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1918: Three perspectives on race and human variation
Author(s) -
Caspari Rachel
Publication year - 2009
Publication title -
american journal of physical anthropology
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.146
H-Index - 119
eISSN - 1096-8644
pISSN - 0002-9483
DOI - 10.1002/ajpa.20975
Subject(s) - race (biology) , variation (astronomy) , determinism , meaning (existential) , epistemology , sociology , darwinism , anthropology , gender studies , philosophy , physics , astrophysics
Race was an important topic to the physical anthropologists of 1918, but their views were not monolithic. Multiple perspectives on race are expressed in the first volume of the AJPA , which encompass biological determinism and assumptions about evolutionary processes underlying the race concept. Most importantly, many of the significant alternative approaches to the study of human variation were already expressed in 1918. This paper examines race from the different perspectives of three key contributions to the first volume of the AJPA : papers from Hrdlička, Hooton, and Boas. The meaning of race derived from this work is then discussed. Despite new understandings gained through the neo‐Darwinian synthesis and the growth of genetics, the fundamentals of the modern discussions of race were already planted in 1918. Am J Phys Anthropol 2009. © 2009 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.