German anthropology and the making of modern mexico, 1880-1940

German scholars Caecilie Seler-Sachs (1855-1935) and Eduard Seler (1849-1922) dominated the growing field of anthropology concerned with the New World civilizations. Between 1887 and 1911, the married couple made six trips to Mexico to collect antiquities, languages and plants. In collaboration with Mexican scholars, they forged international networks of science which these same Mexican scientists used to help legitimize the Mexican state before, during, and after the Revolution of 1910. Mexico was one of the first countries to institute a national program to preserve its cultural patrimony, but more importantly utilized anthropology as a tool to integrate its indigenous population into the national project. Mexican intellectuals drew on the work of Caecilie and Eduard who came from the Germanophone intellectual tradition of historicism. The Seler’s analysis focused on culture rather than inherent biological characteristics which Mexican intellectuals, artists, writers, and artisans harnessed to help shape post-revolutionary indigenismo. My dissertation, “German Anthropology and the Making of Modern Mexico, 1876-1940,” demonstrates how and why Germanophone intellectual traditions influenced Mexican nation-building, how gender impacted access to education and facilitated personal and scientific connections, and finally, how the lives of scholars guided their scientific fieldwork and how their fieldwork influenced their non-scientific lives. I use the biographies of the Selers as an entry into the complex interplay of geopolitical, institutional, and interpersonal networks that shaped the creation of international scientific knowledge. My study builds upon scholarship about creative couples in the sciences by showing how the intimate space of the home and the public space of the field contribute to knowledge production that defies easy categorization. The holistic experience of life is complicated, and by looking at the particularities of Caecilie and Eduard, we can make sense of how life experience shaped knowledge-making and how the creation of new knowledge impacted politics, both personal and public.