{"id":7877,"date":"2011-05-04T15:28:22","date_gmt":"2011-05-04T19:28:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/etherwave.wordpress.com\/?p=7877"},"modified":"2011-05-04T15:28:22","modified_gmt":"2011-05-04T19:28:22","slug":"joseph-deniker-species-and-the-northern-race-part-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/2011\/05\/04\/joseph-deniker-species-and-the-northern-race-part-1\/","title":{"rendered":"Joseph Deniker, Species, and the “Northern Race” (Part 1)"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Joseph Deniker<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Joseph Deniker’s (1852-1915) human geography and ethnography illustrates the eternal persistence of old debates and the various uses of\u00a0canonical\u00a0authors, Cuvier and Darwin among them.\u00a0 There has been in my estimation no satisfactory narrative of the species problem from Cuvier through Prichard, Darwin, and turn of the century anthropologists, ethnologists, and human geographers. \u00a0Nor has there been a consistent appraisal of the\u00a0appropriation\u00a0of the “canon” of naturalists and ethnologists by late nineteenth and early twentieth century naturalists, ethnologists, and anthropologists.<\/p>\n

Historians have generally narrated turn of the century ethnological debates in France, Britain, Germany, and the United States solely in terms of their contributions to eugenics or the rise of statistics.\u00a0 David Livingston, among others, has written Whiggishly about the development of human geography as a discipline or inquiry. \u00a0It is unclear whether any of the authors surveyed at the turn of the century considered themselves as contributing to any kind of discipline. I am certain that any division between a “racial” and “scientific” human geography, emerging in the inter-war period is terribly overdrawn. \u00a0Deniker’s work illustrates the live nature of many nineteenth century debates at the turn of the century. \u00a0His influence on as diverse figures as Madison Grant, A.C. Haddon, and Julian Huxley, each representative of eugenics, “becoming scientific,” and “post-Boasian” ethnology, respectively, points to the ambiguous uses of turn of the century ethnology and the astonishing breath and depth of the ethnographic canon.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Deniker’s Races of Man<\/em>, like almost everything written in nineteenth century ethnology, is a disordered heap.\u00a0 Ethnologists,\u00a0political\u00a0economists, anthropologists, and human geographers, tended not to have a thesis, but a number of related arguments. \u00a0Nineteenth century texts (and twentieth century works, perhaps) were juggling acts developed out of unsure compromises with avalanches of cultural, biological, and linguistic evidences.\u00a0 Ethnographic theory even after Darwinian evolution was under-determined throughout the nineteenth and even into the twentieth century, meaning that the varieties of evidences available about “primitive peoples” could support a variety of antagonistic theories.<\/p>\n

The works of Ellen Semple, Ellsworth Huntington<\/a>, Brooks Adams<\/a>, and others I have discussed here contain passages which historians have labeled “economic” or “geographical” determinism. \u00a0In response to these labels, I have proposed instead that the ascription of “determinism” has to do with the\u00a0privileging of one argument among many in a nineteenth century text.\u00a0 One can only call Brooks Adams an economic determinist if one ignores his arguments about blood or decadence.<\/p>\n

Historians diminish the significance or otherwise ignore other arguments since\u00a0 “determinism” is a particularly useful\u00a0category\u00a0for the construction of disciplinary histories. \u00a0Historians, through the use of the category of determinism, can narrate the prehistory of the profession as defined by ideology, necessity, and false first principles. \u00a0Historians narrate the emergence of a profession as the departure from first principles, ideology, and necessity, to an emphasis on methods of data collection, induction, and “objectivity.”<\/p>\n

The problems of this up from ideology narrative<\/em> are legion. \u00a0Robert Redfield<\/a>, for example, presents his own work as thoroughly modern due to his use of \u00a0“sociological\u00a0categories” and due to his focus on the transition from village to urban life.\u00a0 Far from being modern, Redfield’s sociological constructions depend upon a number of nineteenth century conventions and\u00a0dichotomies, including a volkish <\/em>account of the peasant. \u00a0Redfield’s work, like many practitioner’s narratives, presents itself as novel, revolutionary, and scientific, while\u00a0simultaneously\u00a0depending on the\u00a0“prehistory” of the profession.\u00a0 Redfield, while highlighting Boas’ revolutionary accomplishments, makes prodigious use of Tonnies, Bagehot, Tocqueville, Sumner, Maine, and others.<\/p>\n

Deniker’s work is stuck between narratives. \u00a0His skepticism regarding the applicability of “species” to human beings and his emphasis on\u00a0language\u00a0and material culture garner him a place among the “pre-Boasians” and among the prophets\u00a0of the “evolutionary synthesis.” \u00a0Deniker’s intentions notwithstanding, his account of the “Northern” or “Nordic race” was critical to Madison Grant’s racial absolutism. \u00a0Future ethnologists and anthropologists adopted Deniker’s writings due to the multiplicity of his arguments and the uncertain formulations of his concepts. \u00a0I’m less interested in, for now, how Deniker was utilized for the “evolutionary synthesis” — the answer is enough of his writings complicated the notion of race. \u00a0In the words of Larry T. Reynolds and Leonard Lieberman (Race and Other Misadventures<\/em>), Deniker “objected to the concept of race on the grounds that problems arise in applying zoological nomenclature to humans.”\u00a0 Instead, Deniker referred to “ethnic groups” formed by language, religion, and culture (149.)<\/p>\n

What Reynolds and Lieberman do not quote is the remainder of the definition, in which Deniker contends that ethnic groups, are those encompassing a variety of races, sub-species, and types, bound together by a common civilization, language, or religious beliefs.\u00a0 Manners and customs of individuals were important in\u00a0delineating ethnic groups; however, an ethnologist was also able to define “through minute analysis” a number of discrete “somatological\u00a0\u00a0units” an “aggregation of physical characteristics combined in a certain way.”\u00a0 These somatological units were zoological “types,” \u00a0idealizations which did not represent exactly the features of any one individual but was an approximation of the whole. \u00a0In highly civilized populations, there was a great inter-mixture of somatological units, while in more primitive locales, fewer units defined a population. \u00a0In the most primitive communities, somatological units corresponded to a zoological type or “species.” \u00a0Deniker’s discussion of “types” could be found in any antebellum ethnographic tract or pro-slavery work.<\/p>\n

Deniker was quick to note that a species, defined by Cuvier as the fertility of individuals within a given population with specific morphological characteristics, could not be as rigorously delineated with human beings as with animals or plants.\u00a0 This was the case since the fertility of human beings from morphologically dissimilar groups was not experimentally verified.\u00a0 “No one,” Deniker asserted, “has ever tried cross-breeding between the Australians and the Lapps (The Races of Man<\/em>, “Introduction.”)”<\/p>\n

Deniker complicated the notion of species and made due allowances for cultural determinants. \u00a0 He also considered the delineation of ethnic groups according to morphological characteristics and a more rigorous understanding of species among the human genus <\/em>to be limited not simply by conceptual difficulties but also through lack of evidence.\u00a0 Deniker did not argue against a racial basis for ethnology.\u00a0 He contended, rather, that our lack of knowledge about the fertility of specific populations precluded a precise delineation of what constituted a human species.<\/p>\n

Deniker took great stock in the importance of cranial measurements for physical anthropology. His claim that his science was distinct from that of phrenology, but there nevertheless was a “remote connection” between the size of the cranium walls and that of the brain. \u00a0As importantly, the size and shape of the skull “exhibits the greatest number of well-marked variations,” and “the differences in the form and the dimensions of the skull in correlation with those of the brain and the masicatory organ (the jaw and teeth,) serve to distinguish races and species, both in man and in other vertebra” (54.) \u00a0The skull, furthermore, has preserved the features of human beings throughout history. Deniker, much like Samuel Morton and Josiah Nott, begins to discuss cranial capacity.<\/p>\n

The races of Europe possessed a cranial capacity of 1500 to 1600 cubic centimeters while\u00a0Australian “bushmen” had a cranial capacity of 1250 to 1350 cubic centimeters (56.) \u00a0The differences in cranial capacity point to differences in brain weight, which Deniker arranges in a sliding scale from European to\u00a0Australasian, with the notable exception of the Eskimo, who has the largest cranium capacity.\u00a0 This difference holds true even with differences in weight and stature (100.) \u00a0It was not merely the weight of the brain which affected “psychic processes,” nor the size of the cerebral cortex, but the number of “sinuous folds” in the cortex. \u00a0A study of the distinctiveness of “sinuous folds” had yet to be attempted for all races (101.)<\/p>\n

The “Northern Race” — later\u00a0critical\u00a0for Madison Grant, author of “The Passing of the Great Race” — was “fair, dolichocephalic, and of very high stature,” and found in Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, as well as England and Scotland.\u00a0 (325-328.)\u00a0Deniker does not explicitly argue that there is an exact correspondence between cranial measurements and what we would now consider “intelligence” nor does he\u00a0unambiguously\u00a0deem non-white races inferior to Europeans. \u00a0However, a bias towards European whiteness runs throughout his text.<\/p>\n

Deniker is neither a\u00a0forbearer\u00a0of Boas nor of the evolutionary\u00a0synthesis. \u00a0Deniker is very much a nineteenth century ethnologist. \u00a0In his work, some passages point to the future of anthropology as the study of culture, while others suggest biological reductionism. \u00a0While not a racial theorist on the level of Josiah Nott, Deniker still\u00a0bequeaths virulent materials for future racial theorists, among them Madison Grant, whom I will discuss in the next post.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Joseph Deniker’s (1852-1915) human geography and ethnography illustrates the eternal persistence of old debates and the various uses of\u00a0canonical\u00a0authors, Cuvier and Darwin among them.\u00a0 There has been in my estimation no satisfactory narrative of the species problem from Cuvier through Prichard, Darwin, and turn of the century anthropologists, ethnologists, and human geographers. \u00a0Nor has there<\/p>\n

Continue Reading… Joseph Deniker, Species, and the “Northern Race” (Part 1)<\/span>Continue Reading…<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[39,83,141,184,225,315,396,397,526,715,867,879,886,994,1286,1338],"class_list":["post-7877","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-history-of-the-human-sciences","tag-a-c-haddon","tag-alexis-de-tocqueville","tag-ashley-montagu","tag-brooks-adams","tag-charles-darwin","tag-david-livingston","tag-ellen-semple","tag-ellsworth-huntington","tag-georges-cuvier","tag-james-prichard","tag-joseph-deniker","tag-josiah-nott","tag-julian-huxley","tag-madison-grant","tag-robert-redfield","tag-samuel-morton"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7877"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7877\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7877"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7877"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rational-action.com\/etherwave\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7877"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}