Race and Sociological Reason in the Republic

Abstract

This article compares two collective surveys on the métis conducted in 1908 and 1937 in the French colonies. Métis was a category used mostly to describe children born out of wedlock to indigenous mothers and European fathers. The first inquiry was sponsored by anthropologists of the Société d'anthropologie de Paris; the second was an administrative survey that brought together social scientists, administrators and a variety of other experts. The comparison sheds light on the specific trajectory of the ` métis problem' in the French Empire, and on the process of construction of a social category. More broadly, it invites a reappraisal of the signification and role of race in both the construction of French citizenship and the history of French social thought in the first half of the 20th century.