French ethnology was founded explicitly to serve colonial control objectives
Evidence
The decisive battle was launched before 1954, more precisely during the early 1930’s. The officials of the French administration in Algeria, committed to destroying the people’s originality, and under instructions to bring about the disintegration, at whatever cost, of forms of existence likely to evoke a national reality directly or indirectly, were to concentrate their efforts on the wearing of the veil, which was looked upon at this juncture as a symbol of the status of the Algerian woman. Such a position is not the consequence of a chance intuition. It is on the basis of the analyses of sociologists and ethnologists that the specialists in so-called native affairs and the heads of the Arab Bureaus coordinated their work. — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 131 (
#expands, via linked claim)
Categorization
- XREF: connects to: Integrationists cast French as the ordering Logos over colonized anarchy; Scientific social planning legitimated French intervention in African societies; French administrators studied African peoples partly for professional advancement (+3 more)
Related
- France targeted the veil deliberately in the 1930s after ethnological studies (similarity 0.91)
- Professional ethnology in France was framed as a tool of colonial control (similarity 0.82)
- Scientific social planning legitimated French intervention in African societies (similarity 0.80)
- French colonial administrators studied local peoples for career and practical motives (similarity 0.79)
- French administrators studied African peoples partly for professional advancement (similarity 0.78)
Broader Connections
- French administrators studied African peoples partly for professional advancement
#qualifies(0.60) - France targeted the veil deliberately in the 1930s after ethnological studies
#expands(0.50) — Frantz Fanon, A Dying Colonialism, 131