SOSA 2503 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Scare Quotes, Human Taxonomy, Visible Minority

• School: Dalhousie University
• Department: Soc & Social Anthropology
• Course: SOSA 2503
• Professor: Emma Whelan

Document Summary

Reductive: brings things down to one factor, reducing something complex to something oversimplified. Determinism: the idea that one factor determines something else (idea has been rejected but still has effect) We can"t change history but we can change economics and politics. Think about the oversimplifications that get made, thinking critically. The idea that there are human sub-species, began when europeans began colonizinga way of categorizing people, creating a hierarchy. Medicine was involved in promoting white superiority, it was used to justify segregation and denying voting for indigenous people and african americans. To define race, we use all sorts of different things, it"s all over the place: facial features, skin colour, language, hair colour/texture. Structural racism (systemically discriminate against racialized groups non-whites) might be creating different experiences that can create health disparities between different racial groups, it"s not from innate biological problems. Most experts now say race is a social construct not a biological given.