Sysling Fenneke
Med Hist. 2019 Jul;63(3):314-329. doi: 10.1017/mdh.2019.29.
This paper examines racial science and its political uses in Southeast Asia. It follows several anthropologists who travelled to east Nusa Tenggara (the Timor Archipelago, including the islands of Timor, Flores and Sumba), where Alfred Russel Wallace had drawn a dividing line between the races of the east and the west of the archipelago. These medically trained anthropologists aimed to find out if the Wallace Line could be more precisely defined with measurements of the human body. The paper shows how anthropologists failed to find definite markers to quantify the difference between Malay and Papuan/Melanesian. This, however, did not diminish the conceptual power of the Wallace Line, as the idea of a boundary between Malays and Papuans was taken up in the political arena during the West New Guinea dispute and was employed as a political tool by all parties involved. It shows how colonial and racial concepts can be appropriated by local actors and dismissed or emphasised depending on political perspectives.
本文探讨了种族科学及其在东南亚的政治用途。它追随了几位前往东努沙登加拉（帝汶群岛，包括帝汶岛、弗洛雷斯岛和松巴岛）的人类学家，阿尔弗雷德·拉塞尔·华莱士曾在该群岛的东西种族之间划定了一条分界线。这些受过医学训练的人类学家旨在查明华莱士线是否可以通过人体测量更精确地界定。本文展示了人类学家如何未能找到确定的标志来量化马来人和巴布亚人/美拉尼西亚人之间的差异。然而，这并没有削弱华莱士线的概念影响力，因为在西新几内亚争端期间，马来人和巴布亚人之间存在边界的观念在政治舞台上被采纳，并被所有相关各方用作政治工具。它展示了殖民和种族概念如何被当地行为体挪用，并根据政治观点被摒弃或强调。
