Arthur Ruppin's Concept of Race

Abstract

Focusing on Arthur Ruppin's conception of race, I show that race was a stable category in his work—from his first published work in 1903 to his last one in 1940. While Ruppin's overall understanding of race did not undergo major changes throughout his career, I argue that under the influence of German racial science, the volume of Ruppin's writing on race in the 1920s and the 1930s increased. What makes Ruppin an especially interesting case is the coexistence found in his work between a deterministic racial outlook and his belief in humanism. In the first part of the article I establish race as a constant in Ruppin's model showing that it ranges from an explicit category to social and demographic considerations that are interwoven with racial considerations. In the second part I place Ruppin's conception of race in historical perspective and analyze its epistemological status.