Marc Flandreau
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780226360300
- eISBN:
- 9780226360584
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Chicago Press
- DOI:
- 10.7208/chicago/9780226360584.003.0009
- Subject:
- Anthropology, Anthropology, Global
This chapter continues the narrative of Pim’s career undertaken in the previous chapter. By exploring the interlocking directorates of Bedford Pim’s mining, railway and colonization companies ...
More
This chapter continues the narrative of Pim’s career undertaken in the previous chapter. By exploring the interlocking directorates of Bedford Pim’s mining, railway and colonization companies launched in the mid-1860s, the chapter shows the structure of the science and finance nexus. It also shows how anthropology was embedded in financial engineering. In particular, taking the example of the competition between US anthropologist George Ephraim Squier and anthropologist Bedford Pim as a case in point, the chapter shows how statements about race and racial identity were ultimately tied to alternative financial concerns. The result was the plasticity of racial beliefs, which could be adjusted depending on financial logic. An intellectual history of racism that would ignore its financial underpinning and the problem of scientific credibility would miss some essential ingredients that shaped the contours of the “science of man.”Less
This chapter continues the narrative of Pim’s career undertaken in the previous chapter. By exploring the interlocking directorates of Bedford Pim’s mining, railway and colonization companies launched in the mid-1860s, the chapter shows the structure of the science and finance nexus. It also shows how anthropology was embedded in financial engineering. In particular, taking the example of the competition between US anthropologist George Ephraim Squier and anthropologist Bedford Pim as a case in point, the chapter shows how statements about race and racial identity were ultimately tied to alternative financial concerns. The result was the plasticity of racial beliefs, which could be adjusted depending on financial logic. An intellectual history of racism that would ignore its financial underpinning and the problem of scientific credibility would miss some essential ingredients that shaped the contours of the “science of man.”
