From Boundary to Folded: the Spatial/Temporal Movements of Anthropometric Measurement Technologies and the Interfolding of “Race” and “Caste”

• In Event: Racialised Bodies and Knowledges

Abstract

My paper explores new ways of thinking the movement of scientific objects through a topological material-semiotic approach that brings into focus not only their spatial travels but also the layered temporalities. Based on a historical anthropological research case, I trace the movements of an anthropometric measurement technology, the anthropometer, from its “invention” in late 19th century in Switzerland, to its uses along the following century in practices of knowledge production in and between Germany and India. More precisely, I follow the use of this inscription device by anthropologist/sociologist Irawati Karvé (1905-1970), both during her research on racial differences in Berlin and during her research on “the racial” of “castes” and “tribes” in different settings in India. Beyond functioning as a boundary object across communities of practice, I argue that the measurements produced by the anthropometer can be better understood as a folded object (M’charek 2014). With this concept, we can grasp the complex relationality in the anthropometric makings of “race”, “caste” and “tribe” across different spatial and temporal contexts - even when “race” becomes less present. Thus, having in mind the historicity of anthropometric measurements as a folded object and of the technologies thereby involved, I analyze how “caste” and “tribe” were enacted – and, as an effect of this practice, become racialized. In this sense, my paper proposes a more attentive engagement with the temporalities of such scientific objects, thereby contributing to the understanding of the transformation of racialized knowledge in its long travels across time and space.

Author

• Thiago Pinto Barbosa, Leibniz-Zentrum Moderner Orient