University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Department of History and Sociology of Science Departmental Papers (HSS) (HSS) 10-2016 Patrons of the Human Experience: A History of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1941-2016 Susan M. Lindee University of Pennsylvannia, mlindee@sas.upenn.edu Joanna Radin Yale University Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/hss_papers Part of the Anthropology Commons, and the History of Science, Technology, and Medicine Commons Recommended Citation Lindee, S. M., & Radin, J. (2016). Patrons of the Human Experience: A History of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1941-2016. Current Anthropology, 57 (S14), S218-S301. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/687926 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/hss_papers/23 For more information, please contact repository@pobox.upenn.edu. Patrons of the Human Experience: A History of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1941-2016 Abstract The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research has played a critical but little-understodd role in the development of the social and biological sciences after 1941. For anthropology particularly, its programs have often helped redefine scholarly priorities and research trajectories. Its grants to doctoral students have functioned as an important early sign of scholarly legitimacy, a mark of belonging to the profession. The foundation's history also reflects general transformations in scientific partronage as new landscapes of federal, military, and private funding re-configured opportunities in the social sciences. In this account we track the evolution of the foundation in tandem with the evolution of anthropology during a period of dramatic change after 1941, looking at the Second World War context from which the foundation emerged and the ideas and experiences of those who played a key role in this history. We examine the long-term influence of a philanthropic foundation on the postwar emergence of an internationally oriented anthropology from a tiny, almost clubby discipline with a few key institutions and leaders to a mahor academic and scientific enterprise with sometimes revolutionary ideas about evolution, human biology, race, culture, power, gender, and social order. Disciplines Anthropology | History of Science, Technology, and Medicine This journal article is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/hss_papers/23 S218 Current Anthropology Volume 57, Supplement 14, October 2016 Patrons of the Human Experience A History of the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, 1941–2016 by Susan Lindee and Joanna Radin The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research has played a critical but little-understood role in the development of the social and biological sciences since 1941. For anthropology particularly, its programs have often helped redefine scholarly priorities and research trajectories. Its grants to doctoral students have functioned as an important early sign of scholarly legitimacy, a mark of belonging to the profession. The foundation’s history also re- flects general transformations in scientific patronage as new landscapes of federal, military, and private funding re- configured opportunities in the social sciences. In this account we track the evolution of the foundation in tandem with the evolution of anthropology during a period of dramatic change after 1941, looking at the Second World War context from which the foundation emerged and the ideas and experiences of those who played a key role in this his- tory. We examine the long-term influence of a philanthropic foundation on the postwar emergence of an interna- tionally oriented anthropology from a tiny, almost clubby discipline with a few key institutions and leaders to a major academic and scientific enterprise with sometimes revolutionary ideas about evolution, human biology, race, culture, power, gender, and social order. An international symposium of the Wenner-Gren Foundation send gushing letters of gratitude, admiration, and indebtedness. for Anthropological Research (WGF) is often remembered An invitation to a Wenner-Gren symposium is still a delightful by participants as a rare pleasure. There are “unforgettable thing to receive. It is an elegant invitation to join the clan and days” of discussion and debate producing “glorious new im- the party. Now sent via e-mail, the formal letter from the foun- pressions,”1 with elegant meals in beautiful settings, evening dation’s president (currently Leslie Aiello) explains a set of non- performances by local musicians and dancers, and long talks negotiable rules: there are to be no outsiders (including spouses around the pool or in the gardens. In 1964, population ge- or family), all papers are to be read before arrival, and there neticist Theodosius Dobzhansky called his second invitation to will be significant unstructured time for informal encounters. the foundation’s Austrian castle Burg Wartenstein “irresistible.”2 While it is happening, a Wenner-Gren international sympo- After the castle was sold in 1981, conferences were held else- sium can seem like an academic fantasy, the best graduate sem- where, but the “Old World” charm of the symposium format inar anyone ever pulled together. And its long-term results, in endured. In the “dramatic, yet comfortable” setting of Fez, one participant wrote, “I for one felt wanted, and I was able to re- lax and to attend to intellectual matters fully, without being 1. Alberto Carlo Blanc, Rome, to Paul Fejos, August 26 1958, and burdened by other concerns.”3 Another expressed grief at the Schultz to Fejos, August 25, 1958, in “Burg Wartenstein Symposium #1 end of a conference, when “the summerly ‘fairy tale of science’ Organizer Sol Tax, Current Anthropology, August 18–23, 1958,” Wenner- is over.”4 Gren Foundation Files, Box #MF-20, WGF. From their beginnings in the 1950s through the present, WGF’s 2. Theodosius Dobzhansky to Lita Binns Fejos, January 27, 1964, in “Spuhler, J.N. Behavioral Consequences of Genetic Differences in Man, international symposium programs have inspired scholars to September 16–26, 1964,” Wenner-Gren Foundation Files, Box #MF-20, WGF. Susan Lindee is Janice and Julian Bers Professor in the Department of 3. Handelman to Lita Osmundsen, February 19, 1986, untitled folder, History and Sociology of Science at the University of Pennsylvania Box #DoR-6, WGF. (249 South 36th Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104, U.S.A. 4. “Though certainly you have received hundreds of grateful letters [mlindee@sas.upenn.edu]). Joanna Radin is Assistant Professor in already after the 27 Wartenstein conferences, let me express myself none- the Program in History of Science and Medicine at Yale University, theless my lasting indebtedness to Wenner-Gren Foundation.” Freidrich where she also holds appointments in the Departments of History Keiter, Hamburg, Gerichtsanthropologisches Laboratorium, to Lita Binns and Anthropology (333 Cedar Street, L132, New Haven, Connecticut Fejos, October 14, 1964, in “Spuhler, J.N.—Behavioral Consequences of 06520, U.S.A. [joanna.radin@yale.edu]). This paper was submitted Genetic Differences in Man, September 16–26, 1964,” Wenner-Gren Foun- 20 VIII 15 and accepted 18 V 16. dation Files, Box #MF-20, WGF. q 2016 by The Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research. All rights reserved. 0011-3204/2016/57S14-0002$10.00. DOI: 10.1086/687926 Lindee and Radin Patrons of the Human Experience S219 connections forged, theories meshed, and pathbreaking publi- thropologist Alfred Kroeber (who died on his way home from cations, can transform careers, ideas, and fields. a Wenner-Gren symposium), and Lita Binns Fejos Osmund- The international symposium is the trademark experience sen (who first encountered the organization as a student at of a foundation that conjured these enticing practices out of Hunter College, pursued but never completed a PhD in an- complicated origins that bear no relationship to such lofty intel- thropology at Columbia, and married Paul Fejos; she became lectual aspirations. If the American experience is one of self- director of research and later president of the foundation af- fashioning (e.g., Howe 2009), Wenner-Gren is a deeply Ameri- ter Fejos died). can foundation. Neither Swedish industrialist Axel Wenner-Gren, We consider the supper conferences, international sympo- who provided $2,362,500 in stock to create the foundation, ini- sia, and summer seminars, all of which were designed to push tially known as the Viking Fund, in 1941 (primarily as a re- participants out of their academic comfort zones by resituating sponse to an Internal Revenue Service investigation of his United them in settings of Old World glamour at the foundation’s States operations), nor Hungarian filmmaker Paul Fejos, who elegant New York brownstone and romantic Austrian castle; became its first scientific director and later president, had any the distribution of small grants that have enabled anthropol- formal training in anthropology (fig. 1). Neither had ever been ogists to take risks on new kinds of research; the creation of the a PhD student or held a faculty position at a research univer- journal, Current Anthropology; the Viking Medal and Viking sity.5 Yet the Foundation they built with money, ideas, and Fund Publications in Anthropology; and the eventual sale of carefully cultivated social networks has for 75 years played a the brownstone and castle, both lost as the economic