Empire, Colonialism, and the Human Sciences

In this bold reconsideration of the human sciences, an interdisciplinary team employ an expanded theoretical and geographical critical lens centering the notion of the encounter. Drawing insights from Indigenous and Latin American Studies, nine case studies delve into the dynamics of encounters between researchers, intermediaries, and research subjects in imperial and colonial contexts across the Americas and Pacific. Essays explore ethical considerations and knowledge production practices that prevailed in field and expedition science, custodial institutions, and governance debates. They reevaluate how individuals and communities subjected to research projects embraced, critiqued, or subverted them. Often, research subjects expressed their own aspirations, asserted sovereignty or autonomy, and exercised forms of power through interactions or acts of refusal. This book signals the transformative potential of Indigenous Studies and Latin American Studies for shaping future scholarship on the history of the human sciences. This title is also available as Open Access on Cambridge Core.

Adam Warren is Associate Professor of History at the University of Washington, Seattle. He is the author of Medicine and Politics in Colonial Peru: Population Growth and the Bourbon Reforms (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2010), and the coauthor of Baptism through Incision: The Postmortem Cesarean Operation in the Spanish Empire (Penn State University Press, 2020.)

Julia E. Rodriguez is Professor of History at the University of New Hampshire (USA). She is the author of Civilizing Argentina: Science, Medicine, and the Modern State (University of North Carolina Press, 2006) and editor of the open-source website HOSLAC: History of Science in Latin America and the Caribbean (www.hoslac.org).

Stephen T. Casper is Professor of History at Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York. His research focuses on the history of the human sciences, neuroscience, and neurology, and his latest monograph, Punch Drunk and Dementia: A Cultural History of Concussion, 1870–Present, is under contract with Johns Hopkins Press and explores the cultural history of brain injury and violence in the modern world.