Sign up to save your podcasts
Or
Share Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Share to email
Share to Facebook
Share to X
Or
Thiago P. Barbosa, "Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970)" (de Gruyter Oldenbourg, 2025)
Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowledge has circulated in transnational entanglements, particularly between Germany and India, into the research on human variation in India, racializing the understanding of caste and ethnicity. It focuses on the legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970), an Indian anthropologist trained at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity in Berlin, Germany (1927-1930) and a prominent scientist in post-colonial India. Besides a historical analysis of Karve's adaptation of racial approaches to the study of Indian castes, the book applies material-semiotic and ethnographic lenses to examine how her work is taken up today in anthropology and population genetics. By showing how transnational and transcolonial entanglements in race science shape knowledge on human diversity in India, the book offers novel insights to discussions in anthropology, STS, and global history, including the racialization of difference, colonial legacies, and post-colonial sovereignty in science. It contributes to a better understanding of the co-constitution of politics and sciences of human diversity and it argues for a closer attention to inequalities as a way to de-link from the legacies of scientific racism.
Thiago Pinto Barbosa is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Leipzig.
Armanc Yildiz is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
View all episodes
By New Books Network
4.2
5050 ratings
Racializing Caste: Anthropology Between Germany and India and the Legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970) (De Gruyter, 2025) analyzes how racial knowledge has circulated in transnational entanglements, particularly between Germany and India, into the research on human variation in India, racializing the understanding of caste and ethnicity. It focuses on the legacy of Irawati Karve (1905-1970), an Indian anthropologist trained at the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Eugenics, and Human Heredity in Berlin, Germany (1927-1930) and a prominent scientist in post-colonial India. Besides a historical analysis of Karve's adaptation of racial approaches to the study of Indian castes, the book applies material-semiotic and ethnographic lenses to examine how her work is taken up today in anthropology and population genetics. By showing how transnational and transcolonial entanglements in race science shape knowledge on human diversity in India, the book offers novel insights to discussions in anthropology, STS, and global history, including the racialization of difference, colonial legacies, and post-colonial sovereignty in science. It contributes to a better understanding of the co-constitution of politics and sciences of human diversity and it argues for a closer attention to inequalities as a way to de-link from the legacies of scientific racism.
Thiago Pinto Barbosa is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of Leipzig.
Armanc Yildiz is a postdoctoral researcher at Humboldt University.
Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices
Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/anthropology
More shows like New Books in Anthropology
View all
The New Yorker Radio Hour
6,754 Listeners
Philosophize This!
15,207 Listeners
The LRB Podcast
295 Listeners
New Books in Philosophy
112 Listeners
New Books in History
210 Listeners
New Books in Military History
161 Listeners
New Books in Critical Theory
147 Listeners
New Books in Sociology
46 Listeners
New Books in Political Science
63 Listeners
New Books in Economics
27 Listeners
History of Philosophy Without Any Gaps
1,599 Listeners
New Books in Psychoanalysis
185 Listeners
Ideas
380 Listeners
New Books in African American Studies
164 Listeners
New Books in Environmental Studies
23 Listeners
New Books in Native American Studies
103 Listeners
New Books in Intellectual History
61 Listeners
The China in Africa Podcast
209 Listeners
Philosophy For Our Times
318 Listeners
Novara Media
170 Listeners
The Dig
1,570 Listeners
Theory & Philosophy
374 Listeners
Hard Fork
5,470 Listeners
The Way Out Is In
1,324 Listeners