Kaanu

Title

The Eickstedt Archive: German Anthropology in Colonial India

Creator

Mueller, Katja

Date

2018

Subject

colonialism

orientalism

India

Identifier

doi:10.1177/0376983617747995

issn:0376-9836

Source

Original source

Is Part Of

Indian Historical Review

Publisher

SAGE Publications

Abstract

The Eickstedt archive is an inventory of a German anthropologist’s perception of India of the 1920s through photographs and written accounts. His understanding forms the leitmotif of this reading of the archive, which as such is a reading along the grain. This article attempts to locate the archive’s rationale, which vacillates between expectations of the ‘primitive other’ and a rising racial anthropology. Exploring the relationship between the archive’s content and the context allows one to trace the intentions and preoccupations that influenced the archive, without neglecting the agency of the photographic subjects. Juxtaposing the archive and the published accounts as well as the related artefact collection further substantiates that the archive is constituted by the multiple influences of German anthropology of the 1920s, a conventional nationalism, and European orientalism.

Bibliographic Citation

Mueller, Katja. (2018). 'The Eickstedt Archive: German Anthropology in Colonial India'. Indian Historical Review, 45(2), pp. 213-232.

Extent

Vol. 45, Issue 2, pp. 213-232

Has Format

Download PDF

Type

journal-article

Kaanu ID

kb000248