Abstract
THE proposal for the constitution of an international congress for anthropology and ethnology, which was put forward by the Royal Anthropological Institute, has elicited some interesting expressions of opinion from continental anthropologists. Two communications which have been received by the Council are published in Man for April. Dr. Fritz Krause, of Leipzig, president of the Gesellschaft für Völkerkunde, has been in communication with a number of ethnologists in Austria, Sweden, Holland, and Denmark, and has found that nearly all of them would prefer a congress covering ethnology only. Dr. Krause himself personally is in favour of a congress of ‘ethnic sciences’, of which the mainstay and principal field would be ethnology; but with ‘adjacent sciences’—ethnic psychology, sociology, etc.—taken into account and permanently recognised. Dr. Krause has offered to push his inquiries further, and this offer the Council of the Institute has cordially accepted. The second communication is from the Very Rev. P. W. Schmidt, who concurs in the view that the interests of ethnology will be best served by a separate congress. In fact, he and his colleagues in Vienna consider that there should be separate congresses for ethnology, anthropology, and prehistory. It is felt, however, that a great advantage would be obtained from a periodically recurring joint congress of all three branches of study. A rotation of four meetings at intervals of two years between each, of which the fourth in each series should be a joint meeting of the three studies, is suggested. This has the obvious disadvantage of an inordinately long interval between the independent meetings in each subject.
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International Congress for Anthropology and Ethnology. Nature 129, 646 (1932). https://doi.org/10.1038/129646c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/129646c0