The Birth of Physical Anthropology in Late Imperial Portugal
In this article I analyze the emergence of the field of physical anthropology in the metropolitan academic sphere of the Portuguese Empire during the late nineteenth century. I suggest that Portugal’s relatively peripheral position combined with a complex internal conjuncture of political instability and economic impotence gave early Portuguese physical anthropology a less explicitly “colonial” orientation than in other, more central Western European imperial powers. I describe the various national and international exchanges leading to the birth of this naturalist anthropological tradition at the University of Coimbra, drawing particular attention to the foundational role played by the technological assemblage of large osteological collections aimed at the study of the somatic characteristics of the metropolitan “white” population. I situate these technical developments in the context of wider sociocultural and politico-economic processes of both “nation building” and “empire building.” These processes had a strong effect on the kinds of questions asked and the kinds of answers that seemed compelling and acceptable to early physical anthropologists.
Things of Darkness: Genetics, Melanins and the Regime of Salazar (1936–1952)
This article discusses the interaction between genetics and politics during the early phase of Salazar's regime. In particular it focuses on the work of the Portuguese biologist Jose A. Serra who investigated the genetics of hair pigmentation at the University of Coimbra. The first part of the article describes how Serra's research benefitted from the ideological and political context in Coimbra before and during WWII, and how his work on melanins was a clear response to a new project initiated at the German Kaiser Wilhelm Institut fur Anthropologie. The second part shows how his expertise in the inheritance and composition of hair colour was required by the regime in the post-war period, when wool became a priority of the corporatist State. The ‘things of darkness’ are melanins, dark biological pigments responsible for pigmentation in mammalian tissues, used in this historical investigation to connect Serra's rather obscure field of research to the political context of his time.
Um Grande cerco de paz. Poder tutelar, indianidade e formação do Estado no Brasil
Antonio Carlos Souza Lima. Um Grande Cerco de Paz. Poder tutelar, indianidade e formacao do Estado no Brasil. Petropolis, Vozes, 1995, 335 pags. + Caderno Iconografico.