Making of British Anthropology, 1813-1871
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2013
Language: eng
Number of pages: 272
ISBN-13: 9781848933941
Subjects: Anthropology, history; Great britain, social conditions
Description: Victorian anthropology has been derided as an 'armchair practice', distinct from the scientific discipline of the twentieth century. But the observational practices that characterized the study of human diversity developed from the established sciences of natural history, geography and medicine. Sera-Shriar argues that anthropology at this time went through a process of innovation which built on scientifically grounded observational study. Far from being an evolutionary dead end, nineteenth-century anthropology laid the foundations for the field-based science of anthropology today.