From expeditions to exhibitions: German ethnologists, south American Indians, institutions (1884-1928)

• Grant number: 16/04482-8
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: July 01, 2016
• End date: June 30, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Mauro William Barbosa de Almeida
• Grantee: Erik Petschelies
• Supervisor: Ernst Halbmayer
• Host Institution: Instituto de Filosofia e Ciências Humanas (IFCH). Universidade Estadual de Campinas (UNICAMP). Campinas , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: Philipps-Universität Marburg, Germany
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/09332-9 - The network of the German ethnography in Brazil (1884-1926), BP.DR

Abstract

The doctoral research during the International Research Exchange has to objectives. On the one hand, it aims to propose a rereading of the works produced by pioneers of the ethnology of the South American lowlands Karl von den Steinen, Paul Ehrenreich, Theodor Koch-Grünberg and Max Schmidt, trying to rethink current interpretations, especially those one based on evaluating the Germans ethnographies as evolutionists or confined to museums. On the other hand, through a documentary research (mainly in three German institutions, the Koch-Grünberg Archive in Marburg, at Berlin's Ethnological Museum Archive and the Ibero-American Institute in Berlin), it is intended to demonstrate, in which they formed an international cooperation network, that included ethnographers, indigenous informants, institutions and government agents. In addition, it aims to study those documents left by them in order to understand in what ways they dealt in practice with the material conditions of doing ethnology (finances, sale of the ethnographic collections they collected, etc.) between 1884 (Karl von den Steinen's first travel to the Amazon) and 1928 (Max Schmidt's last one).