Ethnology, art and politics: Alfred Métraux and the Haitian experience

• Grant number: 16/10861-1
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships abroad - Research Internship - Doctorate
• Start date: September 27, 2016
• End date: September 26, 2017
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - Anthropology - Theory of Anthropology
• Principal Investigator: Fernanda Arêas Peixoto
• Grantee: Júlia Vilaça Goyatá
• Supervisor: Lauriere Christine
• Host Institution: Faculdade de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (FFLCH). Universidade de São Paulo (USP). São Paulo , SP, Brazil
• Institution abroad: École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales (EHESS), France
• Associated to the scholarship: 14/25349-9 - Ethnology, art and engagement: Michel Leiris and Alfred Métraux at French Antilles (1940-1960), BP.DR

Abstract

Over the 1940s the swiss anthropologist Alfred Metraux (1902-1963) made three trips to the Republic of Haiti settling longer there between 1948 and 1949, when he coordinated a broad educational project in charge of the United Nations Organization of Education, Science and Culture (UNESCO). In this period he also conducted researches on Haitian Voodoo which became in the famous monograph Le vaudou Haïtien (1958) and established important relationships with anthropologists, artists and institutions in the country. This research aims to recover Metraux's experience in Haiti after the war. A kind of "bridge-man" between France, the United States and Haiti, his presence in the Caribbean country revealed not only aspects of the constitution of this area as ethnographic region but also opens up a wide network of exchange of knowledge, people and things from among these three regions. It is through the clues left by Metraux in archives of these three countries that is possible to rebuild circuits and transatlantic transits paying attention to the imaginary of Haiti produced at the time. (AU)