Austrian socio-cultural anthropology 1945-1965

Founded in 1929 by the two Steyl missionaries Wilhelm Koppers and Wilhelm Schmidt, the Institute of Ethnology (today Department of Social and Cultural Anthropology) at the University of Vienna became the largest and most important institution for ethnology in the German-speaking world in the post WWII period. The aim of this research project is to systematically examine Austrian socio-cultural anthropology with its numerous interdisciplinary connections and international networks in the period from 1945 to 1965 for the first time. 

The research project comprises three work packages to which a total of nine research topics are assigned. The questions and hypotheses include the transformation of central networks, the main protagonists and their lasting achievements as well as markers in the history of ideas. The first work package deals with the “legacy” of the Nazi past but also with Catholic networks and pioneering appointments to chairs at the Institute of Ethnology in Vienna. The second work package is dedicated to international networks. Here, the outstanding importance of conferences and research funding institutions (e.g. UNESCO, Wenner-Gren Foundation) for Austrian socio-cultural anthropology is highlighted and examined. Finally, the third work package deals with interdisciplinary cooperation (e.g. prehistoric archaeology, Japanese studies, Anthropos institutes in Asia), the renewal of ethnographic film and biographical examples of scholars from Austria making an international career in this field. 

Theoretically, the project follows in the tradition of US anthropology’s historian George W. Stocking, who explicitly favours biographical, institutional and historical contextualization over presentist approaches. Epistemologically and methodologically, a source analysis is pursued that combines the approaches of historical anthropology with those of contemporary history for anthropological historiography. Archival research will be carried out in Austria, Italy, Germany, France, UK and in the USA. In addition, secondary contemporary witnesses will be interviewed with the help of standard interviews. 

The scientific correspondence kept in a private archive in Rome can be estimated at over twenty thousand folios. On the basis of these archive sources, completely new questions can be developed in conjunction with other private and state archives. The high density of correspondence will make it possible not only to write a diachronic history of the Vienna Institute in the narrower sense, but also to carry out synchronic studies on international networks and interdisciplinary connections, which will provide a completely new picture of socio-cultural anthropology in Austria during the post-war period up to the 1960s.