Post by djoser-xyyman on Oct 14, 2010 14:44:43 GMT -5
The decline of race
in American physical anthropology
Leonard Lieberman,1 Rodney C. Kirk,1 Michael Corcoran 2
1 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Central Michigan University,
Mt. Pleasant, MI. 48859, USA; E-mail: liebe1l@cmich.edu
2 Department of History, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI.
48859, USA
ABSTRACT This paper is a review of how and why the race concept has
changed in the United States during the 20th century. In the 19th century the
concept of race provided the unchallenged folk taxonomy and the prevailing
scientific paradigm for placing human biological and cultural variation into
categories called races. At the height of the eugenic and anti-immigration
movement of the early decades of the 20th century, Boas and his students began
the critique of racism and aspects of the race concept. In the early 1950s
Washburn proposed that the modern synthesis replace race typology with the
study of processes and populations. In the 1960s new data on clinal genetic
gradations provided tools for studying human variation while challenging the
race concept. We present several kinds of documentation of the decline of the
race concept over the 20th century, and place the above changes in the context
of the essential development of new genetic evidence. We also relate the decline
of race to historical developments, the growth of the culture concept, and
the biographies of the participants. We reject political correctness and view
science as a self-correcting endeavor to relate concepts to the empirical world.
KEY WORDS race, cline, population, Boas, Washburn
Prz. Antropol.–Anthropol. Rev. (2003), vol. 66, pp. 3-21, Fig. 1, Tables 2. ISBN 83-
86969-92-X, ISSN 0033-2003
in American physical anthropology
Leonard Lieberman,1 Rodney C. Kirk,1 Michael Corcoran 2
1 Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Central Michigan University,
Mt. Pleasant, MI. 48859, USA; E-mail: liebe1l@cmich.edu
2 Department of History, Central Michigan University, Mt. Pleasant, MI.
48859, USA
ABSTRACT This paper is a review of how and why the race concept has
changed in the United States during the 20th century. In the 19th century the
concept of race provided the unchallenged folk taxonomy and the prevailing
scientific paradigm for placing human biological and cultural variation into
categories called races. At the height of the eugenic and anti-immigration
movement of the early decades of the 20th century, Boas and his students began
the critique of racism and aspects of the race concept. In the early 1950s
Washburn proposed that the modern synthesis replace race typology with the
study of processes and populations. In the 1960s new data on clinal genetic
gradations provided tools for studying human variation while challenging the
race concept. We present several kinds of documentation of the decline of the
race concept over the 20th century, and place the above changes in the context
of the essential development of new genetic evidence. We also relate the decline
of race to historical developments, the growth of the culture concept, and
the biographies of the participants. We reject political correctness and view
science as a self-correcting endeavor to relate concepts to the empirical world.
KEY WORDS race, cline, population, Boas, Washburn
Prz. Antropol.–Anthropol. Rev. (2003), vol. 66, pp. 3-21, Fig. 1, Tables 2. ISBN 83-
86969-92-X, ISSN 0033-2003