Making Race: Biology and the Evolution of the Race Concept in 20th Century American Thought (2008)
Yudell, Michael (Author)
Columbia University
Rosner, David
Edition Details: Advisor: Rosner, David
Physical Details: 409 pp.
Language: English
At the dawn of the 21 st century the idea of race--the belief that the peoples of the world can be organized into biologically distinctive groups, each with its own discrete physical, social and intellectual characteristics--is seen by most natural and social scientists as unsound and unscientific. Race and racism, while drawn from the visual cues of human diversity, are ideas with a measurable past, identifiable present, and uncertain future. They are concepts that change with time and place; the changes themselves products of a range of variables including time, place, geography, politics, science, and economics. As much as scientists once thought that race and racism were reflections of physical or biological differences, today social scientists, with help from colleagues in the natural sciences, have shown that the once scientific concept of race is in fact a product of history with an unmistakable impact on the American story. This dissertation examines the history of the biological race concept during the 20 th century, studying how the biological sciences helped to shape thinking about human difference. This work argues that in the 20 th century biology and genetics became the arbiter of the meaning of race. This work also brings the story of the evolution of the race concept to the present by examining the early impact of the genomic sciences on race, and by placing it in a contemporary public health context.
...MoreDescription Cited in Diss. Abstr. Int. A 69/10 (2009). Pub. no. AAT 3333492.
Similar Citations
Article
Watkins, Rachel J.;
(2013)
Biohistorical Narratives of Racial Difference in the American Negro: Notes toward a Nuanced History of American Physical Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB001212637/)
Thesis
Iverson, Margot Lynn;
(2007)
Blood Types: A History of Genetic Studies of Native Americans, 1920--1955
(/isis/citation/CBB001561310/)
Article
Anderson, Warwick;
(2013)
Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States
(/isis/citation/CBB001212629/)
Chapter
Marks, Jonathan;
(2008)
Race across the Physical-Cultural Divide in American Anthropology
(/isis/citation/CBB000900013/)
Article
Hyun, Jaehwan;
(December 2019)
Racializing Chōsenjin: Science and Biological Speculations in Colonial Korea
(/isis/citation/CBB774352848/)
Article
Michael Kent;
Vivette García-Deister;
Carlos López-Beltrán;
Ricardo Ventura Santos;
Ernesto Schwartz-Marín;
Peter Wade;
(2015)
Building the Genomic Nation: ‘Homo Brasilis’ and the ‘Genoma Mexicano’ in Comparative Cultural Perspective
(/isis/citation/CBB543686037/)
Book
Müller-Wille, Staffan;
Rheinberger, Hans-Jörg;
(2012)
A Cultural History of Heredity
(/isis/citation/CBB001251195/)
Book
Susanne Lettow;
(2014)
Reproduction, Race, and Gender in Philosophy and the Early Life Sciences
(/isis/citation/CBB916714277/)
Article
Ernesto Schwartz-Marín;
Peter Wade;
Arely Cruz-Santiago;
Roosbelinda Cárdenas;
(2015)
Colombian Forensic Genetics as a Form of Public Science: The Role of Race, Nation and Common Sense in the Stabilization of DNA Populations
(/isis/citation/CBB672411022/)
Book
Inhorn, Marcia Claire;
Wentzell, Emily A.;
(2012)
Medical Anthropology at the Intersections: Histories, Activisms, and Futures
(/isis/citation/CBB001251701/)
Article
Guido Barbujani;
(2017)
What Genetics Has to Say about Racial Categorization of Humans
(/isis/citation/CBB088477154/)
Chapter
Larson, Edward J.;
(2010)
Biology and the Emergence of the Anglo-American Eugenics Movement
(/isis/citation/CBB001020302/)
Article
Mikhail B. Konashev;
(2019)
Th. Dobzhansky and the Development of Evolutionary Biology in the USSR
(/isis/citation/CBB629293770/)
Thesis
Green, Lisa Anne;
(2012)
Science for Survival: The Modern Synthesis of Evolution and the Biological Sciences Curriculum Study
(/isis/citation/CBB001567386/)
Article
David Ceccarelli;
(2021)
“The bad habit of wandering”: Morgan, Osborn and the issue of evolutionary causality in genetics and paleontology
(/isis/citation/CBB874691467/)
Article
Anderson, Warwick;
(2012)
Hybridity, Race, and Science: The Voyage of the Zaca, 1934--1935
(/isis/citation/CBB001250834/)
Thesis
Manganaro, Christine Leah;
(2012)
Assimilating Hawai'i: Racial Research in a Colonial “Laboratory,” 1919--1939
(/isis/citation/CBB001560762/)
Book
Brush, Stephen G.;
(2009)
Choosing Selection: The Revival of Natural Selection in Anglo-American Evolutionary Biology, 1930--1970
(/isis/citation/CBB001020903/)
Article
Frank, Reanne;
(2015)
Back to the Future? The Emergence of a Geneticized Conceptualization of Race in Sociology
(/isis/citation/CBB001510181/)
Article
Graves, Joseph L., Jr.;
(2015)
Great Is Their Sin: Biological Determinism in the Age of Genomics
(/isis/citation/CBB001510179/)
Be the first to comment!