Victorian anthropologists have been nicknamed ‘armchair anthropologists’. Yet some of them did set foot in the field. Edward Burnett Tylor's first published work, Anahuac, or Mexico and the Mexicans, Ancient and Modern, described his youthful travels in Mexico. Tylor's confrontation with the ‘field’ revealed significant in tensions between the different beliefs and attitudes that Tylor held towards Mexican society. Contrasts between the evidence of Mexico's history (prior to European contact) and the present-day society of the 1850s led Tylor to see both progress and degeneration in Mexico, both ‘authentic’ culture and deep cultural mixture. In order to show that he was capable of uncovering the ‘authentic’ Mexican society, Tylor portrayed himself as a professional traveller-ethnographer, even though he was an anthropological novice. The embodied confrontation with the physical field also created tensions in Tylor's relationship to Mexico. Despite Tylor's mainly ethnocentric vision of foreign societies, his experiences of physically navigating the Mexican land and environment led him towards an empathetic relativism with respect to material culture and social practice. At the same time, his role as a traveller encouraged him to see the field as a fluid entity with no clear boundaries, even as he searched for a bounded and untouched Mexican society amidst cultural mixture. Drawing out the tensions resulting from a Victorian traveller's confrontation with the foreign field allows for a more balanced engagement with the works of these Victorian scholars of human diversity, which have often been portrayed as naively ethnocentric.

维多利亚时代的人类学家被昵称为“扶手椅人类学家”。然而，他们中的一些人确实涉足了这个领域。爱德华·伯内特·泰勒（Edward Burnett Tylor）的第一部出版作品《阿纳瓦克》（Anahuac）或墨西哥和墨西哥人（Ancient and Modern），描述了他在墨西哥的年轻旅行。泰勒与“场”的对抗揭示了泰勒对墨西哥社会的不同信仰和态度之间的紧张关系。墨西哥历史（在欧洲接触之前）的证据与 1850 年代当今社会之间的对比使泰勒看到墨西哥的进步和堕落，既有“真正的”文化，也有深刻的文化混合。为了表明他有能力揭开“真实的”墨西哥社会，泰勒将自己描绘成一个专业的旅行民族志学家，尽管他是一个人类学新手。与物理场的具体对抗也使泰勒与墨西哥的关系变得紧张。尽管泰勒对外国社会的看法主要是种族中心主义的，他在墨西哥土地和环境中的实际航行经历使他对物质文化和社会实践产生了一种善解人意的相对主义。同时，他作为旅行者的角色鼓励他将这个领域视为一个没有明确界限的流动实体，即使他在文化混合中寻找一个有界且未受影响的墨西哥社会。将维多利亚时代的旅行者与外国领域的对抗所产生的紧张关系画出来，可以更平衡地接触这些维多利亚时代人类多样性学者的作品，这些学者经常被描绘成天真的种族中心主义。他作为旅行者的角色鼓励他将这个领域视为一个没有明确界限的流动实体，即使他在文化混合中寻找一个有界且未受影响的墨西哥社会。将维多利亚时代的旅行者与外国领域的对抗所产生的紧张关系画出来，可以更平衡地接触这些维多利亚时代人类多样性学者的作品，这些学者经常被描绘成天真的种族中心主义。他作为旅行者的角色鼓励他将这个领域视为一个没有明确界限的流动实体，即使他在文化混合中寻找一个有界且未受影响的墨西哥社会。将维多利亚时代的旅行者与外国领域的对抗所产生的紧张关系画出来，可以更平衡地接触这些维多利亚时代人类多样性学者的作品，这些学者经常被描绘成天真的种族中心主义。