ABSTRACT
Research into anthropology, particularly physical anthropology, was carried out in late nineteenth and early twentieth-century Brazil by such men as S. Romero (1851–1914), N. Rodrigues (1862–1906), E. da Cunha (1866–1909) and Arthur Ramos (1903–1949). However, it was not until after the Second World War that the discipline gained a firm institutional footing in a country that did not abolish slavery until 1888. The foundational work of Brazilian social and cultural anthropology is best represented in the writings of Raimundo Rodrigues Nina (1862–1906) and later of Curt Unkel (a.k.a. Nimuendajú). Nina was a physician and psychiatrist who took an interest in the physical anthropology and criminology of the Afro-Brazilian population and then did pioneering research into their culture and religious practices, thereby becoming the father of Afro-Brazilian studies. Nimuendajú emigrated to Brazil in 1903 and initiated Amazonian ethnography with financial support from German and then American institutions before working for the Brazilian government in various capacities. From about 1930 to 1950 Nimuendajú’s methods provided the paradigm for Brazilian anthropology, but an even more important influence on anthropology and on the humanities in general was the French Année sociologique school. Also, C. Lévi-Strauss taught in Brazil from 1935 to 1938 and R. Bastide from 1938 to 1952.
