The prevailing assumption has been that French ethnographers highlighted the cultural and social environment while anthropologists emphasized the scientific study of head and body shapes. Martin Staum shows that the temptation to gravitate towards one pole of the nature-nurture continuum often resulted in reluctant concessions to the other side. Psychologists Théodule Ribot and Alfred Binet, for example, were forced to recognize the importance of social factors. Non-Durkheimian sociologists were divided on the issue of race and gender as progressive and tolerant attitudes on race did not necessarily correlate with flexible attitudes on gender. Recognizing this allows Staum to raise questions about the theory of the equivalence of all marginalized groups. Anthropological institutions re-organized before the First World War sometimes showed decreasing confidence in racial theory but failed to abandon it completely. Staum's chilling epilogue discusses how the persistent legacy of such theories was used by extremist anthropologists outside the mainstream to deploy racial ideology as a basis of persecution in the Vichy era.

Martin S. Staum, Associate Professor of History at the University of Calgary, is the author of Cabanis: Enlightenment and Medical Philosophy in the French Revolution and a contributor to scholarly periodicals and serials such as French Historical Studies in History of Biology.

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"Staum should be applauded for this anti-disciplinary history of the human sciences. Not only does he examine sociology, anthropology, ethnography, psychology, and history, but he follows the debates among these fields. He offers an encyclopaedic mapping of the French social sciences that clearly locates the contributions of a host of neglected intellectuals. The scope of this book will make it a valuable reference for future researchers trying to grapple with the place of the social sciences in the French Third Republic." ISIS: An International Review Devoted to the History of Science and its Cultural Influences

"Staum offers an admirable study germane to modern identity and purpose. An excellent addition to the McGill-Queen's "Studies in the History of Ideas" series. Summing Up: Highly recommended." Choice