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Summary SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 252 NOTES
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SOCIAL ANTHROPOLOGY 252: SOUTH AFRICAN ANTHROPOLOGYWEEK 1: THINKING ABOUT THE HUMAN IN ANTHROPOLOGY
Lecture 1: Introduction
Themes
- History of Anthropology
- Different modes of studying and viewing the world
- Data or Theory? (Theory and data are not the same.)
- Power or Theory?
Critical Thinking
- Critical Reading
o What is the central argument of a text?
o What data is mobilized in support of the argument?
o What data do I see in the text or in other sources that can destabilize the
argument?
- Critical Writing
o Show the reader what the central argument of a text is?
o Link that to your own data or observations.
o Develop an argument about the world or about your observation.
,Lecture 2: Anthropology and the Science of Race
Biological Race vs Social Race
- Anthropologists deny Biological Race
- Race as a ‘social fact.’
- Social race is based on an assumption of biological difference (p.1).
- Argument: Biological race is false, social races are part of how we see the world.
- Main argument is that biological race is false and social race is based on the
assumption of biological race.
Biological Race Categories are Arbitrary
- P.2 – ‘Similarly, Asian Indians have been classified as the Hindu race from 1920-
1940, as White from 1950-70, and as Asian or Pacific Islander since 1977 when the
1970 Hispanic racial category was dropped, and’ Spanish-speakers were tabulated
separately under "Hispanic Origin (of any race)" (Wright 1994:50-52).’
- P.3 – American South had a one-drop rule, South Africa has middle category called
‘coloured.’ One drop of black blood makes you black in America. No coloured
category likes in South Africa.
- Categories are not universal. Category is arbitrary.
Social Race Categories: Power and Hierarchy
- P.3 – Money Whitens (Brazil).
- P.3 ‘They justify self-perpetuating differences in social rank and livelihood
opportunities as if they were predetermined facts of nature.’
- Ideology and conviction.
- P.4 – Biological race today is based on non-observable differences; social races are
based on observable differences as if they are biological difference.
Is Race and Hierarchy the same as ‘difference’?
- P.5 ‘Recognizing physical differences does not require racial labels. Neither does it
entail "racism," the belief that such differences make some people innately inferior or
superior to others.’
,Race?
- Breed, nation, lineage, descent – p.5
- Linnaeus – humans are of 4 varieties of human species.
- Monogenesis vs Polygenesis.
- Biblical.
- P.7 – Blumenbach, monogenesis, intelligent black people, BUT hierarchy and
degeneration.
- p.7 – ‘Thus while Blumenbach rejected the notion of separate biological races, his
hierarchical, pseudo-evolutionary scheme implied that some varieties were purer,
more original and handsome, than others (Gould 1994b; Banton 1987:5-6; Gossett
1963:37-39).’
Racial Science, Slavery + Power
- P.8 – ‘The race scientists of the nineteenth century shared Cuvier' s belief in a
hierarchy of fixed racial types. But they sought measurable data to demonstrate it
and, in their search, invented anthropometry, the measurement of living humans, and
craniometry.’
- P.9 – ‘Morton's results were predetermined by the skulls he selected for his sample.
As his footnote clearly states, fourteen of his seventeen Hindu skulls and all of his
Mexican and Peruvian skulls were omitted from the Caucasian and American
subsets because of their smallish size. He only obtained an acceptable American
figure by including a number of Iroquois specimens which were, on average, 4.5
cubic inches larger than the average Caucasian skull. He reported the range of
variation found within each of his racial categories, but was so focused upon the
interracial differences that he ignored the fact that his reported intra-racial differences
( 14 to 40 cubic inches) :were far greater than those between racial categories (1 to 9
cubic inches).’
Popular Opinion and Science
- P.10 - ‘…the race scientists were following, rather than leading, popular opinion.’
, Franz Boas – Critique of Racial Science
- P.12-13: ‘Boas surveyed nearly 18,000 recent immigrants and their children, and
measured, among other things, head length and breadth. Head form was then
considered a fixed racial trait, but Boas reported in 1911 that each successive
American child born to round headed, Russian Jewish immigrants was progressively
more longheaded, while those born to long-headed Southern Italian immigrants
became progressively more round-headed. Boas concluded that if such a supposedly
fixed racial trait could change in a single generation, "we must speak of a plasticity of
types" (Boas 1940:71; Stocking 1968:175-82)’
- Nobody listened, why? Power?
Final Attack on Racial Science p.16-17
- 1- Races are arbitrarily defined. More racial traits one chooses, the smaller the race
group is, and the more races you have to define.
- 2- ‘No supposed racial category has exclusive possession of a given genetic trait.’
- Clines- smaller differentiations between neighbours.
- ‘And just as the ordinary dogs of the world are mutts, rather than the distinct breeds
which humans have artificially created, people do not come pre-packaged in pure,
distinct racial types.’
- 3- ‘Because human genetic traits are distributed in clines, the range of genetic
variation within a supposed racial category is greater than those between supposed
racial categories.’
Race as Social
- P.18: ‘For a social race is not a primordial social fact, but a situationally defined,
collective social identity; an historically grounded sense of peoplehood based upon
insiders' and outsiders' interpretations of subjective boundary markers.’
- P.18-19: ‘Relatively little harm is done when "race" is used as a descriptive device-a
way to tell where a person's ancestors came from, or what she/he looks like. The real
danger lies in using "race" as an explanatory device in assuming that a person
thinks, feels, or acts in a certain way because of where his or her ancestors came
from, or
- because of what she/he looks like, for that hearkens back to the erroneous
nineteenth century view of fixed racial types and racially determined behavioural
traits.’
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