What is armchair anthropology? Observational practices in 19 th -century British human sciences

Observation and 19^th-century anthropology

Simon Schaffer argued in his essay ‘From Physics to Anthropology and Back Again’ (1994) that the history of anthropology is full of myths. For instance, canonizing early 20^th-century figures such as Alfred Cort Haddon (1855–1940) and Bronislaw Malinowski (1884–1942) as revolutionists within the discipline has obscured the story of anthropology (Schaffer, 1994: 6–7). As Anna Grimshaw noted in her book The Ethnographer’s Eye (2001), ‘The revolution which Malinowski claimed as his own established new goals for his followers and they set their sights on a position as scientists within the academy; in their drive for professional recognition, these new scholars sought to effect a radical break between the past and present’ (Grimshaw, 2001: 4). The disciplinary transformations, which scholars have associated with the early 20^th century, are misleading because they blur the connections between 19^th-century and 20^th-century methodologies. Furthermore, positioning 19^th-century anthropology as an armchair pursuit without critically engaging with the meaning of this category is particularly problematic, because it has led to historical accounts that have further divided the history of the discipline into divergent methodological epochs (Sera-Shriar, 2011: 486). ¹

Barbara Tedlock – who has written extensively on ethnographic field practice – has argued that ‘The Mythic History of anthropology is populated by four archetypes: the amateur observer, the armchair anthropologist, the professional ethnographer, and the “gone native” fieldworker’. Rather than challenging this mythologized depiction of a disjointed discipline, Tedlock endorses it, emphasizing a pronounced division between the contributions of armchair-based ‘amateur observers’ from the late 18^th and early 19^th centuries, and the field-based ‘professional ethnographers’ from the first half of the 20^th century. In her version, informants such as missionaries, colonial officers and explorers were the sole providers of material for the armchair cogitations of 19^th-century practitioners. It was not until the 1910s that academically trained ethnographers travelled abroad to undertake a recognizable form of intensive fieldwork and collect their own data (Tedlock, 1991: 69).

Schaffer, however, shifts away from this historiographical tradition by showing how figures such as Haddon were not ground-breaking researchers for the discipline, but rather they built their observational techniques on pre-existing methodologies. Thus, for example, Haddon’s training in zoology both inside the laboratory and outside in the field played a critical role in shaping his observational practices (Schaffer, 1994). ² Building upon Schaffer’s analysis, it is instructive to push this point further by examining how the observational practices of British ethnologists and anthropologists transformed during the 19^th century. In doing so, it will help to demonstrate further the continuities that exist between 19^th-century studies on human variation and 20^th-century anthropology. At the same time, I want to emphasize that there is still much to learn about the history of anthropology when one begins to look at the whole activity conducted during the so-called armchair period of the discipline.

Anthropology was in its formative years during the 19^th century, and the boundaries of the research field were being sketched. The disciplinary division between physical anthropology and its socio-cultural counterpart was not clear-cut in this period and many ethnological and anthropological accounts included aspects of both analytical traditions. Even the discipline’s designation was loosely defined during this period. Researchers interested in racial variation used an array of disciplinary terms to describe their research programmes. These terms included the natural history of man, the scientific study of man or race, ethnology, anthropology and ethnography. Each of these terms had varying definitions and this highlights the fractured and transitional state of the emerging science (Sera-Shriar, 2013: 8–20).

Our starting point should begin by reconsidering the categories we ascribe to our actors. Kuklick and others have suggested that the study of humans in the first half of the 19^th century was a type of natural history (Kuklick, 1997: 53). However, such a characterization requires some further unpacking. For instance, studying natural history was not a passive observational practice where naturalists simply anthologized the materials collected by others. Naturalists were highly attuned to the problems associated with using second-hand reports. To ensure the quality of their data, naturalists built an active relationship with the various informants who were gathering evidence abroad. Practitioners of the sciences relating to human diversity were no exception, and they were acutely aware of the sorts of information they required for their studies on human varieties and they responded by directing the collecting methods of their informants. ³

One of the more famous examples of British instructional texts for collecting data on races was published in 1854. Two of the founding members of the Ethnological Society of London (f. 1843), Thomas Hodgkin (1798–1866) and Richard Cull produced an ethnological questionnaire, entitled ‘A Manual of Ethnological Inquiry’ (Hodgkin and Cull, 1854: 193–208). Michael Bravo remarked that ‘The success of ethnological research was dependant on gaining reliable access to information about the people of other nations’ (Bravo, 1996: 342). Hodgkin and Cull’s text functioned as a statement of intent for British ethnologists and it demonstrated that the emerging discipline was trying to raise the scientific criteria of its research practices by standardizing its methods for acquiring data. The questionnaire included instructions on how to collect information about the anatomy and physiology of different races, their customs and habits, material culture and languages. It was purposefully designed so that it could be applied to any race. It included categories such as ‘Physical Characters’, ‘Languages’ and ‘Individuals and Family Life’ (Sera-Shriar, 2013: 74–6).

For Kuklick, however, the quintessential armchair scholar from the 19^th century did not engage in a practical study of humans per se, because he relied on the observations of untrained informants. Fieldwork was seen as dangerous, dirty and unfit for gentlemen. Thus, it was informants from the lower classes who collected data in situ and provided ‘gentlemen-naturalists’ with material for natural-philosophical theorizing. She wrote:

… the theoretical aspect of scientific work was for the mass of gentlemen-naturalists a comfortable task, performed within the familiar confines of their studies. Whether elite scholars were concerned to classify and explain flower, insect, or human variation, they confidently based their generalisations on data gathered by a congeries of collectors. (Kuklick, 1997: 53)

Darwin is a strong example of a travelling ethnologist. Throughout his 5-year journey on board the Beagle, he had many opportunities to examine different human varieties in their indigenous habitats, and he recorded his experiences in his travel diary. Darwin’s ethnological interests were a frequent theme throughout his journals, and he regularly noted similarities between the various races he observed in situ. There were also recognizable examples of monogenetic theorizing – which argued in favour of the single origin of humans – in his journal entries. For example, while studying local tribes on the island of Chiloe off the western coast of South America, he wrote: ‘Everything I have seen convinces me of the close connection of the different tribes, who yet speak distinct languages … It is a pleasant thing in any case to see aboriginal inhabitants, advanced to the same degree of civilisation, however low that may be’ (Keynes, 2001: 266). Darwin’s narrative was also an important evidentiary source for ethnologists back in Britain and it furnished researchers with data for their theories of human ancestry. ⁴

Kuklick’s categorization of gentlemen-naturalists as a term to describe a group of researchers interested in natural history (broadly construed) also requires further reflection. The spectrum of 19^th-century practitioners that could be demarcated as gentlemen-naturalists could include independently wealthy figures such as Darwin, or down-and-out figures such as Robert Knox (1791–1862), who after his involvement in the West Port Murders (1827–8) lost much of his social and professional standing within Britain and barely lived above a level of pauperism. Despite his loss of reputation from the late 1820s onward, Knox was still considered to be an important – albeit controversial – contributor to medical and natural history discussions right up until his death in 1862 (Sera-Shriar, 2011: 488–91). Kuklick has also portrayed figures such as Edward Burnett Tylor (1832–1917) and James Frazer (1854–1941) as passive observers of ethnographic material, at the mercy of colonial informants and disengaged from their collecting practices (Kuklick, 1991: 14–16). However, this was not the case: both of these figures were highly attuned to the problems associated with using evidence collected by informants and each actively organized and monitored ethnographic exchange networks throughout the empire (Edwards, 2001: 27–42). In 1872, as an example, Tylor and several other members of the newly amalgamated British anthropological community produced the first questionnaire for the Anthropological Institute (f. 1871). It was an important precursor to Notes and Queries in Anthropology, which was the most famous ethnographic questionnaire ever to be produced by anthropologists, and was reworked into 6 different editions between 1874 and 1951 (Urry, 1993: 18–19). As was the case with Hodgkin and Cull’s manual from the 1850s, the aim of the guide was to enhance the quality of the data collected by informants travelling and living throughout the world. The questions were divided thematically into 8 main sections, with each part written by a different figure specializing in that area. Tylor wrote section two and it focused on questions relating to mythology, religion and social organization. It utilized techniques such as cultural survivals and animism, which were outlined in his book Primitive Culture from 1871 (Tylor, 1871). He included questions such as ‘What ideas have they of souls and other spirits? What do they think of dreams and visions? Are they appearances of spirits?’ (Davis et al., 1873: 137). ⁵ By following these sets of questions Tylor – and the other contributors to the guide – were attempting to direct the collecting practices of travellers in order to maximize their results and satisfy the research needs of anthropologists in Britain.

It is also significant to recognize that the importance of the field as we understand it today had yet to be established in the first half of the 19^th century. Practitioners were more concerned with refining their methods and theories for analysing ethnographic data (generally) than with the amount of direct experience they had with indigenous peoples. In other words, how one made sense of the data was the key preoccupation. As Robert Kohler argued, for a naturalist such as George Cuvier, ‘fieldwork had the advantage of direct and vivid impressions, but [he would] assert that for breadth of comparison and objective analysis the closet naturalist had the advantage’ (Kohler, 2002: 2). Within the confines of their study, these naturalists stockpiled evidence and conducted comprehensive cross-comparative analyses of materials. They would identify patterns within their data sets, and discard information that looked untrustworthy.

Following on from this point, many social scientists and historians have underemphasized the fact that most early practitioners interested in human diversity conducted ethnological and anthropological research in their spare time. In the first half of the 19^th century it was virtually impossible to support oneself as a full-time researcher of human varieties, and so practitioners had other careers such as physicians or surgeons. William Lawrence (1783–1867) as an example was the professor of Anatomy and Surgery at the Royal College of Surgeons and his lectures on the Natural History of Man were originally delivered before medical students in London (Lawrence, 1828). Consequently, in many cases, practitioners were unable to conduct their own research abroad because of commitments in Britain. Using informants in the colonies to collect data was one of the most effective ways to compensate for this constraint.

Because of his numerous vocational commitments in Britain, Prichard was reliant on the accounts of voyagers for his data on different races. He wrote that ‘in order to obtain a clear view both separately and connectively of [humanity’s] physical history, we must follow in detail the observations of voyagers’ (Prichard, 1813: 282). The credibility of his book, Researches into the Physical History of Man (1813), rested partially on the principle that its evidence was collected in situ by people who had engaged first-hand with indigenous populations living throughout the world. Looking at the footnotes from the 1st edition of his Researches, we can see that Prichard’s evidence came from a broad range of sources. He drew upon the travel descriptions of explorers such as James Cook (1728–79), Scottish voyager James Bruce (1729–1811), the French circumnavigator Louis Antoine de Bougainville (1729–1811) and others. ⁶

When describing a race, Prichard pieced together the reports of several different explorers with the use of both quotations and general reference to their works. This was significant because it was an attempt to authenticate his racial descriptions. Prichard’s use of travel literature was part of a 4-step process. Within this framework, he saw travellers as data collectors and their observations as types of natural history specimens. He attempted to establish the credibility of these reports by emphasizing the accuracy of the observations. Once this was done, he would classify this evidence into groupings according to the similarities and differences described in the accounts. The final step within the process was to provide an analysis of the material and identify the significance of certain key passages from the travel narratives. ⁷

Prichard recognized certain explorers as having particularly significant reports. For instance, he wrote: ‘The different voyagers who preceded Captain Cook in exploring the Pacific Ocean had given us many curious notices concerning the natives of the islands, but we have derived more extensive information from the remarks of that celebrated navigator [Cook] and the naturalists who accompanied him, among whom Dr. Forster holds a distinguished place’ (Prichard, 1813: 251). Prichard gave particular weight to the observations of Johann Reinhold Forster (1729–98) – the naturalist from Cook’s second and third voyages – because of his background in both natural history and medicine. For Prichard, Forster’s travelogue was exceptional because he was trained in two of the traditions fundamentally important for ethnological research.

If we are to expand our understanding of natural history, we need to examine in detail the observational practices of naturalists from each subfield. As with botanists and zoologists, practitioners interested in scientific race studies possessed highly specialized observational techniques for analysing materials relating to human diversity. These materials included not only anatomical and physiological evidence, but also cultural phenomena such as religious artefacts and detailed documentations of different languages. What it means to observe something does not simply mean the physical act of looking at an artefact, text, or person. Rather, it is a much more specialized practice of analysing and interpreting an object’s or specimen’s meaning and significance.

As Daniela Bleichmar noted, the observational practices of naturalists did not simply involve ‘sight, but rather insight’ (Bleichmar, 2007: 168). All forms of specialized observational practices involve laborious training and practitioners from any discipline establish discriminating practices, which seek to identify those characteristics that an object of study possesses which are of importance to researchers (Secord, 2002: 135–206). As Daston and Galison argued in Objectivity (2007), ‘All sciences must deal with the problem of selecting and constituting “working objects”’ (Daston and Galison, 2007: 19). By selecting rudimentary materials to base foundational training on, newcomers to any discipline learn to observe the world in a specialized way. In the case of ethnology and anthropology, Urry has noted, ‘ethnography does not attempt to “record” the totality of everyday life in a particular context, but is the result of a process of selection by the anthropologist according to the needs of interpretation, explanation, and generalisation’ (Urry, 1993: 2). ⁸

The type of professional training and institutional backing that researchers receive is a major influence on their observational method. As an example, many ethnologists and anthropologists during the first half of the 19^th century studied medicine and this background fed into their writings on human diversity. Anatomical and physiological topics were a staple of ethnological literature. Medically trained figures such as Prichard and Lawrence focused on anatomical and physiological features – especially skull conformations – to distinguish the various races (Prichard, 1813: 55–8; Lawrence, 1828: 283). The medical world also influenced ethnological observational practices in other ways. Anatomical lecture theatres in cities such as London and Edinburgh provided early ethnologists such as Lawrence and Knox with a venue for disseminating the edifying principles of the emerging science to a new generation of practitioners.

The linguist Robert Gordon Latham (1812–88) was another leading member of the British ethnological community during the first half of the 19^th century with a background in medicine. His medical education influenced his ethnological observational framework and in his first major book The Natural History of the Varieties of Man (1850) he included detailed anatomical descriptions of different races. For Latham, the most important physical feature that separated human varieties was the conformation of the skull. He wrote that ‘the real reasons for the differences of outline lie in the differences of the skull and the bony parts of the face … anatomists have long been in the habit of determining the different varieties of the human race, by the difference of the conformation of their skulls’ (Latham, 1850: 3–4). Because it was the shape of the skull that primarily differentiated human varieties, Latham included descriptions of the key bones researchers were to examine when studying the races of the world. They included the ‘frontal bone’, the ‘occipital bone’ and the ‘parietal bones’ (ibid.: 4).

Colonialism was equally significant for facilitating ethnological and anthropological observation. The British Empire, with its settlements scattered across the world, possessed a global network for gathering and exchanging information. Ethnologists and anthropologists in the metropole who were unable to travel abroad were thus allowed to acquire data on many different races. Huxley was one of the earliest practitioners to take advantage of this infrastructure and he organized with the Colonial Office in London a scheme that encouraged officers living abroad to photograph indigenous people for the benefit of human diversity studies and the empire (Edwards, 2001: 131–55). In turn, observational practices were influenced by this partnership with the British government because ethnological and anthropological research had to show its utility for colonial administrators. There are also other connections between anthropology and imperialism. For instance, many practitioners during the first half of the 19^th century took up an interest in human diversity because they encountered extra-European peoples abroad while working as colonial agents.

The Australian-born naval officer Phillip Parker King (1791–1856) was a key contributor to early ethnographic descriptions of indigenous populations living along the complex coastlines around the Strait of Magellan in South America. He took an interest in ethnology through his encounters with extra-Europeans during his voyages. He and his officers published their accounts in the first volume of The Narrative of the Surveying Voyages of His Majesty’s Ships Adventure and Beagle (Fitzroy, 1839). It is a good example for demonstrating the important role imperial agents played in the formation of 19^th-century ethnological and anthropological knowledge because it was written in a crucial period of British imperialism when Spain’s loss of power in South America opened up new opportunities for other European nations to explore the region (Pratt, 1992: 15–16; Rubiés, 2000: 2–4). King and his crew’s descriptions of the Tehuelche people (or Patagonians to use the 19^th-century designator) were some of the most detailed reports to be written by English explorers since the Jesuit missionary Thomas Falkner (1707–84) resided in the area during the middle of the 18^th century. Thus, it formed the foundation of early 19^th-century British descriptions of indigenous peoples from Patagonia and the surrounding area (Jones, 1986: 197–8).

King and his crew's travel accounts included comprehensive reports on the physical appearance of the indigenous peoples, their customs and habits, material culture and social organization. This information was useful for ethnologists back in Britain who were classifying the racial and social features of different populations into groups based on similarities and differences. As members of the British Royal Navy they also had to collect information that was valuable for military concerns and King and his crew documented the weaponry of the natives. For example, during one of his visits in 1827 to the Patagonian community living at Gregory Bay on the Strait of Magellan he stated:

The only weapons which we observed with these people were the ‘bolas’, or balls, precisely similar to those used by the Pampas Indians; but they are fitter for hunting than for offence or defence. Some are furnished with three balls, but in general there are only two. These balls are made of small bags or purses of hide, moistened, filled with iron pyrites, or some other heavy substance, and then dried. They are about the size of a hen’s egg, and attached to the extremities of a thong, three or four yards in length. (Fitzroy, 1839: I, 19)

An enlarged military presence within the imperial world also helped to facilitate long-term research trips because it became easier for researchers to reside in colonial settlements for extended periods and gain access to indigenous populations. Transformations in the size and scale of sea, road and rail transportation technologies and networks made it possible to reach isolated communities easier and faster (Kuklick, 2011: 7–8). ⁹ For example, the construction of the Suez Canal – which was completed in 1869 – accelerated the travel time between India and England. Depending on which region of India a ship was sailing to, the travel distance could be cut down by up to 51 per cent (Headrick, 1981: 150–7).

In all disciplines, experienced researchers produce instructive literature, which explains the key principles and methodologies of the field of study. Whether these texts are on botany, geology, or ethnology, they all share the same purpose, which is to develop more refined observational skills. Daston and Galison, for instance, focused on scientific atlases from the 18^th and 19^th centuries and remarked that:

Whether atlases display crystals or cloud chamber traces, brain slices or galaxies, they still aim to ‘map’ the territory of the sciences they serve. They are the guides all practitioners consult time and time again to find out what is worth looking at, how it looks, and perhaps most important of all, how it should be looked at. (Daston and Galison, 2007: 23)

The speech therapist and co-founder of the Anthropological Society of London (f. 1863) James Hunt (1833–69) wanted anthropologists to distinguish themselves from ethnologists by prioritizing research that focused on the physical conformation of races. By contrast he positioned ethnology as a humanistic pursuit, which focused on the philology, material culture and social organization of human varieties. To substantiate the scientific criteria on which anthropological researchers based their analyses, Hunt argued for the application of the Baconian method of induction. He asserted that Baconianism – with its emphasis on facts – was the most reliable way to do scientific research. He wrote:

It has been solely the application of this [Baconian] method which has given such weight to our deliberations and our deductions. Loyalty to facts with regard to … anthropology brought us face to face with popular assumptions, and the contest has resulted in victory to those who used the right method. Having then seen the advantage of conducting our investigations … according to the inductive method … (Hunt, 1867: ccxii) ¹⁰

Finally, another important component of observational practice has to do with the issue of trust. Practitioners within any research field consider certain sources of knowledge more credible than others. In particular, scholars since the 17^th century have prioritized knowledge based on first-hand experience as the most reliable source of scientific knowledge. Steven Shapin argued in his book A Social History of Truth (1994) that ‘seventeenth-century and present-day “moderns” widely advertise direct experience as the surest grounds for factual knowledge, just as they identify reliance upon the testimony of others as an insecure warrant for such knowledge’ (Shapin, 1994: xxv). Shapin wanted to challenge this conception of science and he argued that most scientific knowledge is based to some degree on the observations and research of other practitioners. As a result, all forms of knowledge are collective endeavours. He wrote: ‘Knowledge is a collective good. In securing our knowledge we rely upon others, and we cannot dispense with that reliance’ (ibid.). ¹¹ Building upon Shapin’s reconsideration of second-hand sources within knowledge discourses, I argue that a reliance on the testimony of other researchers does not necessarily devalue the significance or credibility of a work. Thus, observational practices encompass a wide range of methods, and as Anne Secord argued in her thesis ‘Artisan Naturalists’ (2002), ‘speaking, reading, writing, counting, looking, [and] walking’ were all part of the naturalist’s framework (Secord, 2002: 13).

Conclusion

In his 1992 essay ‘The Ethnographer’s Magic’, George Stocking discussed the difficulties of being an historian working in an anthropology department. He argued that his colleagues often teased him because he had never undertaken his own project based on fieldwork. Thus, in the minds of his peers he had never completed his disciplinary rite of passage. ¹² Stocking continued by stating that in some ways he felt as though he had missed out on an important experience, one that could have potentially shed light on his interpretations of the discipline’s past. He argued that by doing fieldwork, it might be possible better to understand the processes anthropologists undergo as they observe and interact with different populations during their research activities (Stocking, 1992: 12–14).

Although this reflexive narrative about his own lack of experience in the field is highly suggestive, Stocking has not taken into consideration the similarities between doing history and the practices of 19^th-century armchair theorists. Stocking does not recognize that there is much more in common between his methodologies as an historian, and those of 19^th-century ethnologists and anthropologists. At a rudimentary level, because historians are unable to engage directly with the people they study, they are forced to develop highly sophisticated analytical techniques for understanding their materials. They are highly attuned to the problems associated with relying on second-hand reports for historical research. Without realizing it, Stocking had been practising a kind of 19^th-century anthropological study, albeit with some degree of variation.

It has been a central argument in this article that 19^th-century researchers interested in human diversity were more than simply armchair theorists, and that the observational practices of these researchers embodied a wide range of methodologies. At the crux of all ethnological and anthropological studies was a desire to understand human difference. By shifting away from fieldwork as the backbone of all anthropological research we can begin to see more continuities between the practices of 19^th-century ethnologists and anthropologists, and the methods of their 20^th-century counterparts. In this article, I also argued that it was important to start thinking more critically about what it means to observe human variation in a specialized way. By understanding how researchers collected their material, analysed the data and represented their results we can broaden our understanding of the discipline’s past.

Before I began thinking about the disciplinary history of anthropology, I would have been hard-pressed to find a similarity between the work of Prichard, who is widely regarded as the epitome of a 19^th-century armchair observer, and that of Malinowski and his fieldwork-centred approach. However, after going back to their works I was suddenly struck by the opening lines of their respective books. At the beginning of Prichard’s Researches, he instructs his readers to imagine themselves in a distant land where they were suddenly in contact with people who were markedly different from the Europeans they were accustomed to seeing (Prichard, 1813: 1–2). In the opening pages of Argonauts of the Western Pacific, Malinowski asks his readers to do a similar thought experiment, and he instructs them to consider what it would be like to encounter a group of indigenous peoples on the beach of a remote Pacific island (Malinowski, 1932: 4–5). In each case, the point of these reflexive exercises was to get their readers to start thinking about human diversity and to try and understand cultural variation. In essence, they start by considering how researchers should observe, analyse and represent human difference. With these textual comparisons taken together with the concerns discussed throughout this article, it is my hope that I have highlighted a key problem within the secondary literature and that historians and social scientists can continue to fill the gap between the armchair and the field.