Article ID: CBB317778701

From Racial Types to Aboriginal Clines: The Illustrative Career of Joseph B. Birdsell (2020)

unapi

The mid-twentieth century Australian fieldwork of Joseph B. Birdsell illustrates, perhaps uniquely, the transition from typological structuring in physical anthropology before World War II to human biology’s increasing interest in the geographical or clinal patterning of genes and commitment to notions of drift and selection. It also shows that some morphological inquiries lingered into the postwar period, as did an attachment to theories of racial migration and hybridization. Birdsell’s intensive and long-term fieldwork among Aboriginal Australians eventually led him to criticize the settler colonialism and white racism that had made possible his expeditions and data collection. Yet he continued to regard Aboriginal communities as “island laboratories” and to treat Aboriginal people as convenient research subjects, distancing himself from their life worlds and experiences of dispossession and exploitation.This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.

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Authors & Contributors
Roque, Ricardo
Rice, Carla
Manning, Dolleen Tisawii'ashii
Stonefish, Mona
Ellinghaus, Katherine
Martínez, Julia
Concepts
Science and race
Colonialism
Indigenous peoples; indigeneity
Physical anthropology
Cross-cultural interaction; cultural influence
Human genetics
Time Periods
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
18th century
Early modern
17th century
Places
Australia
Europe
Canada
Great Britain
Africa
Queensland (Australia)
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
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