Opinion article: 'Apartheid thinking in academia' | News

?Stellenbosch social anthropologist?Kees (C.S.) van der Waal?traces the history of racial indexing in South African ethnographic research. This opinion article was published in?Die Burger?on 8 June.

The announcement in April of new anthropological research at Stellenbosch University (SU) following the discovery of anthropometric material in the University Museum ? a human skull, the hair colour chart of Eugen Fischer and the eye colour chart of Rudolf Martin ? immediately caught the public?s attention and elicited extensive commentary in the media.

This was to be expected in a society that is deeply divided into racial castes and accommodates notions of perceived cultural purity. Unfortunately, though, the responses focus too much on the colour charts and the allocation of blame about crimes against humanity. It is necessary to identify the underlying issue, namely how ideas about human classification continue to shape society to this day.

Most comments draw on a defensive neo-Afrikaner perspective to deny the importance of the find, or vehemently question the link to the work of Fischer, the German physical anthropologist who promoted Nazi racism. Leopold Scholtz argued in?Die Burger?(3 May) that the relationship between the excrescences of racial classification and apartheid is far-fetched. He insists that recognition should be given to the work of Maties (SU)?volkekundiges(ethnologists or cultural anthropologists) such as P. J.?Schoeman and P.J.?Coertze who, according to him, tried their best to push apartheid into a morally acceptable direction.

It is too early in our historical reconstruction of the production of knowledge in the former?volkekunde?(ethnology or cultural anthropology) department of Maties to arrive at any definitive conclusions about the influences of Fischer?s brand of physical anthropology. However, from the historical work of David Hammond-Tooke, Robert Gordon and John Sharp on anthropology andvolkekunde?in South Africa, and from my own experience, there is enough reason to question Scholtz?s positive reading of?volkekunde.

We know that eugenics, racial hygiene and hereditary genetics formed part of the student curriculum and that the notion of ?racial distinctions? was deemed non-problematic. The challenge to critically track the destructive impact of thinking tools used for social classification ? such as ?ethnos?, ?race?, ?culture?, ?population? and ?community? ? into the present is academically and politically very important .

Volkekunde?was established at Stellenbosch by Werner Eiselen, one of the intellectual architects of apartheid, in 1926 as an Afrikaans variant of anthropology. This was after social anthropology had already come into being at the Universities of Cape Town, Pretoria and the Witwatersrand. From the beginning, a strong Afrikaner-nationalist element prevailed in?volkekunde. Anthropologists like Eiselen, Schoeman, Coertze and J.P.?Bruwer approached their work as?volksdiens?(service to the?volk, or Afrikaner people). They viewed ?the poor-white question? and ?racial purity? as important challenges.

Political activism, including membership of the?Ossewabrandwag?(Ox-wagon Sentinel), was for some of these academics (Coertze and Schoeman were members), a logical extension of their work. In 1943, Coertze, F.J.?Language and B.I.C.?van Eeden published?Die Oplossing van die Naturellevraagstuk in Suid-Afrika: Wenke Ooreenkomstig die Afrikanerstandpunt van Apartheid?(The Solution of the Native Problem in South Africa: Suggestions According to the Afrikaner Standpoint of Apartheid). This document by Stellenbosch?volkekundiges?would inform the ideological debates in Afrikaans religious and cultural circles for the rest of the decade, and after 1948 its ideas would systematically be turned into government policy.

Volkekunde?developed its own theoretical approach, especially under the leadership of Coertze, who was later based at the University of Pretoria (UP). Together, the departments of?volkekunde?and applied?volkekunde?at Afrikaans universities comprised an academic industry for training thousands of civil servants and soldiers involved in the administration of separate development in the cities and Bantustans, and in the army.

The theoretical and methodological approach of?volkekunde?was unsophisticated and ideologically determined. The core concept was the idea of the ?ethnos?, a group of people who, in terms of physical similarity (?race?), formed a strong unit and were guided by their culture.

During colonial times, this concept of people also prevailed elsewhere in the world, but it would gradually be undermined in other academic work by the realisation of the importance of cultural borrowing, mixing and variation in all populations.?Volkekunde, however, continued to use race and?ethnos?as core concepts.

My training in the subject in the late sixties at UP was also stamped by these ideas. As students we received no training in participant observation, the main method of ethnographic work. We were supposed to maintain a social distance from black Africans and to use only interviews for research and not stay with black people.

The work of?volkekundiges, quite predictably, emphasised the importance of the cultural traditions of peoples [stet]. This knowledge was obtained primarily from older male informants during short field visits, and was then presented as the general state of affairs although it was largely a patriarchal ideology representing a single dominant variant. The results of this research seamlessly slotted in with the ideals of separate development.

Much of the?volkekunde?research was instrumentally focused on identifying and using traditions for modern public administration, for example the use of customary law in courts and the strengthening of tribal authorities in the homelands.

In time, the differences between?volkekunde?and social anthropology grew bigger, and in 1977 the majority of?volkekundiges?left the professional society for anthropology in South Africa to establish their own exclusive disciplinary association.

There were also young scholars who gradually moved away from thevolkekunde?laager. It was my privilege in 1983 at the former RAU (Rand Afrikaans University, now the University of Johannesburg) to resign from theVereniging van Afrikaanse Volkekundiges?(Association of Afrikaans?Volkekundiges) and to leave the highly restrictive anthropological training that I had received at Tuks (UP) behind.

We tackled new research with practising participant observation, approached ?race?, ?ethnos? and ?culture? critically as ideological concepts, and adapted our curricula to increasingly reflect global anthropology?s rich variety of theory and ethnography.

After 1990, the historical role of?volkekunde?had expired and the?volkekundeparadigm went through its last convulsions. In 2001, the two societies merged, and these days very little of?volkekunde?is left in academic circles. A Kuhnian paradigm shift away from race and?ethnos?had taken place around the world and eventually also in much of the Afrikaans intellectual circles.

The significance of our new research into the use of anthropometric instruments by?volkekundiges?is not only historical in nature. In fact, the impact of devastating social classifications serves as a starting point for extensive work on the impact of social divisions, which continues to this day.

The new anthropological research agenda that we recently launched in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at SU is called?Indexing the Human. One of our focus areas is the history and influence of the?volkekundeapproach in teaching and research.

The anthropometric instruments discovered in the Stellenbosch University Museum will have a lasting value when they become the catalyst for engaging with the thinking tools of the past that continue to separate humans, and when our new anthropological research helps us to think about humanity in a more inclusive and humane way.

* Prof?Van der Waal teaches Social Anthropology at Stellenbosch University.

Source: http://blogs.sun.ac.za/news/2013/06/12/opinion-article-apartheid-thinking-in-academia/

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