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Rewriting the history of Irish anthropology part 1: BEROSE International Encyclopaedia.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 6, 2022 – 12:16 pm
Filed under Comment, Criticism, Research
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Anon. 1885. Dredging party, 1885, with friends.
Sitting, left to right: A.C. Haddon (in front of light suit), S. Haughton, W. S. Green, C. B. Ball;
Standing: Sir D’Arcy W. Thompson (light suit), Sir R. S. Ball (yachting cap), Valentine Ball (at end of trawl),
Permission of the Royal Irish Academy © RIA

BEROSE International Encyclopaedia of the Histories of Anthropology has commissioned Ciarán Walsh to write a new entry on the life and work of Alfred Cort Haddon (1865 – 1940). The entry draws on independent post-doc research for a ground-breaking reassessment of Haddon’s contribution to the modernisation of anthropology that Berghahn Books commissioned as part of its series on Anthropology’s Ancestors. Alfred Cort Haddon: a very English savage (in Ireland) is due out in 2023 and represents a radical reworking of Haddon’s work as an artist, philosopher, ethnologist and anti-racism activist whose experiments in photo-ethnography cinematography constitute a singularly modernist achievement in anthropology.

The timing couldn’t be better. The photograph above records a seminal moment in the brave new world of practical marine biology which sets the scene for Haddon’s enthusiastic entry into ethnology two years later, an event that was so disruptive it triggered a decade-long battle with anatomists who attempted to restrict academic anthropology to the study of the natural history of the human species in situations defined by theoretical positions compatible with empire and evolution. This scenario has its analogue in the current stand-off between those who see anthropology as an engaged and essentially emancipatory project and those who operate a restricted form of practical anthropology within a neoliberal academy.

As such, the BEROSE entry represents the first part of a new history of anthropology in Ireland. It addresses key themes of the current debate about what it means to do anthropology (to borrow a phrase from Clifford Geertz) in the intertwined contexts of an engagement with colonial legacies sparked by the Black Lives Matter Movement, legislated genocide in the Amazon and other flash-points across the globe, and the restrictions on knowledge production that characterise a neoliberal academy.

BEROSE will publish “Artist, Philosopher, Ethnologist and Activist: The Life and Work of Alfred Cort Haddon (1855-1940)” by Ciarán Walsh in August 2022.

Research Update | October 2018

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on October 3, 2018 – 1:59 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Research

 

 

 

Reading Haddon …

Four years ago, I was given the job of finding out what exactly was going on in the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, which was established in TCD in 1891. My research has focussed on the Laboratory’s programme of ethnographic surveys in the west of Ireland, which were conducted by “head-hunters” Alfred Cort Haddon and Charles R. Browne between 1892 and 1900.

The main question is this: what do the surveys tell us about the development of (1) social documentary photography in Ireland and (2) a western imaginary based on island life in the west of Ireland? My research also considers the ethical and practical implications of placing material from the laboratory–including anatomical specimens–into the public domain, especially in the context of debates about the relation between body, image, and identity in contemporary Ireland.

 

BBC Northern Ireland on location in “Old” Anatomy TCD in 2018. Brendan Holland and Martina Hennessy, TCD School of Medicine, discuss the relevance of historic anatomical/anthropological specimens to current medical research (see the Giant Gene)

 

Four years on the project is entering its final phase. The tricky task of converting extensive  work on primary sources in Dublin and Cambridge is well underway and slowly taking shape as a text. This text is structured around the idea of murderous, little facts from the hidden spaces of anthropology in Ireland. These facts have produced some interesting results; not least the need for some radical new thinking about the history of anthropology as a whole.

 

Ugly Little Facts: Aidan Baker, Librarian of the Haddon Library in Cambridge, with a collection of papers relating to the Aran Islands. The documents were placed in an envelope in 1913 and “lost.” They were rediscovered in 2013 in a search for Haddon’s notes and/or other papers relating to “The Ethnography of the Aran Islands, County Galway” (Haddon &  Browne 1893). 

 

Murderous Little Facts

The origin of this trope–ugly little facts–comes from an unlikely source. Thomas Henry Huxley is credited with coining the phrase in a conversation recalled by Francis Galton in his memoirs (1908).  Herbert Spencer revealed in conversation that he once wrote a tragedy. Huxley declared that the ‘catastrophe had to be a ‘beautiful theory killed by a nasty ugly little fact.’

My theory–or historiographical framework perhaps–is that the disciplinary history of anthropology operates around a foundational trope. Haddon is represented as taking anthropology out of the armchair and into the field in 1898; after he had escaped from the Darwinian backwater that was Dublin in the 1890s. That claim is not supported by facts in the Haddon papers and related sources but, repeated often enough, it has become a form of disciplinary folklore that has compressed the history of anthropology and circumscribed narratives like that of the  Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory.

 

Reading Haddon: A small section of the Haddon Papers in Cambridge University Library.

 

The strategy I have adopted in response is to use overlooked primary sources as “tropocidal” facts; using ugly, little facts gleaned from the forgotten spaces of anthropology to kill off the armchair trope and suggest some alternative narratives. The Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, in this scenario,  becomes  (1) the site of a  struggle for disciplinary authority between conservative (biological) and radical (sociological) elements within “organised” anthropology in the 1890s, (2) an agent of the development of an equally radical, photo-ethnographic practice in fieldwork associated with the Laboratory and (3) the starting point for John Millington Synge’s exploration of peasant life in the West of Ireland.

 

 

Photography as ethnography: a photograph taken by Browne on the Great Blasket Island in 1897.  The man in the middle is Tomás Ó Criomhtain, An tOileánach, one of the most celebrated figures of the Blasket Island Community and an important figure in folklore studies in Ireland. Photograph courtesy of the Board of TCD.

 

Forgotten Spaces

This study is  grounded in the discovery of artefacts,  records, and photographs associated with the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory, which prompted a new reading of Haddon’s association with it. In 2014 Siobhán Ward of TCD started unpacking tea chests containing a substantial collection of historical material from the School of Anatomy.  This material included specimens, instruments, records, paper and a spectacular collection of glass plate negatives dating from 1890. This material had ‘disappeared’ in 1948 when it was placed in long-term storage under the theatre in the “Old” Anatomy Building.

Reconstruction of the anthropological collection began in February 2016 and the contents of the tea chests have since been recorded, sorted, and tallied with related material in other collections in Ireland and UK. It wasn’t long before a gap opened up between the conventional history of pre-modern anthropology in Ireland and the ugly little facts —documentary and material— that had  emerged from “Old” Anatomy.

 

“Unpacking” the Dublin Anthropometric Laboratory in 2016. An early photograph showing the anatomical and anthropological material discovered in the “Old” Anatomy building in 2014. The records of the Laboratory and associated artefacts are visible in the foreground. They include the schedules of measurements taken in the Aran Islands in 1892, Daniel J. Cunningham’s cast of the cranial topography of a chimpanzee, and some of the psychometric instruments designed by Francis Galton.

 

Finally …

“Unpacking” the Laboratory has become, unexpectedly, a confrontation with the historiography of anthropology. This has meant spending just over two years reading what Haddon wrote – rather than reading about what Haddon was thought to have done – and this  has produced some interesting new narratives.

 

This part of the project will conclude in 2019 … hopefully.

 

Ciarán Walsh | Oct 3, 2018

 

 

 

 

 

Fairscin Inise / An Island Portrait is a big hit in the Outer Hebrides.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on June 26, 2015 – 1:20 pm
Filed under Exhibition, Heritage, Photography

 ceoec.ru

 

 

Major research proposal endorsed by NUI Maynooth

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on August 9, 2014 – 4:37 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Education, Heritage, Research

Mark Maguire, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds and Steve Coleman

Mark Maguire, Head of Anthropology NUI Maynooth, Ciarán Walsh , Nicola Reynolds, President of thr Anthropological Society NUIM and Steve Coleman, NUIM at the opening of the Headhunter exhibition in NUI Maynooth in October 2013.

A major research proposal prepared by Ciarán Walsh for the Irish Research Council’s (IRC) Employment Based Post-graduate Programme has been endorsed by the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM)  and now proceeds to the IRC for evaluation and adjudication. The proposal builds on the work that Walsh has been doing on the ‘Haddon in Ireland Project’ and involves a 4 year post-graduate research project supervised by Mark Maguire of NUIM in partnership with Abarta Audio Guides, a small heritage services company operated by Neil Jackman and Róisín Burke.

Neil Jackman of Abarta Audio Guides: http://abartaaudioguides.com/about-us

The ‘Haddon in Ireland’ research project brings together public research (NUI Maynooth), private sector innovation (Abarta Audio, Clonmel) and a researcher with a proven track record (Ciaran Walsh) to reopen and reexamine the history of human science in the British isles.

Anthropometry Inisbofin 6007

This project aims to explore the Irish Ethnographic Survey, an attempt to reveal the origins of the Irish ‘race’ undertaken by scientists from Ireland and the UK between 1891 and 1903. Among them was the famous AC Haddon. This was the beginning of ‘scientific’ Anthropology but it was overshadowed by subsequent developments in Cambridge. The records were ‘lost,’ dispersed over collections in Ireland and the UK where they have remained uncatalogued and largely overlooked for 120 years.

The primary aim to reconstruct that archive and place it in the public domain. The central question is how that can be achieved, given that the material is spread over a dozen institutions in 4 jurisdictions. We will look to the latest interactive technology for solutions.

We propose to create a transnational network that digitally links collections Dublin, Cambridge, London, Edinburgh and Belfast. We will develop interactive tools that will provide access to it and enhance the users experience of our anthropological heritage. The contemporary significance of this is enormous. The Survey’s attempts to trace the origins of the Irish people continues with the genetic study of populations.

This project will reconnect both and the transnational component will add enormously to the impact of the project on the public construction of Anthropological knowledge.

Ciarán Walsh rewrites the history of anthropology at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute in the British Museum

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on July 2, 2014 – 4:40 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Heritage, Photography, Research

Photograph show Jocelyne Dudding, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge and Ciarán Walsh, www.curator.ie, posing for a photograph in the foyer of the British Museum in London. They were participating in a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum on the links between Anthropology and Photography.

Jocelyne Dudding, Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge and Ciarán Walsh of www.curator.ie  in the foyer of the British Museum in London. 




It’s a big claim, but papers presented by Jocelyne Dudding and Ciarán Walsh at the Anthropology and Photography conference in the British Museum (May 2014)  have challenged the chronology  of the early development of British anthropology and Haddon’s role in it.

Dudding and Walsh have been working on the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project for the past 6 months, focussing on  photographic and manuscript collections that are held in Cambridge  – in the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA), the Haddon Library and the University Library. 

They presented preliminary finding of their research at a conference organised by the Royal Anthropological Institute and the British Museum. The research, part funded by the Heritage Council of Ireland, is part of a project that is attempting to reconstruct the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey of 1891-1903.

The photographic record of the  the Survey, the photograph albums of Charles R. Browne, were published by  www.curator.ie in 2012 as part of the  the ‘Irish Headhunter’ project. The albums are held in TCD but there was no trace of any paperwork that could place them in context. The search moved to Cambridge and significant work has been done in the photographic collections of the MAA  and the Haddon Papers in the Haddon and University Libraries there.

Preliminary findings suggest that the Survey, established by Haddon and Cunningham in TCD in 1891,  played a much greater role in Haddon’s transition from Zoology to Anthropology than had previously been thought. The photographic record, correspondence and journal entries reveal a lot about Haddon’s role in the survey with significant implications for the history of the early development of anthropology.

These are being teased as the ‘Haddon in Ireland’ project continues with the re-construction of the archive of the Irish Ethnographic Survey.

 

 

 

 

‘Haddon In Ireland’ project commences in Cambridge

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on May 5, 2014 – 8:07 am
Filed under Anthropology, Exhibition, Heritage, Photography, Research

IMG_2907polvam.ru

sports74.ru

www.curator.ie has commenced work on a project that promises to significantly rewrite the history of the early development of anthropology. Supported by a grant from the Heritage Council of Ireland, the initial phase of the ‘Haddon In Ireland’ project comprises of an assessment of unpublished photographs and manuscripts held in the Haddon Library and the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (MAA) in Cambridge, in partnership with Aidan Baker, Librarian at Haddon, and Jocelyne Dudding, Manager of Photographic Collections at the MAA.

Aidan Risbeth Ciaran

Aidan Baker, Margaret Rishbeth (granddaughter of Alfred Cort Haddon) and Ciarán Walsh at the launch of the ‘Irish Headhunter’ exhibition in the Haddon Library in 2013.

Major feature on Anthropology by Ciarán Walsh in Irish Independent Newspaper

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on January 4, 2014 – 1:14 pm
Filed under Anthropology, Journalism

 Солнечный водонагреватель своими руками

 

 

 

 

The ‘ Irish Headhunter’ exhibition organised by www.curator.ie got a remarkable response from anthropologists working in Ireland. The project was featured in the Irish Journal of Anthropology and the exhibition was shown in the National University of Ireland Maynooth (NUIM) which has the only Anthropology Department in the state.   This switched the focus from the 1890s to the present and, in this feature commissioned by the Irish independent Newspaper editor Katie Byrne, Ciarán Walsh explores the role of contemporary Irish anthropologists. It features extracts from interviews with Mark Maguire, Head of Anthropology in NUIM; Nicola Reynolds, President of the  Anthropology Society NUIM; Fiona Murphy, Dublin City University School of Business and, Patrick Slevin of Applied Research for Connected Health (ARCH). Each of the contributors outlines what they see as the main challenges facing Irish society in 2014 from an anthropological perspective.

 

See: http://irishindependent.newspaperdirect.com/epaper/viewer.aspx (Weekend Magazine)

 

 

 

www.curator.ie and Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, Cambridge agree on joint research project

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on December 13, 2013 – 4:48 pm
Filed under Heritage, Photography, Research

 veroxybd.comaton-mebel.ru

 

 

 

Further details to be announced in January 2014.

 

www.curator.ie participating in RAI conference on anthropology and photography, London.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on December 11, 2013 – 4:01 pm
Filed under Criticism, Heritage, Photography

RAI Anthrop Photog

Босерон

www.curator.ie is participating in a conference on anthropology and photography being organised by the RAI (Royal Anthropological Institute) in the British Museum, London, on 29th- 31st May 2014.

Ciarán Walsh is a member of a panel being convened by Dr Jocelyne Dudding of the Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology in Cambridge University. The panel came together as a result of the ‘Headhunter’ project being shown in Cambridge University in September followed by the National University of Ireland Maynooth in October 2013. Dr. Mark H. Maguire, Dept. of Anthropology, NUI Maynooth and Dáithí de Mórdha of Ionad an Bhlascaoid Mhóir (The Great Blasket Centre) will also be taking part. Dáithí is co-curator of the ‘Headhunter’ project.

The panel will be examining the importance of photography in the Ethnographic Survey of Ireland of 1891-1903 in the context of social, cultural and political issues that framed anthropology in Ireland in the 1890s and, continue to influence it to this day.

Information: RAI (Royal Anthropological Institute)

Exhibition of Blasket Island photography extended due to popular demand.

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Posted by Ciaran Walsh on November 26, 2013 – 2:16 pm
Filed under Exhibition, Heritage, Photography

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Latest News



TCD to announce return of ancestral remains to Inishbofin



Blogging resumes on Ballymaclinton: An Irish giant, 24 stolen skulls, one colonial legacies project and a slave owner named Berkeley.



Is the TCD statement on the stolen skulls of Inishbofin a missed opportunity?



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