Mapping Racial Thought and Epistemic Hierarchies: A Transnational History of International Anthropology Congresses (1920-1980)

By adopting the concept of "field" as a semi-autonomous social space where actors compete for legitimaticy, the research uncovers how racial and biological thought was sustained, transformed, and contested during this period. The project pursues two main objective: 

1. mapping transnational alliances and power relations that geographically and institutionally configured the anthropological fied, highlighting asymmetries between centers and peripheries in knowledge production;
2. analyzing how these configurations both reflected and reshaped espitemological and disciplinary frameworks, particularlye through paradigm conflicts (biological, cultural, and social). 

This research is innovative in three respects: it adopts a global and transnational perspective attentive to the geography of knowledge and the asymmetrical circulation between centers and peripheries; it focuses on international congresses - key arenas for the circulation and legitimization of anthropological knowledge - which have never been the subject of systematic study; and it draws on an original corpus of largely unexplored printed and archival sources (Geneva, London, Paris, Leiden) from 33 congresses organized by three major institutions: the International Institute of Anthropology, the International Congress of Anthropological and Ethnological Sciences, and the Colloque des anthropologistes de la langue française.