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Germany–India Entanglements in the Scientific Racialization of Caste

This blog post marks the launch of the latest monograph in our series, Publications of the German Historical Institute London:

Racializing Caste: Anthropology between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905–1970)

by Thiago P. Barbosa, winner of the 2023 Prize of the German Historical Institute London and the Frobenius Research Promotion Award 2023

The idea of ‘race’ has shaped our understanding of human diversity. As an idea that became a key concept in different sciences dealing with the variation of human form and life, race has been part of the discourse since the nineteenth century. Following the movements of scientists, books, and technologies, the idea of race travelled around the globe. As Germany intensified its racial frameworks in science and politics, several students from different nations, including India, trained within the German school of racial anthropology, a tradition of anthropology that reached its political apex at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute of Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics (KWI-A) in Berlin. One of these international students was Irawati Karve (1905–70), a prominent Indian anthropologist who trained in the late 1920s and early 1930s at the infamous KWI-A.

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Museums Under Construction: On Loss, Disorder, Destruction, and Objects in Storerooms

Archaeological artefacts from the Ottoman Empire have only recently attracted attention in current debates over decolonization and restitution. Mirjam S. Brusius of the German Historical Institute London is researching the excavation of objects, the role of the local population, and why certain items have languished for decades in the storerooms of European museums.

Continue reading Museums Under Construction: On Loss, Disorder, Destruction, and Objects in Storerooms