Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge

Jerry Gershenhorn

Description

Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge is the first full-scale biography of the trailblazing anthropologist of African and African American cultures. Born into a world of racial hierarchy, Melville J. Herskovits (1895–1963) employed physical anthropology and ethnography to undermine racist and hierarchical ways of thinking about humanity and to underscore the value of cultural diversity. His research in West Africa, the West Indies, and South America documented the far-reaching influence of African cultures in the Americas. He founded the first major interdisciplinary American program in African studies in 1948 at Northwestern University, and his controversial classic The Myth of the Negro Past delineated African cultural influences on American blacks and showcased the vibrancy of African American culture. He also helped forge the concept of cultural relativism, particularly in his book Man and His Works. While Herskovits promoted African and African American studies, he criticized some activist black scholars, most notably Carter G. Woodson and W. E. B. Du Bois, whom he considered propagandists because of their social reform orientation.

 

After World War II, Herskovits became an outspoken public figure, advocating African independence and attacking American policymakers who treated Africa as an object of Cold War strategy. Drawing extensively on Herskovits’s private papers and published works, Jerry Gershenhorn’s biography recognizes Herskovits’s many contributions and discusses the complex consequences of his conclusions, methodologies, and relations with African American scholars.

Sujets

• Sociologie, société et politique
• Human biology
• Biological anthropology
• Anthropology

Informations

• Publié par: Nebraska Paperback
• Date de parution: 01 avril 2004
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780803203952
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge

Critical Studies in the History of Anthropology

Series Editors Regna Darnell StephenO.Murray

j e rry g e rs h e n h o rn

Melville J. Herskovits and the Racial Politics of Knowledge

UniversityofNebraskaPress

Lincoln and London

Copyright∫2004 by the University of Nebraska Press All rights reserved. Manufactured in the United States of America!

Typeset in CC Galliard. Book design by R. Eckersley

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Gershenhorn, Jerry. Melville J. Herskovits and the racial politics of knowl- edge / Jerry Gershenhorn. p. cm. – (Critical studies in the history of anthropology) Includes bibliographical references and index. isbn0-8032-2187-8 (cloth alkaline paper) 1. Herskovits, Melville J. (Melville Jean), 1895–1963. 2. Anthropologists – United States – Biography. 3. An- thropologists – Africa, West – Biography. 4. African Americans – Anthropometry. 5. African Americans – Social life and customs. 6. Racism in anthropology – United States. 7. Cultural relativism – Africa, West. 8. African diaspora. 9. Self-determination, National – Africa, West. 10. Africa, West – Social life and customs. I. Title. II. Series. gn21 .h47 g472004 301%.092–dc22 2003016335

InMemoryofRhodaGershenhorn

List of Illustrations

Contents

Series Editors’ Introduction

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. The Making of an Anthropologist

2. The Attack on Pseudoscientific Racism

3. Transforming the Debate on Black Culture

4. Subverting the Myth of the Negro Past

5. Objectivity and the Development of Negro Studies

6. The Postwar Expansion of African Studies

7. Foreign Policy Critic

Epilogue

Notes

Bibliography

Index

ix

xi

xv

1

11

27

59

93

123

169

201

231

241

305

329

Illustrations

1. Herman Herskovits

2. Franz Boas

3. Melville and Frances Herskovits

4. Herskovits with Suriname artifact

5. Carter G. Woodson

following page 130

6. Board of Advisors of the Encyclopedia of the Negro project

7. Ralph Bunche

8. Gunnar Myrdal

9. E. Franklin Frazier

10.HerskovitsatNorthwesternUniversity

11. Herskovits and J. Roscoe Miller with Liberian president William V. S. Tubman

12. Frances Herskovits