Giuseppe Sergi

Giuseppe Sergi (March 20, 1841 – October 17, 1936) was an Italian anthropologist of the early twentieth century, best known for his opposition to Nordicism in his books on the racial identity of Mediterranean peoples. He rejected existing racial typologies that identified Mediterranean peoples as "dark whites" because they implied a Nordicist conception of Mediterranean peoples descending from whites who had become racially mixed with non-whites which he claimed was false. His concept of the Mediterranean race, identified Mediterranean peoples as being an autonomous brunet race and he claimed that the Nordic race was descended from the Mediterranean race whose skin had depigmented to a pale complexion after it moved north. This concept became important to the modelling of racial difference in the early twentieth century.

Life Born in Messina, Sicily, Sergi first studied law and then linguistics and philosophy. At the age of 19 he took part in Garibaldi's expedition to Sicily. He later took courses in physics and anatomy, finally specializing in racial anthropology as a student of Cesare Lombroso.

In 1880 he was appointed as professor of anthropology at the University of Bologna. At this time the discipline of anthropology was still associated with the literature faculty. In the following years, thanks to the activity of his laboratory of anthropology and psychology, he helped establish the discipline on a more scientific basis. In 1884 he moved to the University of Rome where he developed a program of research into both anthropology and psychology. He was elected as a member to the American Philosophical Society in 1885.

On 4 June 1893, the Sergi took the lead in founding the Roman Society of Anthropology (now the Italian Anthropological Institute ). He also began the journal (now the Journal of Anthropological Sciences). Both the society and journal were associated with the university. He was initially assigned temporary premises in the School of Application for Engineers in San Pietro in Vincoli but in 1887 moved to the old building of the Roman College, where Sergi dedicated part of the space to the creation of an anthropological museum.

Internationally renowned for his contributions to anthropology, he also succeeded in establishing the International Conference of Psychology in Rome, 1905, under his presidency of the society.

He died in Rome in 1936. His son Sergio Sergi (1878–1972), also a noted anthropologist, developed his father's theories.

Racial theories

Sergi's initial contribution was to oppose the use of the cephalic index to model population ancestry, arguing that over all cranial morphology was more useful. according to which emotion is the mind's perception of physiological conditions that result from some stimulus.

Works in English translation (1894). The Varieties of the Human Species. Washington: The Smithsonian Institution. (1901). The Mediterranean Race: a Study of the Origins of European Peoples. London: Walter Scott. (1911). "Differences in Customs and Morals and their Resistance to Rapid Change," Papers on Inter-racial Problems. London: P. S. King and Son.