Physiology studies and scientific exchange in the Anthropology Laboratory of the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro (1910s-1920s).

The main purpose of this study is the scientific practice of Edgard Roquette-Pinto at the National Museum of Rio de Janeiro during the 1910's and 1920's in the XXth Century. The article examines the relationship between laboratory science and nation building. Driven by Physicians-Anthropologists like Edgard Roquette-Pinto among others, the investigations performed at the Anthropology Laboratory there reveal the dynamic of the borders between Laboratory and Field Sciences, and the new biological parameters adopted at that time. The investigative agenda involved plants, animals and human bodies, and it was related to the current Anthropology concept aligned with the debate of Nation construction. The physiological studies amplified the scientific exchange with different institutions, emphasizing cultural exchange between Brazil and Paraguay, and the role played by Edgard Roquette-Pinto there as he inaugurated the Physiological course at Faculty of Medicine at University of Asunción.

From Savagery to Sovereignty: Identity, Politics, and International Expositions of Argentine Anthropology (1878­1892).

In the late nineteenth century, Argentine intellectual elites turned to world's fairs as a place to contest myths of Latin American racial inferiority and produce counternarratives of Argentine whiteness and modernity. This essay examines Argentine anthropological displays at three expositions between 1878 and 1892 to elucidate the mechanisms and reception of these projects. Florentino Ameghino, Francisco Moreno, and others worked deliberately and in conjunction with political authorities to erase the indigenous tribes from the national identity, even while using their bodies and products to create prehistory and garner intellectual legitimacy. Comparison of the three fairs also demonstrates how the representation of Amer-Indians and their artifacts shifted in accordance with local political needs and evolving international theories of anthropogenesis. The resulting analysis argues for the importance of considering the former colonies of the Global South in understanding the development of pre-twentieth-century anthropology and world's fairs, particularly when separating them from their imperial context.

A laboratory for Latin eugenics: the Italian Committee for the Study of Population Problems and the international circulation of eugenic knowledge, 1920s-1940s / Um laboratório para eugenia latina: o Comitê Italiano para Estudo dos Problemas da População e a circulação internacional do conhecimento eugênico, décadas de 1920-1940

Abstract The aim of this article is to shed light on the rise to international prominence of the Italian statistician and eugenicist Corrado Gini and his appointment as the inaugural president of the Latin International Federation of Eugenic Societies in October 1935. It explores the numerous pioneering, still little known, investigations he undertook with a few Italian scientists and some foreign scholars, in order to analyze the role played by “isolation,” and “racial hybridization” in the formation and degeneration of human races. After outlining Gini’s professional and political trajectory, the article focuses on the scientific expeditions launched by the Italian Committee for the Study of Population Problems between 1933 and 1940 under his stewardship.

Resumo O objetivo deste artigo é mostrar a projeção internacional do estatístico e eugenista italiano Corrado Gini e sua nomeação como presidente inaugural da Federação Latina Internacional de Sociedades Eugênicas em outubro de 1935. Examina várias pesquisas pioneiras, ainda pouco conhecidas, que Gini, alguns cientistas italianos e outros estrangeiros empreenderam a fim de analisar o papel do “isolamento” e da “hibridização racial” na formação e degeneração de raças humanas. Após apresentar a trajetória profissional e política de Gini, o artigo concentra-se nas expedições científicas lançadas pelo Comitê Italiano para Estudo dos Problemas da População, entre 1933 e 1940, sob sua direção.

[Caring for the health of your neighbor: the work of anthropologist Charles Wagley with the Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública]. / Cuidar da saúde do vizinho: atuação do antropólogo Charles Wagley no Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública*

The article focuses on the work of Charles Wagley as a top staff member with Serviço Especial de Saúde Pública (Special Public Health Service), a US-Brazil cooperation program established during World War II. Taking into consideration Wagley's experience with migration policy under Brazil's Rubber Program, as well as the context of development promotion and the issues then on the anthropological agenda, the article explores Wagley's community study of the Amazon town he visited while on SESP missions, published in the book Uma comunidade amazônica (Amazon Town). Encountering a reality that he believed emblematic of underdevelopment, Wagley was led to reflect on social change and the role of science.

Teratology in Mexico. 19th Century.

It was not until the last third of the 19th century, the period in which, according to historiography, the country definitely inserted itself into modernity, that anomalies and monstrosities had a presence in Mexico. Therefore, what I present here are four moments of teratology in Mexico, four dates in which I try to recount how teratology, which still occupied a marginal place within the main themes of national science, not only reached to cover the realm of medical discussions at the time, but also laid the foundations for new disciplines like biology and anthropology.

Nature/culture/seawater.

Seawater has occupied an ambiguous place in anthropological categories of "nature" and "culture." Seawater as nature appears as potentiality of form and uncontainable flux; it moves faster than culture - with culture frequently figured through land-based metaphors - even as culture seeks to channel water's (nature's) flow. Seawater as culture manifests as a medium of pleasure, sustenance, travel, disaster. I argue that, although seawater's qualities in early anthropology were portrayed impressionistically, today technical, scientific descriptions of water's form prevail. For example, processes of globalization - which may also be called "oceanization" - are often described as "currents," "flows," and "circulations." Examining sea-set ethnography, maritime anthropologies, and contemporary social theory, I propose that seawater has operated as a "theory machine" for generating insights about human cultural organization. I develop this argument with ethnography from the Sargasso Sea and in the Sea Islands. I conclude with a critique of appeals to water's form in social theory.

Symptoms of another life: time, possibility, and domestic relations in Chile's credit economy.

In this article, I explore the synergy and disjunctures of the consumer credit system and care for the mentally ill and addicted in the lifeworlds of the urban poor in Santiago, Chile. In Chile, the expansion of the credit system has had a double-edged effect on the poor. Although it produces perpetual indebtedness, it also is a resource amid unstable labor. Following an extended family over several years, this article examines how women take up credit through a wider field of domestic relations and institutions to care for kin with mental illness and addiction within the home. Such gestures of care enact a temporality of waiting, allowing different, but unpredictable, aspects of others to emerge. Through longitudinal ethnographic research with this family, I demonstrate both how possibility is actualized within the home as symptoms of illness and forms of domestic violence, and how a wider network of dependencies­from neighbors to lending institutions­shapes the temporality of relations within the home. Such a study of care in relation to the credit economy may offer other analytic perspectives on discourses of individualism, consumerism, and cost-effectiveness accompanying the expansion of consumer credit as they are absorbed into the everyday.

[Didn't it matter to him absolutely?: Juan Vilanova and the controversy about tertiary man]. / ¿Absolutamente sin cuidado?: Juan Vilanova y la polémica sobre el hombre terciario.

During the founding period of palaeoanthropology, the postulate about tertiary age of humankind was an outstanding subject. First proposals were based on supposed proofs about ancient lithical industry (eoliths). Some discoveries of human fossil remains complicated that issue, because they were dated as pliocene or oldest. This controversy about so-called "tertiary man" soon arrived to Spain. Juan Vilanova y Piera, palaeontologist and professor at Madrid, dealt with it from an antievolutionist point of view. When a human fossil skeleton, included in the Botet's collections, with several apparently primitive traits arrived to Valencia from Argentina, Vilanova got reasserted and exposed his ideas about this question more intensely.

Reconstructing Indigenous ethnicities: the Arapium and Jaraqui peoples of the lower Amazon, Brazil.

In Latin America, indigenous identity claims among people not previously recognized as such by the state have become a key topic of anthropological and sociological research. Scholars have analyzed the motivations and political implications of this trend and the impacts of indigenous population's growth on national demographic indicators. However, little is known about how people claiming indigenous status constructs the meaning of their indigenous ethnicity. Drawing from sixty-four indepth interviews, focus-group analyses, and participant observation, this article explores the double process of identity construction: the reconstruction of the Arapium indigenous identity and the creation of the Jaraqui indigenous identity in Brazil's Lower Amazon. The findings reveal six themes that contribute to the embodiment of a definition of indigenous identity and the establishment of a discursive basis to claim recognition: sense of rootedness, historical memory, historical transformation, consciousness, social exclusion, and identity politics.

A child's house: social memory, identity, and the construction of childhood in early postclassic Mexican households.

Despite the recent attention given to the archaeology of childhood, households continue to be treated by archaeologists as the product of adult behavior and activities. Yet children shaped the decisions and motivations of adults and influenced the structure and organization of daily activities and household space. Further, children's material culture serves to both create and disrupt social norms and daily life, making children essential to understanding broader mechanisms of change and continuity. Thus, archaeologists should reconceptualize houses as places of children. This research brings together multiple lines of evidence from the Early Postclassic site of Xaltocan, Mexico, including ethnohistory, burials, and figurines to reconstruct the social roles and identities of children and to problematize our understanding of households. I argue that thinking of houses as places of children enables us to see that children were essential to daily practice, the construction and transmission of social identity, and household economic success.

[Medical anthropology evidences on the Pishtaco origin]. / Evidencias médico antropológicas sobre el origen del Pishtaco.

This paper will contribute to the scientific development of a new approach on the pishtaco in Peru by means of medical anthropological analysis. The model emphasizes presentation and analysis of historical, pharmaceutical, and anthropological evidence supporting use of human tissues with specific medical goals in Peruvian and European regions. We can find the origin of this phenomenon around the sixteen and seventeen centuries in Europe: The pishtaco has no an Andean origin. The methodology and main conclusions of this paper could provide to the scientific community an alternative perspective to the conventional anthropological and ethnological research, as an example of a medical anthropological analysis of the pishtaco character. Professionals involved in intercultural health projects could have a new insight on this issue thanks to these results. They will obtain an adequate historical-cultural context for the interpretation and understanding of people and native communities' beliefs about health, body and medical systems.