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"This is the first paperback edition of the only English-language translation of the Haitian scholar Antnor Firmin's The Equality of the Human Races, a foundational text in critical anthropology first published in 1885 when anthropology was just emerging as a specialized field of study. Marginalized for its ""radical"" position that the human races were equal, Firmin's lucid and persuasive treatise was decades ahead of its time. Arguing that the equality of the races could be demonstrated through a positivist scientific approach, Firmin challenged racist writings and the dominant views of the day. Translated by Asselin Charles and framed by Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban's substantial introduction, this rediscovered text is an important contribution to contemporary scholarship in anthropology, pan-African studies, and colonial and postcolonial studies."
Antenor Firmin's "Equality of Human Races" is a pioneering work of early anthropology written in French by a Haitian who is probably anthropology's first scholar of African descent. Firmin published "De l' galit des Races Humaines " in Paris in 1885 twenty years after the 'Father of Racism, ' Count Arthur de Gobineau, published "Essai sur l'in galiti des Races Humaines." De Gobineau's racist tome was translated into several languages and influenced Nazi ideology, while Firmin's work became obscure and marginal in the anthropological and scientific communities it sought to affect. "Equality of Human Races " is far more than a response to de Gobineau. It is a substantial work of early anthropo...
Joseph Anténor Firmin (1850–1911) was the reigning public intellectual and political critic in Haiti in the nineteenth century. He was the first “Black anthropologist” and “Black Egyptologist” to deconstruct the Western interpretation of global history and challenge the ideological construction of human nature and theories of knowledge in the Western social sciences and the humanities. As an anti-racist intellectual and cosmopolitan thinker, Firmin’s writings challenge Western ideas of the colonial subject, race achievement, and modernity’s imagination of a linear narrative based on the false premises of social evolution and development, colonial history and epistemology, and ...
For much of history, strangers were routinely classified as barbarians and inferiors, seldom as fellow human beings. The notion of a common humanity was counterintuitive and thus had to be invented. Siep Stuurman traces evolving ideas of human equality and difference across continents and civilizations from ancient times to the present. Despite humans’ deeply ingrained bias against strangers, migration and cultural blending have shaped human experience from the earliest times. As travelers crossed frontiers and came into contact with unfamiliar peoples and customs, frontier experiences generated not only hostility but also empathy and understanding. Empires sought to civilize their “barb...
In her newest book, anthropologist Carolyn Fluehr-Lobban examines the foundations of race in American society. She offers a simple and accessible explanation of the biology of race and a cross-cultural perspective on the social context of race, color-coding, ethnicity and ethnocentrism. In a world where race is a factor in almost every society and its politics, the author finds abundant evidence that race is a dynamic, changing concept. Her book is a fascinating and thoughtful assessment of the nature of race and racism, and will be of value to readers and instructors in anthropology, sociology, education, and ethnic studies. Visit our website for sample chapters!
"Savage Seasons recounts a woman's efforts to free her husband, a journalist arrested by the brutal regime of the Haitian government in the 1960s"--
From St. Augustine and early Ethiopian philosophers to the anti-colonialist movements of Pan-Africanism and Negritude, this encyclopedia offers a comprehensive view of African thought, covering the intellectual tradition both on the continent in its entirety and throughout the African Diaspora in the Americas and in Europe. The term "African thought" has been interpreted in the broadest sense to embrace all those forms of discourse - philosophy, political thought, religion, literature, important social movements - that contribute to the formulation of a distinctive vision of the world determined by or derived from the African experience. The Encyclopedia is a large-scale work of 350 entries covering major topics involved in the development of African Thought including historical figures and important social movements, producing a collection that is an essential resource for teaching, an invaluable companion to independent research, and a solid guide for further study.