Empires, Nations, and Natives Anthropology and State-Making

Benoît de L'Estoile, "Empires, Nations, and Natives: Anthropology and State-Making"
English | ISBN: 0822336170 | 2005 | 344 pages | PDF | 1272 KB
Empires, Nations, and Natives is a groundbreaking comparative analysis of the interplay between the practice of anthropology and the politics of empires and nation-states in the colonial and postcolonial worlds. It brings together essays that demonstrate how the production of social-science knowledge about the "other" has been inextricably linked to the crafting of government policies. Subverting established boundaries between national and imperial anthropologies, the contributors explore the role of anthropology in the shifting categorizations of race in southern Africa, the identification of Indians in Brazil, the implementation of development plans in Africa and Latin America, the construction of Mexican and Portuguese nationalism, the genesis of "national character" studies in the United States during World War II, the modernizing efforts of the French colonial administration in Africa, and postcolonial architecture.