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Book ID: CBB001510128

Constructing Race: The Science of Bodies and Cultures in American Anthropology (2014)

Teslow, Tracy (Author)

Cambridge University Press

ISBN: 9781107011731

Publication Date: 2014
Physical Details: xiii + 399 pp.; bibl.; index
Language: English

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World War II Anthropology Science and race Science and culture 20th century, early 19th century Americas Boas, Franz Benedict, Ruth Fulton Montagu, Ashley Shapiro, Harry Lionel Fielding, Henry Gene Weltfish

Racial Science helps unravel the complicated and intertwined history of race and science in America. Tracy Teslow explores how physical anthropologists in the twentieth century struggled to understand the complexity of human physical and cultural variation, and how their theories were disseminated to the public through art, museum exhibitions, books, and pamphlets. In their attempts to explain the history and nature of human peoples, anthropologists persistently saw both race and culture as critical components. This is at odds with a broadly accepted account that suggests racial science was fully rejected by scientists and the public following World War II. This book offers a corrective, showing that both race and culture informed how anthropologists and the public understood human variation from 1900 through the decades following the war. The book offers new insights into the work of Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict, and Ashley Montagu, as well as less well-known figures, including Harry Shapiro, Gene Weltfish, and Henry Field.

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Reviewed By

Review Jonathan Marks (2016) Review of "Race Unmasked: Biology and Race in the Twentieth Century". Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 161-164). unapi

Review Malinda Alaine Lindquist (2015) Review of "Constructing Race: The Science of Bodies and Cultures in American Anthropology". Journal of American History (pp. 516-517). unapi

Review Jerry Gershenhorn (2015) Review of "Constructing Race: The Science of Bodies and Cultures in American Anthropology". American Historical Review (pp. 1502-1503). unapi

Review Lindquist, Malinda Alaine (2015) Review of "Constructing Race: The Science of Bodies and Cultures in American Anthropology". Journal of American History (pp. 516-517). unapi

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001510128/

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