The Making of the Infrahuman
Criminal Anthropology and its Objects

Project by

Zainabu Jallo
Early-Career Fellow 2025–2026

This project examines how the legacy of criminal anthropology continues to shape modern understandings of what it means to be human—particularly through the material traces it has left behind.

The prejudices embedded in criminal anthropology—and, by extension, forensic anthropology—are rooted in legal and institutional frameworks informed by "scientific research." Over time, these biases contributed to the classification of the infrahuman: individuals considered human, yet not fully entitled to civil liberties; human, but perceived as lagging on the evolutionary scale. The implications of criminal anthropology on contemporary perceptions of what it means to be human remain deeply ingrained in both scientific inquiry and broader society.

This project illustrates the enduring influence of a discredited scientific field—criminal anthropology—in shaping the classification of human types, particularly as reinforced by modern technological tools. Drawing on historiography and methodologies from material culture studies, it analyzes a diverse range of objects whose tangible qualities and afterlives as data offer insight into the historical construction of the infrahuman. The project highlights how such objects are not only sources of information but also active agents in the formation of ideological frameworks.