Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe: Ethnography, Anthropology, and Visual Culture, 1850-1930 ed. by Marsha Morton and Barbara Larson

Abstract

Reviewed by: Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe: Ethnography, Anthropology, and Visual Culture, 1850-1930 ed. by Marsha Morton and Barbara Larson Bariş Ülker Constructing Race on the Borders of Europe: Ethnography, Anthropology, and Visual Culture, 1850-1930. Edited by Marsha Morton and Barbara Larson. London: Bloomsbury, 2021. Pp. ix + 277. Cloth. $103.50. ISBN 978-1-3501-8232-5. This volume, edited by Marsha Morton and Barbara Larson, uncovers both the practices of ethnic othering and the resistance mechanisms in these processes, as they emerged within the visual and design arts. Although the essays concentrate on the period from the mid-nineteenth century to the late 1920s, during which period the arts were heavily influenced by the rise of ethnography and anthropology, the authors [End Page 379] extend their discussion on the creation of racial inequalities and systems of domination backwards and forwards in time. At the intersection of academic works related to postcolonialism, race, the history of ethnography and anthropology, Orientalism, and memory studies, these essays reflect on the complex relationships between power and knowledge. From a broader perspective, one of the most crucial contributions of this edited volume is its regional focus on Scandinavia, Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Russia. These regions not only reveal transnational connections in terms of geopolitical identities, but also generate linkages between migration patterns, linguistic developments, and collaborative ethnographic work. Therefore, the eleven chapters in this edited volume intend to go beyond Edward Said's binary model (depicted in Orientalism) by analyzing the fine and applied arts from Eastern and Northern Europe and Russia. In the first chapter, Patricia G. Berman explores how the concept of race, mediated through photography, became a crucial element in Norway's nation-building process. By photographing military recruits and gathering anthropometric data in the eastern and southern regions of the country, military physician Carl Oscar Eugen Arbo—as Berman argues in reference to the photographic theories of Margaret Olin, Deborah Poole, and Elizabeth Edwards—measured the physical capacity of the nation, encouraged a classification system for racial research through international collaborative work, promoted the authentic representation of the Norwegian mountain farmer for the nation-building process, and influenced the foundational arguments for the development of eugenics and racist ideologies in Europe and America. Similarly, Bart Pushaw's chapter considers the representation of colonial subjects within the Danish Empire through the interactions between archeologist Daniel Bruun and artist Johannes Klein, stemming from their expeditions, which would become part of various exhibitions. In contrast, Pushaw also depicts the works of Sámi artist John Savio as an example that challenges the anthropological gaze of the state, narratives of racial biology, and the perception of docile indigenous subjects. Alison W. Chang reflects, in chapter 3, on the oeuvre of Pia Arke, a Greenlandic/Danish artist, who used archival photos, reports, and collections to question untold and forgotten stories of Danish colonization in Scoresbysund, Greenland. Connecting Arke's uses of space, photographs, and stories to Homi Bhabha's understanding of "in-between" spaces, Chang illustrates the reconstruction of narrative and memory through Arke's personal stories, the materiality of images, and a critique of colonial mapping. In chapter 4, Robert Born and Dirk Suckow illustrate the multilayered Orientalist discourses in Transylvania and Hungary during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries by juxtaposing representations of Roma people in texts and images with the construction of national identities and music as a platform of mobilization and differentiation. In a complementary manner, in chapter 5, Marsha Morton analyzes the Orientalism surrounding Leopold Carl Müller's paintings of Egyptians, which [End Page 380] she situates between middle-class Viennese liberalism's interpretation of ethnic identities through ethnographic comparisons and the increasing influence of physical anthropology with its emphasis on biological racial difference, nationalist tensions, and prejudicial narratives. Elaborating on the idea of unity in diversity, Rebecca Houze points to the ethnographic interests of the Gödöllö art colony near Budapest (set up by middle-class artists and intellectuals who blended folk art practices and contributed to the production of a rich material culture), while Barbara Larson examines Paul Gauguin's visual representations of the Celts of Brittany through his interest in comparative linguistics...