictions and mediations. Here we can maintain a
concern with multi-level causative mechanisms to explain the shape and nature of the
institutions themselves, at the same time as conceiving of particular products such as social
scientific treatises, programmatic, and descriptive works as having a history and reality of their
own. However, social scientific ideas do not, therefore, have to be seen as merely the outcome
or consequences of conceptual systems within science. Thus, we may maintain a concern with
explanation along with a perspective likely to be consonant with anthropology where the actors
concerns with institution-building, organization, and disciplinary boundary-maintenance are put
in the foreground and become part of the explanation for the outcomes defined as social
science. In this paper, I look at the experience of the North American anthropologist Melville J.
Herskovits (1895-1963) and his attempts to construct Afro-American studies as a subdiscipline
within anthropology (and beyond). I begin by discussing Herskovits early involvement with the
physical anthropology of race in the United States, funded by the National Research Council in
the 1920s, as well as his unsuccessful attempts to secure funding for a large research project
on the New World Negro at this time. I show how Herskovits was marginalized from the
Carnegie Corporations Negro in America study. I then move to his directorship of the
Committee on Negro Studies at the American Council of Learned Societies in the 1940s, his
role in the short-lived Institute of Afroamerican Studies in Mexico, and the successful
establishment of the Program of African Studies at Northwestern University in 1948. While he
had a long involvement with Brazilian anthropologists and did fieldwork in Brazil in 1941-42,
Herskovits was not directly involved as an investigator with the UNESCO project in Brazil.
Nevertheless, he exerted a considerable influence in terms of his anthropological perspective
and his recommendations regarding research staff. A question remains, though: Why was
Herskovits not more directly involved with the project?

Introduction
It was of course Foucaults point that intellectual production is not the result of the struggles of
the heroic individual scientist or the result of the unchanging Cartesian ego, but, rather, like all
else, intellectual production is the result of collective social life. What makes intellectual
production possible is not so much the talent and originality of individual intellectuals but the
ability to follow rules so sedimented that they have become unconscious and taken for granted
by those who are initiated, are authorized, and are practicing under their purview. Pointing out
these rules for Foucault was the crucial first step in exposing the ideological edifice of
intellectual production, and investigating the rules for these rules, and then showing how these

rules became, in the longue dure, an epistemological force and power of their own that could
dictate various systems of knowledge and perspective was the central focus of Foucaults
entire oeuvre. Here, attitudes and discourses become institutions that come to embody and
constitute knowledge and discipline. Power is intimately involved in the production of knowledge
within these institutions, and in the resistance to institutionalized ways of seeing that come to
reward that considered acceptable and normal and to punish that considered abnormal and
stigmatized. Yet, one cannot help to feel that ultimately Foucault engages in a kind of
projectionism, where ideas are projected onto institutions which are in turn seen as the result
of ideas, where these institutions embody discourses of science, the normal, the sane, the
immoral, the insane, and so forth. This perspective is consonant with that of constructivism in
the philosophy, sociology, and history of science. Constructivism is the thesis that all of
science is constructed by social actors and that social science must be viewed as a realitycreating force. This is somewhat stronger than social constructionism, where social actors are
seen to construct their world using cognitive structures. Constructivism holds that not only the
form but the content of science is socially constructed. This is associated with, for example, the
[1]
[2]
work of Bruno Latour and Karin Knorr-Cetina. The focus is upon the internal practices of
science, on the conflicts, negotiations, and resolutions between scientists that lead to
conceptual orders, facts, and knowledge. Constructivism entails a projectionism in that science
is seen as being the result of the agency of actors in scientific fields. Receiving less attention in
this schema are the underlying structures and causal mechanisms that determine the shape
and functioning of scientific institutions such as universities and research institutes, scientific
associations, funding organizations, and the like. I am not saying that constructivists are
complete idealists about society. But they do tend to see reality as existing in science only in
ways defined by science. For them, there are real effects, but not necessarily a reality to
causes. Causes for the constructivists are defined by the conceptual systems within a particular
science.
It is now clear that in the history and philosophy of science we can no longer abide by
the purely internalistic and idealistic approaches that focus exclusively on ideas as scientific
paradigms. At the same time, a resort to an externalism prioritizing social context runs the risk
of reductionism. Further, staking out a choice between internalism and externalism is, as
[3]
Bourdieu among others has argued, is itself no longer tenable. Bourdieu suggests that we
look at the structure of the distribution of capital held by protagonists in competition with each
other in a particular scientific field, struggles that are both social and symbolic. This
perspective has much potential because an emphasis on the acquisition of cultural, social, and
symbolic capital encompasses the scarce resources of prestige, funding, positions, training and
initiating new members of the guild, and so forth, as well as the control over the representations
of what science is. This has the virtue of showing the kinds of resource competition endemic to
the so-called scientific community. However, Bourdieu does not specify how the scientific field
is linked, and by what mediations, to the social totality. For this we need a dialectical theory.
And Bourdieu, in his emphasis on the search for the autonomy of intellectual practice
autonomy from political considerations and compromises does not indicate the role of
ideology in the representation of scientific practice. Here, by ideology I mean a collection of
evaluative representations evaluative of the practices of ensuring interests that are a
medium through which struggles for power and legitimacy are conducted, both within scientific
fields and between scientific fields and other parts to the social totality.
By contrast, an approach that focuses to social scientific institutions pays
epistemological and practical dividends. The advantages of such a position are as follows.
Institutions can be conceived of as a point of dialectical contradictions and mediations
dialectical because institutions are the site of the unity of diverse phenomena and mediations
because they act as linkages in various ways to determinate structures. Here we can maintain a
concern with multi-level causative mechanisms to explain the shape and nature of the
institutions themselves, at the same time as conceiving of particular products such as training
and initiation programs such as degrees and titles, as well as social scientific treatises,
programmatic, and descriptive works, as having a history and reality of their own. Social
scientific ideas do not, therefore, have to be seen as merely the outcome or consequences of
conceptual systems within science. Thus, we may maintain a concern with explanation along
with a perspective likely to be consonant with anthropology where the actors concerns with
institution-building, organization, and disciplinary boundary-maintenance, and the authorization

of knowledge are put in the foreground and become part of the explanation for the outcomes
defined as social science. In this paper, I look at the experience of the North American
anthropologist Melville J. Herskovits (1895-1963) and his attempts to construct Afro-American
studies as a subdiscipline within anthropology and as an inter-disciplinary and multinational and
transnational scientific endeavor in order to provide the context of the UNESCO project in
Brazil, and to understand his role in that project.

Herskovits and Institution-Building


Herskovits, born in Ohio to Jewish European immigrants to the United States, considered
becoming a rabbi before volunteering for the U.S. Army medical corps in World War I. Returning
from the war in France, he enrolled in the University of Chicago for a degree in history and then
went to New York where he became a student of Elsie Clews Parsons (1875-1941), Alexander
Goldenweiser (1880-1940), and Thorsten Veblen (1857-1929) at the New School for Social
Research, and of Franz Boas (1858-1942) at Columbia University, where he did his Ph.D. under
[4]
Boas with a library dissertation on the culture areas of Africa. In 1923, Boas succeeded in
having him named to a three-year fellowship to the Board of Biological Sciences of the National
Research Council (NRC) itself formed in 1916 ostensibly for research in the war effort but in
the context of anti-immigrant and anti-labor politics. Up until the early 1920s the NRC had been
the site of struggles within anthropology between scientists, including eugenicists, and the
Boasians (along with fellowships for Herskovits there were those for Margaret Mead (19011978) for her work on Samoan adolescence and psychologist Otto Kleinberg (1899-1992) for
[5]
his work on the question of race and intellectual differences). These developments served to
further the Boasian program. In the case of Herskovits, the research problem was directly
related to Boass earlier work on the plasticity of physical features in the presence of
acculturative forces in the US context. It has been argued that Boass anthropological
perspective on race was paradoxical, especially as it related to supposed racial differences
between whites and African Americans, but his views were mitigated by his liberal
humanitarianism. Boas criticized the racial typology of his day, but operated as if races existed
[6]
and could be distinguished even if their distinguishing features overlapped. Herskovits was to
inherit much of this tendency. The NRC fellowship enabled Herskovits to engage in a physical
anthropological research project on the effects of race-crossing on the bodily form of African
Americans. Herskovitss research was conducted in three places: in Harlem, where his field
assistants were Zora Neale Hurston (1903-1960) and Louis E. King (1898-1981), who also took
measurements for Herskovits in rural West Virginia, and at Howard University, where he also
taught during 1925, engaging in intellectual exchanges with philosopher Alain Locke (18861954), biologist Ernest E. Just (1883-1941), sociologist E. Franklin Frazier (1894-1962), and
economist Abram L. Harris (1899-1963) who assisted him in measuring Howard students. In his
[7]
two books and many articles arising from this research, he argued that the American Negro
was a racially-mixed amalgam that was distinctive among human beings,in the process of
forming their own definite physical type, a homogeneous population of low variability that,
because of North American racism, was becoming more Negroid. Thus, he argued as Boas
had done before him that it was ultimately American cultural forces that affected race. Boas, in
fact, made an argument much like thebranquearimiento arguments of Latin American
[8]
nationalism. He advocated race-mixing, and compared the plight of African Americans to
that of Jews: it would seem that man being what he is, the negro problem will not disappear in
America until the negro blood has been so much diluted that it will no longer be recognized just
as anti-Semitism will not disappear until the last vestige of the Jew as a Jew has
[9]
disappeared. At the same time, Herskovits used culture to dispel popular racist
misconceptions and to counter the nativism of the 1920s in a number of articles in the popular
press, but he did so as a liberal and certainly not as a radical.
Herskovits started as an assistant professor in the Department of Sociology at
Northwestern University in 1927. He sought funding from a number of funding sources for an
ambitious study of what he came to call the New World Negro, combining fieldwork in various
locations in the America and in Africa. These grants were turned down, so he relied on the
patronage of Parsons for grants for fieldwork in Suriname (1928 and 1929) and in Dahomey
(1931), and small foundation grants for summer fieldwork in Haiti (1934) and Trinidad (1939).

He received a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation for a years fieldwork in Brazil (1941-42).
After early writings on Harlem that emphasized the assimilation of African Americans to
mainstream US culture, he subsequently sought to document African cultural survivals in
[10]
several programmatic statements. This dramatic shift in focus was the result, as I argue
elsewhere, of the influences of Parsons and of interlocutors such as Jean Price-Mars (18761969) in Haiti, Fernando Ortiz (1881-1969) in Cuba, Arthur Ramos (1903-1949) in Brazil, and
[11]
Gonzalo Aguirre Beltrn (1908-1996) in Mexico. But his activities did not only consist in
writing, but, rather, no less the attempt to organize and define a subdiscipline within
anthropology by subdiscipline I mean the definite development of a specialization within an
academic discipline, with specialized knowledge and training being specified, with core texts
being identified, authorized histories being written, and bodies of specialists being identified, all
[12]
of which implies boundary maintenance and, what is more, a whole interdisciplinary
research effort under the rubric the New World Negro. In the 1920s and 1930s, he wrote a
number of unsuccessful grant applications to fund large fieldwork projects and program
development. In 1938, he founded the anthropology department at Northwestern, becoming its
chair and recruiting graduate students who worked on the Afro-Americas and in Africa.
In 1936, Herskovits applied for a large grant for funding a substantial research project on
Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States, to Frederick P. Keppel (1875-1943), president of
the Carnegie Corporation. Herskovits did not know that Keppel at this time was in the midst of
trying to choose someone to head a major study of the American Negro. Herskovits was
considered to direct the study, but then rejected when Keppel heard that he was hard to work
with. Keppel wanted a foreign researcher in the mold of an Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859),
and he asked Herskovits for suggestions. Herskovits said it was important that if a foreign
scholar be appointed to direct the project, it was important for that foreign scholar to be from a
country without a history of colonialism, and he suggested his friend the Swiss anthropologist
Alfred Mtraux (1902-1963). Herskovits conspired with his friend, sociologist Donald Young
(1898-1977), to become part of the project and direct a team of social scientists from the United
States; they also advocated the inclusion of African Americans on the research team such as
[13]
Abram Harris. Eventually Keppel decided that someone like Mtraux wrote for a specialized
academic audience while what was needed was someone familiar with policy implementation.
And so it was Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal (1898-1987) who was named to direct the
[14]
project that resulted in the classic book An American Dilemma (1944). Herskovits was angry
that he was not named to head the study. As his former student Alvin W. Wolfe (b. 1928)
recalled, Herskovits felt Myrdal was appointed on the principle that ignorance is equivalent to
[15]
objectivity. Ultimately, Myrdal did not care for Herskovitss approach to African cultural
survivals, and Herskovits himself disapproved of a policy orientation to scholarship. Myrdal
hired 31 researchers to write memoranda, including Frazier, who went on to do fieldwork in
Brazil, and Ruth Landes (1908-1991) who had just returned. A number of African-American
scholars were included. Myrdal decided to include Herskovits for reasons of academic politics.
Herskovitss memorandum turned out to be his classic work, The Myth of the Negro
[16]
Past (1941), completed in under one year with the significant assistance of his wife and
collaborator Frances S. Herskovits (1897-1972).
While basically excluded from the Carnegie project, Herskovits was approached by
Waldo G. Leland (1879-1966), the secretary of the American Council of Learned Societies
(ACLS), to establish a conference on Negro Studies. This was in order to counter the Social
Science Research Council (SSRC) which had been advising the Carnegie Corporation on the
Myrdal Negro project. The idea for the conference, which was held at Howard University in
1940, and the formation of the ACLSs Committee on Negro Studies, was to promote the
[17]
ACLSs view of the humanities. Herskovits was named the chair of a committee of eight
scholars, including Young, Klineberg, historian Richard Pattee of the US State Department, the
[18]
friend of Ramos and translator of Ramoss O negro brasileiro, and friend of Ortiz and PriceMars. Only three committee members were black, including linguist Lorenzo Dow Turner (18951972), who did fieldwork in Brazil in the 1940s. Most of these scholars theoretical views
accorded with those of Herskovits. When Herskovits tried to expand his empire by trying to
create a joint committee on African and Negro studies with the ACLS, the SSRC, and the NRC,
the attempt failed when the SSRC refused to join, and therefore the ACLS limited the
committees purview to the history, literature, and culture of black people in the Americas.
During the decade the committee was in existence, during which it added and lost some

members, some of the black members pushed for a more activist approach to research and to
organize a conference on discrimination against black scholars. When this happened,
Herskovits and the committee disbanded in 1950. This was somewhat ironic, given Herskovitss
views of applying anthropology. He held a dim view of applied anthropology when it was
undertaken on behalf of an organization or group. This he felt would challenge the
[19]
anthropologists scientific objectivity. But the whole point of his The Myth of the Negro
Pastwas to provide documentation to that would provide blacks with pride in their past and
inform whites of this past which will influence opinion in general concerning Negro abilities and
[20]
potentialities, and thus contribute to a lessening of interracial tensions.
During the 1940s, Herskovits was involved with Pattee, Ortiz, and others to establish
the short-lived Institute of Afroamerican Studies in Mexico City and the journal Afroamrica of
which only two issues appeared. He became president of the American Folklore Society (1945)
and the editor of the Journal of American Folklore. From 1948-1952, he was the editor of
theAmerican Anthropologist. He was the chair of the NRCs Committee on International
Cooperation in Anthropology (1945-1946) and in 1950 edited the International Directory of
[21]
Anthropologists. He was the president of the African Studies Association in 1958. That he
was never the president of the American Anthropological Association might point to the effects
[22]
of anti-Semitism in the academy. During World War II, Herskovits advised the US State
Department on Africa, and later ran a training course for diplomats. In 1948 he established the
Program of African Studies (PAS) at Northwestern University with a grant from Carnegie and
where a number of grants from foundations such as the SSRC, Carnegie, Rockefeller, and the
Fulbright program enabled him to send graduate students to West Africa. This did not take away
his attention from the New World Negro; he saw African research as key to the studies of the
[23]
[24]
Afro-Americas, and he contributed a defining overview of the field in 1951.
Throughout this time, Herskovits patrolled the boundaries of New World Negro studies,
assisting those who shared his culturalist theoretical perspective. He sent students to Ortiz,
Ramos, Price-Mars, and others and put each in touch with the other. He formed a circle
[25]
between those he considered trained and those he considered amateurs. By contrast, he
undercut those who did not share his views or who were seen to be encroaching on his
fieldwork territory. For example, W.E.B. Du Bois (1868-1963) had proposed to edit
anEncyclopedia of the Negro starting back in 1931, but Herskovits, worried that activists would
be involved and thus be less than scientific, engaged in a letter-writing campaign behind the
scenes to undermine the project even though he was on good personal terms with Du Bois and
[26]
Herskovits had used his personal library when researching his Ph.D dissertation. King, his
assistant in his NRC study, applied for a position under Du Bois at Atlanta University but
[27]
Herskovits wrote a very letter critical of Kings abilities, effectively ending any chance for an
[28]
academic career for King. And Herskovits was initially supportive of Katherine Dunham
(1909-) and her fieldwork in the Caribbean, but was not once she became an initiate in the
[29]
Vodou religion; he was not encouraging of Hurston in her studies of Jamaica and Haiti. These
were all African-Amercans and this raises the question of whether Herskovits felt that black
[30]
scholars could be objective enough to do anthropology in the Afro-Americas. But not only
blacks were excluded. With Ramos, Herskovits worked to exclude Landes and her competing
[31]
perspectives. Ramos was asked to review her memo for the Myrdal project and did so in
[32]
[33]
extremely critical terms. Herskovits was equally dismissive. While this might be interpreted
[34]
in more personal terms, as did Landes herself, what was really at stake in all of this was the
creation and defense of a particular scholarly preserve, the closing of ranks, and the struggle
over meaning. In short, the imposition of orthodoxy.

Herskovits, Brazilian Anthropologists, and the Anthropology of Brazil


In many ways, Herskovitss introduction to the anthropology of Brazil came via his friend
Rdiger Bilden, the student of Boas and the associate of Gilberto Freyre (1900-1987). Bilden
had written about Brazil being a laboratory of civilization and had endorsed the nationalist
[35]
ideology of democracia racial. And when Donald Pierson (1900-1995) was a graduate
student at the University of Chicago, he was the president of the sociology club and in 1933 he

asked Herskovits to give a talk at the university. Pierson then called on Herskovits for advice on
studying the Negro in Brazil, saying he had become interested in the apparent absence of
[36]
prejudice in Portuguese-Negro relations in Brazil and later Pierson provided Herskovits with
translations of the chapter summaries of Raymundo Nina Rodriguess (1862-1906) Os africanos
[37]
no Brasil (1932). Freyre invited Herskovits to contribute to the first Afro-Brazilian congress in
[38]
1934, and he sent two contributions of already-published material but did not attend. It was
[39]
Freyre who suggested to Ramos that Ramos contact Herskovits. They exchanged letters and
publications, and there were mutual influences in each others work, especially vis--vis the
[40]
concept acculturation. In 1937, Herskovits sent an already-published contribution to the
[41]
second Afro-Brazilian congress where he utilized some of Ramoss work. Herskovitss
assisted Ramos to obtain a grant to travel to the United States and lecture at Louisiana State
University, and they finally met when Ramos came to Northwestern University to give a joint talk
[42]
with Herskovits on The Race Problem in Brazil and the United States. Herskovits conducted
[43]
fieldwork in Bahia in 1941-1942, receiving offers of assistance by Pierson and Charles
[44]
Wagley (1913-1991) before his trip. His work in Bahia was central for his debate with Frazier
[45]
over the role of Africanisms in the Afro-American family. He made a number of
anthropological connections at various conferences and he trained three Brazilian
anthropologists at Northwestern: Octavio da Costa Eduardo did his masters in 1943 and Ph.D.
in 1945, Ren Ribeiro (1914-1990) his masters in 1949, and Ruy Galvo de Andrade Coelho
[46]
earned his Ph.D in 1955.

Herskovits and the UNESCO Project in Brazil


In studies of the UNESCO project in Brazil, the focus is not directly upon Herskovits perhaps
[47]
because he was not officially part of the project. But he did influence the course of the
investigations directly and indirectly. Herskovits was consulted often by those within and
associated with the UNESCO bureaucracy. In 1947, for instance, he was asked to contribute
[48]
the draft of the UNESCO statement on the Rights of Man. He was also asked to consult on
the staff for a project on education in the Marbial Valley, Haiti. Herskovits suggested scholars
[49]
who might work on the project that was eventually directed by Mtraux and included his wife
[50]
Rhoda Bubendey Mtraux (1914-) and others. Herskovits was consulted on the
establishment of the Hylean Amazon Institute in Brazil that would launch investigations in a
number of fields, from ecological conditions to the educational needs of the indigenous
populations; Herskovits suggested that ethnological surveys of indigenous groups be extended
[51]
to include groups of blacks and their relations with whites in the area. Herskovits was asked
to provide suggestions for an anthropologist on the project and he suggested Ralph Beals
(1901-1985) and Octavio Eduardo as an alternative possibility when Beals could not accept the
[52]
[53]
post. Herskovits was also consulted on UNESCOs famed Statement on Race. However,
as editor of American Anthropologist he did not publish a discussion of the statement, as did the
[54]
British journal Man.
For the UNESCO project in Brazil, Herskovits was consulted by a number of staff
members. Kleinberg asked for his advice on statements made by Brazilian and other
[55]
anthropologists on race. Ramos, now head of UNESCOs Department of Social Sciences,
told Herskovits in 1949 about the formation of the race committee he was establishing, but did
not name those he chose for the committee. At the same time he told Herskovits he wanted to
start a permanent division devoted to the study of the backward people of our world to whom
the benefits of Unesco are not yet extended and that he also wanted to start a program in
African studies, involving a collaboration between Northwestern University and the Muse de
lHomme in Paris. Herskovits was pleased, and sought through Ramos to obtain UNESCO
[56]
funding for the PAS. He also proposed that the ACLS Negro committee could be used to put
[57]
together a program of research projects on the Afro-Americas.
Ramos died in October, 1949, and by April, 1950, Mtraux was the head of a newlycreated Division for the Study of Race Problems within UNESCO. Mtraux advocated for
anthropology to have a key part in UNESCO projects, and Herskovits published his short report
[58]
on the role of anthropology in the American Anthropologist. Ramos had not chosen

Herskovits as part of his research team for the study of race, and Mtraux also chose not to
include Herskovits in the project directly. Herskovitss views were represented by Ribeiro, who
as part of the project did research on the role of religion in racial relations in Recife after Freyre
[59]
had requested his Instituto Joaquim Nabuco be included in the project .
And Herskovits had a
direct influence when he suggested his student Coelho over the African-American
[60]
anthropologist St. Clair Drake (1911-1990), who had been a part of the Myrdal study. Once
the plans for the project had been drawn up, Mtraux said he would be sending Herskovits the
research plan for the Brazilian project, which was written by Klineberg and Coelho, for
Herskovitss comments and criticisms, saying After all, you are the great old man in this
[61]
field.
Perhaps the question should be: Why was Herskovits not more directly involved with the
project? Asking this question avoids a kind of teleology often present in the history of science,
and accords agency to historical actors. Herskovits certainly saw race relations within his area
of theoretical expertise. From 1929 until 1933 reviewed the state of race relations in
[62]
the American Journal of Sociology. And he was sympathetic to the democracia
racial argument, which clearly animated the project from the perspective of Ramos and
[63]
Mtraux. As early as 1925 he compared the Brazilian situation to the color line in the United
[64]
States, writing that there is no race problem in Brazil. And he was certainly on friendly
personal terms with both Ramos and Mtraux. An apparently devoted friend and colleague,
Mtraux reported the difficulties he was having intervening with the publisher Payot in the
[65]
French translation of Herskovitss textbook Man and his Works. He and Claude Lvi-Strauss
(1908-) looked for translators and then reviewed the translations despite mounting pressures at
[66]
work, with Mtraux writing that he had devoted to it every spare hour I had in many
[67]
weeks and that he was sorry he could only devote to your text a few hours at night, most of
[68]
the time in bed.
An evolution in the thinking of both Ramos and Mtraux could be seen. Ramos became
more and more outspoken against racism during the War and advocated an applied social
[69]
science perspective and similarly with Mtraux after his few years with UNESCO. Mtraux
wrote to Herskovits saying he hoped Herskovits would recognize that the Maribal project
represents also a worthwhile contribution to the science which you have
[70]
created. Herskovitss reaction to the Maribal work perhaps demonstrates the emerging
differences between Herskovits and the policy-oriented social science at UNESCO. Mtraux
was responding to Herskovitss 1951 article The Present Status and Needs of Afroamerican
Research when he hoped for acknowledgment of his contribution to Afro-American
anthropology from the one who had been able to define the terms and ways of seeing of the
field who had created the science. Herskovits responded that when the scientific findings
of the study were made available he would be the first to acknowledge their contribution. He
continued: I do think however, as you know, that there is a difference between research that is
carried on for the purpose of correcting a given situation and research that is done for the
[71]
purpose of extending the boundaries of knowledge. Mtraux responded by saying My dear
Melville, In Haiti, during the two years I spent in the Maribal Valley, I felt I wanted to
do scientific work, and I never allowed myself or my collaborators to be influenced by the fact
that the result of our work might find a practical use. I am primarily a scientist, and never shall I
[72]
carry out a survey, only as a basis for a practical programme. Later, Herskovits softened his
stance, saying he looked forward to discussing with Mtraux the matter of practical versus
nonapplied research, stating ironically Certainly I am not one to quarrel over a classification.
And when he received the Maribal book said It is a fine piece of work, and will be a basic point
[73]
of reference in all further studies of the economy of the Haitian peasant.
Finally, in 1951, Alva Myrdal (1902-1986) was appointed head of UNESCOs
Department of Social Science. While on good personal terms with Herskovits the
Herskovitses had offered to take care of the Myrdal children when Gunnar and Alva were to
return to Sweden at the start of World War II it is possible that given her activist role and her
new institutional position this development would not have worked in Herskovitss favor. In any
event, the project had already begun with a line-up of different investigators.

Conclusions: Institutions and Intellectual Practice


I would like to conclude by making three points.
First, I hope that an approach to academic institutions within anthropology is an
approach that recommends itself. Considerations of institutional structures have found their way
into histories of Anglo-North American anthropology. For example, it is now argued that the
establishment of the fieldwork method by Bronislaw Malinowski (1884-1942) as a foundational
methodological strategy owes itself more to Malinowskis entrepreneurial efforts in securing
[74]
funding and his organizational efforts than simply to the power of his ideas.
And when the
interpretations of Navajo religion by Gladys Reichard (1893-1955) contrasted with those of the
Boas student A. L. Kroeber (1876-1960), Kroeber had the institutional resources, the
differences of which are linked, it has been recognized, to gender inequalities, to put his views
into circulation. Kroeber taught at Harvard where there was a recognized anthropology program
and the resources to support extensive projects that trained graduate students and thus
[75]
Kroeber was able to institute his interpretations whereas Reichard was not.
Second, however, the task of understanding scientific institutions requires a number of
different theoretical approaches all at once. For the UNESCO project, we need to understand
the role of international organizations in the context of the Cold War, as Stolcke has
[76]
suggested. And we also have to be able to understand the interaction of local/national
political agendas, such as that of the elites of Bahia and of Brazil and their interest in the
project, with the functioning of academic institutions conceived of as fields of competition and
hierarchy. In the United States, the history of anthropology has been concerned with a
[77]
historicism that professes to be atheoretical. This implies a judgmental relativism. At the
same time, Anglo-North American history of anthropology has also focused primarily on
developments in the United States and in Europe. But clearly, even to understand the
development of North American anthropology, as in the work of Herskovits, we need to
understand his transnational connections in what I have been calling an intellectual social
[78]
formation. The history of anthropology in Brazil is much stronger in this regard, including the
[79]
work of Florestan Fernandes, and, more recently, especially the work of Mariza
[80]
[81]
[82]
Corra, Olvia Maria Gomes da Cunha, Mariza Peirano, and Marcos Chor Maio among
[83]
others writing on anthropology, and Srgio Miceli more generally.
And finally, we should remember that critical reflections on social science, even on
social science such as the UNESCO project, need not preclude a belief in the role for the social
sciences in human emancipation. Indeed, it is the primary standard to which we should apply to
our own intellectual praxis.
Kevin A. Yelvington
Department of Anthropology
University of South Florida
4202 E. Fowler Avenue SOC107
Tampa, FL 33620-8100
EE. UU.
(813) 974-0582 (telefone)
(813) 974-2668 (FAX)
yelvingt@cas.usf.edu (correio eletrnico)

Notes

[1] . E.g., Bruno Latour e Steve Woolgar, Laboratory Life: The Social Construction of Scientific
Facts (Beverly Hills: Sage, 1979), and Bruno Latour, We Have Never Been Modern. Trad.
Catherine Porter (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1993).
[2] . E.g., Karin Knorr-Cetina, The Manufacture of Knowledge: An Essay on the Constructivist
and Contextual Nature of Science (New York: Pergamon Press, 1981), and Epistemic Cultures:
How the Sciences Make Knowledge (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999).
[3] . E.g., Pierre Bourdieu, The Specificity of the Scientific Field and the Social Conditions of
the Progress of Reason, Social Science Information 14(6) (1975), 19-47, and The Peculiar
History of Scientific Reason, Sociological Forum 6(1) (1991), 3-26.
[4] . On the career of Herskovits, see Walter A. Jackson, Melville Herskovits and the Search for
Afro-American Culture, in George W. Stocking, Jr., ed., Malinowski, Rivers, Benedict and
Others: Essays on Culture and Personality (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1986), 95126; Robert Baron, Africa in the Americas: Melville J. Herskovits Folkloristic and
Anthropological Scholarship, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 1994;
Jerry B. Gershenhorn, Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge, unpublished
Ph.D. dissertation, University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill, 2000; and George Eaton
Simpson, Melville J. Herskovits (New York: Columbia University Press, 1973).
[5] . See Elazar Barkan, The Retreat of Scientific Racism: Changing Concepts of Race in Britain
and the United States Between the World Wars (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1992), 111-114; Thomas C. Patterson, A Social History of Anthropology in the United
States (Oxford: Berg, 2001), 55-64; and George W. Stocking, Jr., Race, Culture, and Evolution:
Essays in the History of Anthropology (New York: The Free Press, 1968) 270-307.
[6] . E.g., Vernon J. Williams, Jr., Rethinking Race: Franz Boas and his
Contemporaries(Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996), 1-36.
[7] . Melville J. Herskovits, The American Negro: A Study in Racial Crossing (New York: Alfred
A. Knopf, 1928), and The Anthropometry of the American Negro (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1930).
[8] . For Brazil, see, e.g., Thomas E. Skidmore, Black into White: Race and Nationality in
Brazilian Thought (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993 [1974]).
[9] . Franz Boas, The Problem of the American Negro, Yale Review 10(1) (1921), 395.
[10] . E.g., Melville J. Herskovits, The Negro in the New World: The Statement of a Problem,
American Anthropologist 32(1) (1930), 145-155, On the Provenience of New World
Negroes,Social Forces 12(2) (1933), 247-262, African Gods and Catholic Saints in New World
Negro Belief, American Anthropologist 39(4) (1937), 635-643, Some Next Steps in the Study
of Negro Folklore, Journal of American Folklore 56(219) (1943), 1-7, and The Present Status
and Needs of Afroamerican Research, Journal of Negro History 36(2) (1951), 123-147.
[11] . See Kevin A. Yelvington, The Invention of Africa in Latin America and the Caribbean:
Political Discourse and Anthropological Praxis, 1920-1940, in Kevin A. Yelvington, ed., AfroAtlantic Dialogues: Anthropology in the Diaspora (Santa Fe: School of American Research

Press, forthcoming). Cf. Yelvington, The Anthropology of Afro-Latin America and the
Caribbean: Diasporic Dimensions, Annual Review of Anthropology 30 (2001), 227-260.
[12] . See, e.g., Jane F. Collier, The Waxing and Waning of Subfields in North American
Sociocultural Anthropology, in Akhil Gupta and James Ferguson, eds., Anthropological
Locations: Boundaries and Grounds of a Field Science (Berkeley: University of California Press,
1997), 117-130.
[13] . Walter A. Jackson, Gunnar Myrdal and Americas Conscience: Social Engineering and
Racial Liberalism, 1938-1987 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 26-31.
[14] . Gunnar Myrdal, et al., An American Dilemma (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1944).
[15] . Interview, 10 March 1999.

[16] . Melville J. Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past (New York: Harper & Brothers, 1941).
[17] . Robert L. Harris, Jr., Segregation and Scholarship: The American Council of Learned
Societies Committee on Negro Studies, 1941-1950, Journal of Black Studies 12(3) (1982),
315-331. Cf. Olvia Maria Gomes da Cunha, The Apprentice Tourist Revisited: Travel,
Ethnography, and the Nation in the Writings of Rmulo Lachataer and Arthur Ramos,
forthcoming in Contours.
[18] . Arthur Ramos, O negro brasileiro: ethnographia, religiosa e psychanalyse (Rio de Janeiro:
Civilizao brasileira, 1934). Ramos, The Negro in Brazil. Trans. Richard Pattee (Washington,
DC: The Associated Publishers, 1939).
[19] . E.g., Melville J. Herskovits, Applied Anthropology and the American
Anthropologists,Science 83(2149) (1936), 215-222. Cf. Kevin A. Yelvington, An Interview with
Alvin W. Wolfe,Practicing Anthropology 25(4) (2003), esp. 42-43.
[20] . Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, 32.
[21] . Melville J. Herskovits, org., International Directory of Anthropologists. 3d ed. (Washington,
D.C.: Division of Anthropology and Psychology, National Research Council, 1950).
[22] . Simpson, Melville J. Herskovits, 5.
[23] . E.g., Melville J. Herskovits, The Contribution of Afroamerican Studies to Africanist
Research, American Anthropologist 50(1) (1948), 1-10. Cf. Herskovits, The Significance of
West Africa for Negro Research, Journal of Negro History 21(1) (1936), 15-30.
[24] . Herskovits, The Present Status and Needs of Afroamerican Research.
[25] . Herskovits, The Myth of the Negro Past, 6-7.
[26] . Melville J. Herskovits Papers, Northwestern University, Evanston, IL, USA (HP), Box 7
Encyclopedia of the Negro.

[27] . HP, Box 7 Herskovits-Du Bois 5 June 1935.

[28] . On King, see Ira E. Harrison, Louis Eugene King, the Anthropologist Who Never Was, in
Ira E. Harrison and Faye V. Harrison, eds., African-American Pioneers in Anthropology(Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1999), 70-84.
[29] . See Joyce Aschenbrenner, Katherine Dunham: Dancing a Life (Urbana: University of
Illinois Press, 2002); and e Kate Ramsey, Melville Herskovits, Katherine Dunham, and the
Politics of African Diasporic Dance Anthropology, in Lisa Doolittle e Anne Flynn, eds.,Dancing
Bodies, Living Histories: New Writings About Dance and Culture (Banff, Alberta: Banff Centre
Press, 2000), 196-216.
[30] . At least one African-American anthropologist trained by Herskovits Johnnetta Betsch
Cole (1936-) seemed to think this the case. See Kevin A. Yelvington, An Interview with
Johnnetta Betsch Cole, Current Anthropology 44(2) (2003), 275-289.
[31] . See Sally Cole, Ruth Landes: A Life in Anthropology (Lincoln: University of Nebraska
Press, 2003); Mariza Corra, O mistrio dos orixs e das bonecas: raa e gnero na
antropologia brasileira, Ethnogrfica 4(2) (2000), 233-265; Mark Alan Healey, The Sweet
Matriarchy of Bahia Ruth Landes Ethnography of Race and Gender, Dispositio/n 23(50)
(1998), 87-116; Cf. Yelvington, The Invention of Africa in Latin America and the Caribbean.
[32] . HP, Box 19 Ramos-Herskovits 14 March 1940, with copy of report to the Carnegie
Corporation.
[33] . Besides his criticisms voiced to the Carnegie team and Myrdal, many years later
Herskovits wrote an extremely critical review of Landess book City of Women. See Melville J.
Herskovits, Review of City of Women by Ruth Landes, American Anthropologist 50(1) (1948),
123-125.

[34] . Ruth Landes, A Woman Anthropologist in Brazil, in Peggy Golde, ed., Women in the
Field (Chicago: Aldine, 1970), 119-142.
[35] . Rdiger Bilden, Brazil, a Laboratory of Civilization, The Nation 128 (3315) (1929), 71-74.
[36] . HP, Box 18, Pierson-Herskovits, 10 May 1934.
[37] . Raymundo Nina Rodrigues, Os africanos no Brasil (So Paulo: Companhia Editora
Nacional, 1932); see HP, Box 18, Pierson-Herskovits, 28 August 1934.
[38] . Melville J. Herskovits, Procedencias dos negros do Novo Mundo, in Estudos afrobrasileiros: trabalhos apresentados ao 1Congresso afro-brasileiro reunido no Recife em
1934.Tomo I (Rio de Janeiro: Ariel, 1935-37), 195-197, an abstract of On the Provenience of
New World Negroes, Social Forces 12(2) (1933), 247-262, and A arte de bronze do panna em
Dahome, in Estudos afro-brasileiros, Tomo II, 227-235, translation of Melville J. Herskovits e
Frances S. Herskovits, The Art of Dahomey I: Brass-Casting and Applique Cloths, American
Magazine of Art 27(2) (1934), 67-76.
[39] . HP, Box 7 Freyre-Herskovits 1 November 1935.
[40] . Olvia Maria Gomes da Cunha, Sua alma em sua palma: identificando a raa e
inventando a nao, in Dulce Chaves Pandolfi, ed., Repensando o estado novo (Rio de
Janiero: Editora Fundao Getlio Vargas, 1999), 257-288; cf. Mariza Corra, As iluses da
liberdade: A Escola Nina Rodrigues e a antropologia no Brasil (So Paulo: Editora da
Universidade de So Francisco, 1998), Luitgarde Oliveira Cavalcante Barros, Arthur Ramos e
as dinmicas sociais de seu tempo (Macei, Alagoas: Editora da Universidade Federal de
Alagoas, 2000), and Antonio Sapucaia, ed., Relembrando Arthur Ramos (Macei, Alagoas:
Editora da Universidade Federal de Alagoas, 2003).

[41] . Deuses Africanos e santos Catolicos nas Crencas do Negro do Novo Mundo, in O negro
no Brasil: trabalhos apresentados ao 2.0 Congresso afro-brasileiro (Bahia) (Rio de Janeiro:
Civilizao brasileira 1940), translation of African Gods and Catholic Saints in New World
Negro Belief, American Anthropologist 39(4) (1937), 635-643.
[42] . See Daily Northwestern, 11 February 1941, 1 and Daily Northwestern, 18 February 1941,
1, 5.
[43] . For reports on his activities in Brazil, see Melville J. Herskovits, Pesquisas ethnolgicas na
Bahia. Trad. Jos Valladares (Salvador: Publies do Museu da Bahia, 1943) and Tradices e
modos de vida dos africanos na Baa, Pensamento da Amrica 28 de 11 1943, 147-148, 159.
[44] . See the correspondence in HP, Box 4.
[45] . E. Franklin Frazier, The Negro Family in Bahia, Brazil, American Sociological Review7(4)
(1942), 465-478; Melville J. Herskovits, The Negro in Bahia, Brazil: A Problem in
Method,American Sociological Review 8(4) (1943), 394-402; and Frazier,
Rejoinder, American Sociological Review 8(4) (1943), 402-404.
[46] . Octavio da Costa Eduardo, West Afrian Religion: Its Nature and Role, unpublished M.A.
thesis, Northwestern University, 1943 and The Negro in Northeast Brazil: A Study in
Acculturation, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University, 1945; Ren Ribeiro,
The Afrobrazilian Cult-Groups of Recife A Study in Social Adjustment, unpublished M.A.
thesis, Northwestern University, 1949; and Ruy Galvo de Andrade Coelho, The Black Carib of
Honduras, A Study in Acculturation, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Northwestern University,
1955.
[47] . E.g., Marcos Chor Maio, A histria do Projeto UNESCO: estudos raciais e cintificas
socais no Brasil, unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Instituto Universitrio de Pesquisas do Rio de
Janeiro, O Brasil no concerto das naes: a luta contra o racismo nos primrdios da
UNESCO, Histria, Cincias, Sade: Manguinhos 5(2) (1998), 365-413, Tempo controverso:
Gilberto Freyre e o Projeto UNESCO, Tempo Social 11(1) (1999), 111-136; and Verena
Stolcke, Brasil: una nacin vista a travs del cristal de la raza, Revista de Cultura Brasilea1
(1998), 51-66.
[48] . HP, Box 41, McKeon-Herskovits, 7 April 1947; Herskovits-Havet, 29 April 1947.
[49] . HP, Box 41, Bowers-Herskovits, 25 July 1947; Herskovits-Laves 31 July 1947; HerskovitsBowers 4 August 1947; Bowers-Herskovits 8 March 1948; Herskovits-Bowers 2 April 1948;
Bowers-Herskovits 5 May 1948.
[50] . Alfred Mtraux, et al., Lhomme et la terre dans la valle de Marbial, Haiti (Paris: Unesco,
1951).
[51] . HP, Box 41, Corner-Herskovits 22 July 1947; Herskovits-Corner, 30 July 1947.
[52] . HP, Box 41, Herskovits-Bowers 21 May 1948; Herskovits-Foster 25 May 1948; HerskovitsBowers 2 June 1948.
[53] . HP, Box 54, Herskovits-Mtraux 2 October 1950.
[54] . See various issues of Man between November 1951 and June 1952.
[55] . HP, Box 46, Kleinberg-Herskovits 2 June 1949.

[56] . HP, Box 50, Ramos-Herskovits 30 August 1949; Herskovits-Ramos 16 September


1949; Ramos-Herskovits 3 Octobre 1949.
[57] . HP, Box 50, Herskovits-Ramos 13 October 1949.
[58] . Alfred Mtraux, UNESCO and Anthropology, American Anthropologist 53(2) (1951), 294300.
[59] . Maio, Tempo controverso.

[60] . HP, Box 50, Mtraux-Herskovits 24 May 1950; Herskovits-Mtraux 1 June 1950; Box 54,
Herskovits-Mtraux 2 October 1950. But by 1952 Coelho had left UNESCO. Mtraux wrote to
Herskovits saying It was certainly a wise decision on his part, since he now looks happier and
works again with zest, reflecting that Bureaucratic life does not suit all temperaments and Ruy
Coelho is not the only one who feels nostalgic for academic life.... HP, Box 58, MtrauxHerskovits 19 February 1952.
[61] . HP, Box 54, Mtraux-Herskovits 21 September 1950.
[62] . Melville J. Herskovits, Race Relations, American Journal of Sociology 34(6) (1929),
1129-1139, Race Relations, American Journal of Sociology 35(6) (1930), 1052-1062, Race
Relations, American Journal of Sociology 37(6) (1932), 976-982, and Race
Relations,American Journal of Sociology 38(6) (1933), 913-921.
[63] . Alfred Mtraux, UNESCO and the Racial Problem, International Social Science
Bulletin2(3) (1950), 384-390.
[64] . Melville J. Herskovits, The Color Line, American Mercury 6(22) (1925), 208.
[65] . Melville J Herskovits, Man and his Works: The Science of Cultural Anthropology (New
York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1948).
[66] . HP, Box 50, Mtraux-Herskovits 24 May 1950; Herskovits-Mtraux 1 June 1950; Box 54,
Mtraux-Herskovits 21 September 1950; Mtraux-Herskovits 7 November 1950; MtrauxHerskovits 29 January 1951; Box 58 Herskovits-Mtraux 16 October 1951.
[67] . HP, Box 54, Mtraux-Herskovits 5 July 1951.
[68] . HP, Box 54, Mtraux-Herskovits 10 August 1951. See Melville J Herskovits, Les bases de
lanthropologie culturelle. Trans. Franois Vaudou (Paris: Payot, 1952).
[69] . E.g., see Arthur Ramos, Guerra e relaes de raa (Rio de Najeiro: Departamento
Editorial da Unio Nactional dos Estudantes, 1943) and As cincias sociais e os problemas de
aps-guerra (Rio di Janeiro: Casa do Estudante do Brasil, 1944).
[70] . HP, Box 54, Mtraux-Herskovits 5 July 1951.
[71] . HP, Box 54, Herskovits-Mtraux 17 July 1951.
[72] . HP, Box 54, Mtraux-Herskovits 10 August 1951.
[73] . HP, Box 54, Herskovits-Mtraux 4 September 1951; Box 58, Herskovits-Mtraux 2 de
January 1952.

[74] . See Henrika Kuklick, The Savage Within: The Social History of British Anthropology,
1885-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), George W. Stocking, Jr., After
Tylor: British Social Anthropology, 1888-1951 (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1995),
and Joan Vincent, Anthropology and Politics: Visions, Traditions, and Trends (Tucson:
University of Arizona Press, 1990).
[75] . Deborah Gordon, The Politics of Ethnographic Authority: Race and Writing in the
Ethnography of Margaret Mead and Zora Neale Hurston, in Marc Manganaro, ed., Modernist
Anthropology: From Fieldwork to Text (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), 148-149.
[76] . Stolcke, Brasil, 53-54.
[77] . See Kevin A. Yelvington, A Historian Among the Anthropologists, American
Anthropologist 105 (2) (2003), 367-371.
[78] . Yelvington, The Invention of Africa in Latin America and the Caribbean.
[79] . Florestan Fernandes, A etnologia e a sociologia no Brasil: ensaios sobre aspectos da
formao e do desenvolvimento das cincias socais na sociedade brasileira (So Paulo:
Editora Anhambi, 1958).
[80] . E.g., Mariza Corra, Antroplogas e antropologia (Belo Horizonte: Editora da
Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2003), As iluses da liberdade, Histria da antropologia
no Brasil (1930-1960) (Campinas: Editora da Universidade Estadual de Campinas, 1987), and
Traficantes do excntrico: os antroplogos no Brasil dos anos 30 aos anos 60,Revista
Brasileira de Cincias Sociais 6(3) (1988), 79-98, among other works.
[81] . Olvia Maria Gomes da Cunha, Intenco e gesto: pessoa, cor e a produco cotidiana da
(in)diferenca no Rio de Janeiro, 1927-1942 (Rio de Janeiro: Arquivo Nacional, 2002).
[82] . Mariza G.S. Peirano, The Anthropology of Anthropology: The Brazilian Case,
unpublished Ph.D. dissertation, Harvard University, 1981.
[83] . E.g., Srgio Miceli, Intelectuais e classe dirigente no Brasil, 1920-1945 (So Paulo: Difel,
1979), Intelectuais brasileira (So Paulo: Companhia das Letras, 2001), Miceli, org., Histria
das cincias sociais no Brasil (So Paulo: IDESP/Vrtice/FINEP, 1989), Miceli, org.,Temas e
problemas da pesquisa em cincias sociais (So Paulo: Editora Sumar, 1992), e Miceli,
org., O Que ler na cincia social brasileira: 1970-1995 (So Paulo: Editora Sumar, 1999).

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