ANTHRO 3AC Study Guide - Midterm Guide: John Hartigan, Heredity, Coparenting
Document Summary
Stuart hall is a political theorist whose work resists the essentialization of race, particularly biological explanations for race. Last term we saw him discuss how biological diversity is undeniable, but that it is power/knowledge systems that give meaning to particular differences and not others. Race is produced from a set of oating signi ers that taken on the appearance of natural or normal though they shift over time (in relation to social norms and laws, labor distribution, etc). Hall is interested in what people do, not who they are -- what people do is contextual and not guaranteed by biology or otherwise. Rivers talks about the different kinds of kinship there is and the method society uses to approach them. Many times, relationships are traced by pedigrees for those individuals who can trace their lineages by the information of the elderly and knowledgeable.
