Starting in England and Germany in particular, a movement developed at the end of the 19th century dedicated to the study of heredity and the extension of the theory of evolution to humanity. The focus was on the consequences of industrialisation and urbanisation, the social question, the distribution of birth rates and other population-related issues. For many, the question of how a supposed process of human degeneration could be halted was particularly central. While in England Francis Galton introduced the term "eugenics" for the concept of favouring hereditary traits that were considered positive, in Germany Alfred Ploetz chose the term "racial hygiene". Emphasising the "welfare of the people", different possible solutions were proposed. Ethnologists also took part in eugenic/"racial hygiene" discussions. As was generally the case in this movement they also argued for very varied positions. Socialist ambitions played just as much a role as capitalist ideas or religious ties. In all spectrums, there were different views on the question of "races" and "racial mixtures" and latent to openly and massively far-reaching anti-Semitic and racist programmes. The article focuses on Richard Thurnwald's approach to eugenic debates, his commitment, and his positioning in the "racial hygiene" movement. This is done in comparison to the viewpoints of Felix von Luschan, Franz Boas, Otto Reche and Father Wil helm Schmidt. The article also provides an insight into an early professional network, when German-speaking ethnology was still closely linked to physical anthropology.
This article examines Richard Thurnwald's writing, focusing particularly on his analyses of colonialism and social scientific epistemology. Although I cover his entire career, I pay special attention to the middle period (1922 - 1936). I argue that Thurnwald was able to extricate himself from dependence on external political pressures during this period to a much greater extent than was the case both before WWI and after his definitive return to Germany in 1936. The period 1922 - 1936 was, for Thurnwald, one of greater scientific autonomy and intellectual flourishing. He elaborated an original resolution to the polarization between historicism and relativism, on the one hand, and positivism and universalism, on the other. He began to thematize colonialism as a highly destructive force that was laying the groundwork for anticolonial movements. The article argues that Thurnwald differs from contemporaries such as Carl Schmitt insofar as his writing before 1933 does not contain proto-fascist ideas. However, his thinking after 1933 and especially 1936 became closely aligned with Nazi concepts and policies. Deleting Thurnwald from disciplinary memory would mean that we are allowing Nazism to deprive us of the insights of his interwar work. Yet it is equally unacceptable to elide Thurnwald's complicity with Nazism. The paper ends with a call for a more nuanced approach to decolonizing and denazifying the history of science.
The present analysis examines the main early theoretical and conceptual influences that remained significant in Richard Thurnwald's work. While also considering subsequent ramifications, this research question is primarily applied to the early work and academic life of one of the 20th century's most influential and best-known social anthropologists from the German-speaking world. The relevant phases scrutinized here concern Thurnwald's sojourns between 1890 and late in 1900 in Vienna, Bosnia and Graz - then all under Austro-Hungarian Habsburg rule. The main question about those crucial theoretical and methodological influences that Thurnwald brought with him to Berlin in late 1900 thus leads to a clear first answer: At that time, Thurnwald was already a fully trained social scientist whose formative years had been shaped by some of the best-known theoreticians of his day. Among them, it is argued that the theoretical influence of his main Vienna teacher, social scientist and economist Carl Menger, was far more pervasive than that of others. The impact by Thurnwald's intellectual counterpart in Graz, sociologist Ludwig Gumplowicz, was second and complementary to that. On these theoretical levels, Thurnwald brought a "proto-functionalism avant la lettre", featuring a comparative emphasis with early interests in superpositioning processes and in the relevance of social Darwinism. On the methodological levels, Thurnwald had accomplished one of the first fieldwork projects by any formally trained social scientist, based on his good skills in locally relevant languages and by his preference (against other available options) for small scaled dialogical participant observation. In political terms Thurnwald at first remained the liberal conservative he had been before his Berlin arrival, with an interest in maintaining a dominant German-speaking colonial rule such as he had experienced and served in Bosnia.
This centennial issue of Sociologus revisits the journal's origins, focusing on its founder Richard Thurnwald and-critically-on his long-overlooked collaborator and wife, Hilde Thurnwald. While Richard has long been recognized as a key figure in social anthropology, this introduction brings to light the crucial intellectual and organizational role Hilde played in the journal's founding, continuation, and editorial development. Despite being absent from early mastheads, she was instrumental in sustaining Sociologus through economic crises, war, and postwar reconstruction. Her background in social work and psychology influenced the journal's interdisciplinary orientation. Drawing on scarce archival materials and oral testimonies, the introduction highlights the Thurnwalds' collaboration as a scholarly partnership shaped by gendered divisions of labor and historical contingencies. By examining Hilde's editorial work and scholarly engagement, the introduction seeks to reframe Sociologus as the product of a shared intellectual endeavor and to acknowledge Hilde Thurnwald as a co-founder and key architect of its legacy.
This study** examines Thurnwald's contribution to theories of ethnic stratification and early state formation. The framework for the analysis of his work is a four-part phase concept for the period from 1898 to 1935, which follows and traces Thurnwald's thinking over three decades. Changes and constants are elaborated. Thurnwald's early studies on Ancient Egyptology and Ancient Oriental Studies serve as the starting point of the investigation, providing an important theoretical frame of reference for his field research in German New Guinea (1906-1909, 1912-1915). Under the influence of these field experiences, he revised his original concepts. Thurnwald rejected the theory of conquest in the sense of Gumplowicz, Ratzel, Ratzenhofer and Oppenheimer, but adhered to the thesis that social and ethnic stratification could only be explained by exogenous factors such as migration. The final section is devoted to Thurnwald's "structural types", which interpret the processes of immigration and superimposition from the perspective of his ethnosociological approach. The study concludes with an overall assessment of his five-volume magnum opus Die menschliche Gesellschaft (1931-1935).
This research delves into the intricate dynamics between female domestic workers (DW) and employers within the domestic sphere, examining the impact of homeowners' embedded practices and consumption patterns, shaped by their habitus and lifestyle, on female DW's self-perception, consumer agency, and socialization. Female DW navigate a multifaceted world, balancing limited agency with muted resistance within the intertwined and often power-imbalanced space of the home. Despite financial constraints, they demonstrate agency constrained by circumstances through muted resistance against excessive consumption, prioritizing values like health and personal well-being. They engage in boundary work, positioning themselves as morally superior through responsible spending and personal values. By advocating for fair compensation and recognition, female DW challenge traditional power dynamics. While exposed to diverse lifestyles, their core values remain firm. Through secondary socialization, they acquire new knowledge while adapting it to their resources and personal values, showcasing adaptability. Paradoxically, they also contribute to their employers' social standing, acting as status symbols.
Actor-network theory is an approach notable for distributing agency over a range of human and other-than-human actors hence questioning the existence of a given "society" and instead conceiving of materially heterogeneous collectives. So far, ANT has only shown fleeting interest in the study of money. This is surprising, given the literature emphasising the powerful, agency-bearing role ascribed to money in intersubjective relations and socioeconomic arrangements. This article reviews two ethnographic case studies to examine conceptions of sociality and agency inherent in both national currencies and actor-network theory. Based on a comparative framework, which discusses different properties of money on a commercial farm in South Africa and within a progressive political struggle in Indonesia, I argue that money's material and semiotic properties make it unfit to be subsumed into an actant scheme. Instead, I draw attention to the circulation of currency within uneven, messy, and hierarchical postcolonial political economies as foundational to money's agency in the making of social relations.
Drawing on ongoing ethnographic research on rifts between parents and their adult children in Switzerland, this paper examines estrangement processes within the context of intergenerational property transfers. The (prospective) death of a parent, along with relat- ed questions surrounding wills, inheritance, and the distribution of heirlooms and me- mentos, can intensify familial conflicts that have often been simmering for a long time, and may also create new ones. Recent research on kin relations and inheritance has employed "(de-)kinning" as an exploratory tool to examine how property transfers "make" and "unmake" kin relations. However, as the case presented in this paper suggests, adult children affected by contested property transfers did not frame such transfers in terms of "(un)doing kinship", but instead associated them with notions of punishment and unfulfilled expectations. From a broader perspective, the final rift between parents and adult children was seen as the culmination of a parent-child relationship disrupted by unresolved issues from the past. Familial es- trangement is a multifaceted process and requires nuanced exploration from a lifespan perspective. Taking a closer look at adult children's interpretations and contextualization of inheritance disputes within their family histories provides insights into parent-child dynamics marked by ambivalence and the expectations attached to close kin relations.
The article opens by presenting the work of the Federal Association of Anthropologists (Bundesverband f & uuml;r Ethnolog*innen; bfe). With its foundation in 2012, non-academic anthropology was given an institutional face and weight for the first time, and self-employed anthropologists were given a professional home. In its first ten years, the bfe primarily represented the interests of freelance anthropologists. It has since evolved into an organized representation of all people who feel committed to an anthropological epistemology and who want to cultivate and communicate this through membership in a professional network. In a second step, the article explores options for dialogue between academic and non-academic anthropology. To this end, both the occupational orientation of German social / cultural anthropology institutes and that of the German Society of Social and Cultural Anthropology (DGSKA) were examined. Finally, suggestions are made as to how the dialogue between the professional association, institutes and professional association could be consolidated.
