Entangled traditions of race

Abstract

This article discusses the relationship between race and physical anthropology in Hungary and Romania between 1900 and 1940. It begins by looking at institutional developments in both countries and how these influenced the most important Hungarian and Romanian anthropologists' professional and research agendas. Drawing from a wide range of primary sources, the article reveals the significant role the concept of race played in articulating anthropological and ethnic narratives of national belonging. It is necessary to understand the appeal of the idea of race in this context. With idealized images of national communities and racial hierarchies creeping back into Eastern European popular culture and politics, one needs to understand the latent and often unrecognized legacies of race in shaping not only scientific disciplines like anthropology, but also the emergence and entrancement of modern Hungarian and Romanian nationalism.

Carrying Europe’s ‘White Burden’, Sustaining Racial Capitalism: Young Post-Soviet Migrant Workers in Helsinki and Warsaw

“…In a similar vein, Dzenovska's (2013) work on the ways postsocialist Latvia has attempted to reinscribe itself into Europeanness by claiming colonial possessions is another poignant reminder of the continued salience of coloniality in contemporary European politics. Likewise, racial science, physical anthropology and eugenics were not alien to Eastern Europe, having played a role in constituting ideas of the nation, blood and lineage (Gawin, 2007;Mogilner, 2013;Turda, 2010). European racialized imagination of modernity was expressed in consumer culture and entertainment, such as 'human zoos' in Moscow and Riga (Novikova, 2013).…”