HIS202H1 Lecture : Lecture #9.docx
Document Summary
New scientific position on race, post wwii: based on cultural anthropology and population genetics. Emergence of culture as an object of scientific study: culture rather than nature as major cause of difference. Culture as grounds for new racism: culture is rendered static and essentialist. Key: rise of internal critique of white primacy, rise of scientific anti-racism. The career of sex and race as biological categories. 18th and 19thc: racial and sexual differences as natural, biological determinism enlisted to varying degrees of citizenship, colonialism, social inequalities, hierarchies built around: physical differences, mental ability, evolutionary stages of development, xenophobia etc. First half of the 20thc: creeping problems: countless typologies of supposed races, no agreement on number of so-called races, anthropometric measurements and genealogies debunked notion of pure races". Iq tests disproved any link between race" and intelligence. In short: scientists sought to discover fixed natural kinds within the human species but race" proved impossible to pin down.
