Przegląd Antropologiczny - Anthropological Review, 2003, vol. 66

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Browsing Przegląd Antropologiczny - Anthropological Review, 2003, vol. 66 by Subject "race"

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    Race: Tradition and convenience, or taxonomic reality? More on the race concept in Polish anthropology
    (Polskie Towarzystwo Antropologiczne, 2003) Kaszycka, Katarzyna A.; Strzałko, Jan
    Against the background of the race debate and the principal elements of the current understanding of human intraspecific variation, we present the status of the race concept in Polish anthropology. Using questionnaires, we twice surveyed physical anthropologists about their agreement with the statement "There are biological races within he species Homo sapiens." In the 1999 study, 62% of respondents disagreed with race (defined as subspiecies) and 31% accepted it. In the 2001 study, this proportion was reversed: only 25% rejected race (by any definition) with the remaining respondents (75%) differing widely as to its accepted meaning. Each time, age was significant factor in differentiating the replies - in general, acceptance of race increased with age while rejection declined. It appears that Polish anthropologists regard race as a term without taxonomic value and often in a populational sense. Here we point out, however, the risks associated with the "metaphorical" use of the term "race", as it relativizes the essential error of perceiving the existence of subspecific taxa within our species.
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    The decline of race in American physical anthropology
    (Polskie Towarzystwo Antropologiczne, 2003) Lieberman, Leonard; Kirk, Rodney C.; Corcoran, Michael
    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 the several kinds of ducumentaion of the decline of the race concept over 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.