All eyes are turned towards genomic data and models as the source of knowledge about whether human races exist or not. Will genomic science make the final decision about whether racial realism (e.g. racial population naturalism) or anti-realism (e.g. racial scepticism) is correct? We think not. The results of even our best and most impressive genomic technologies under-determine whether biogenomic races exist, or not. First, different sub-disciplines of biology interested in population structure employ distinct concepts, aims, measures and models, producing cross-cutting categorisations of population subdivisions rather than a single, universal biogenomic concept of 'race.' Second, within each sub-discipline (e.g. phylogenetics, conservation biology), genomic results are consistent with, and map multiply to, racial realism and anti-realism. Indeed, racial ontologies are constructed conventionally, rather than discovered. We thus defend a constructivist conventionalism about biogenomic racial ontology. Choices and conventions must always be made in identifying particular kinds of groups. Political agendas, social programmes, and moral questions premised on the existence of naturalistic race should accept that no scientifically grounded racial ontology is forthcoming, and adjust presumptions, practices and projects accordingly.
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Seumas Bates
this landscape. In this case, a focus on local racial hierarchies, and their resilience and vulnerability. After first conceptualizing how this article understands “race” in relation to Hurricane Katrina, it shall analyze some of the direct challenges
In Nature and Culture
- Published (Print):
- 01 Mar 2017
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 65–85 (21 total)
Michael Banton
If social units are to be classified it must be by reference to some distinctive characteristic or characteristics that they share. Administrative classifications are usually based on the characteristics identified in the everyday language that reflects practical knowledge. Classifications that will assist the growth of social scientific knowledge have to be based on the identification of theoretically relevant characteristics. Classification precedes the naming of categories. Experimental research into the relative strength of civic and ethnic preferences could uncover the variables that underlie popular notions of nation, race and ethnic group.
Digitizing the Western Gaze
The End FGM Guardian Global Media Campaign
Jessica Cammaert
to divide, rather than unite, transecting as is often the case, existing ethnic, and class divisions (Cammaert forthcoming). And this is precisely what makes End FGM problematic—the allusion/ illusion that regardless of race, religion, class or any
Melanie Kennedy and Natalie Coulter
and the discussions that followed, then, remind us of the cultural visibility of tweenhood, and that the subject of the tween—one bound up with deep-rooted assumptions about race, beauty, and consumer culture—is a site onto and through which
The Paris Opera Ballet Dancing Offstage
Work, Grace, and Race
Tessa Ashlin Nunn
underscore, the term nègre designates a person with Black skin as “une marchandise, un bien mobilier susceptible d'être possédé, exploité ou détruit, ou tout au mieux une sous-race de l'espèce humaine.” 73 Weighed down by a history of violence, the word
In French Politics, Culture & Society
- Published (Print):
- 01 Jun 2022
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 90–115 (26 total)
Christian Promitzer
This article engages with the commonly encountered claim that Bulgarian physical anthropology "features a long, fruitful, and honorable existence," by discussing Bulgarian anthropology's contribution to the controversial issue of ethnogenesis. With the Russian influence waning from the mid-1880s on, the pioneers of Bulgarian anthropology were largely influenced by the German example. But the first generation of Bulgarian anthropologists' tradition of "racial liberalism" (Benoit Massin) was lost after World War I. On the eve of World War II a debate on racism raged among Bulgarian intellectuals. By the time blood group analysis had joined anthropometrics, adherents of a closer collaboration with the Third Reich used it to argue for the Bulgarian nation's non-Slavic origins. In 1938 they even disrupted a lecture given by the biologist Metodiy Popov when he wanted to stress the Bulgarians' ethnic relationship with the other Slavic nations, and to repudiate the idea of a hierarchy of races. During the Socialist period a new generation of anthropologists went on to investigate the Bulgarian ethnogenesis using the term "race", although this clearly contravened the 1950 UNESCO statement on the race question.
Fabricating the Color Line in a White Democracy
From Slave Catchers to Petty Sovereigns
Ben Brucato
Though states are founded in and dependent on successfully claiming a monopoly on the use of violent force and the certification of citizenship, these means suggest particular ends: the production of the social order. Police have the primary mandate to produce order and administer poverty. From a new abolitionist perspective, the particular social order of the U.S. is unique. The white race was founded through the production and maintenance of the color line and performed through a cross-class alliance of whites. Policing is deeply implicated in these processes. A historical account of police during the Herrenvolk era is provided. Finally, the persistence of racist policing is explained in light of a now officially color-blind political order, with officers functioning as petty sovereigns in a neoliberal era.
“Boys Fight, Girls Fight“
Adolescent Girls Speak about Girls' Aggression
Melissa K. Levy
A perceived rise in girls' physical aggression is alarming the public as it collides with dominant views of femininity. Existing research focuses on either boys' violence or girls' non-physical aggression, leaving the realm of girls' physical aggression relatively unexplored. Using data from ethnographic observations and interviews, this study examines young adolescent girls' experience of their and their peers' fighting. Findings indicate that girls participate in fights to stand up for themselves and others, to show they are not afraid, and for fun. This study calls for continued in-depth research into girls' perspectives on aggression and violence in order to provide insight into how gendered, raced, and classed structures affect girls. It seeks, too, to address the problems that arise from girls fighting.
In Girlhood Studies
- Published (Print):
- 01 Dec 2012
- Article Type:
- Research Article
- Pages:
- 45–64 (20 total)
Judith A. Nicholson and Mimi Sheller
Race matters. “Too often scholars discuss mobility in the abstract, assuming or omitting the highly consequential matter of the identity of those who move and its effects on how they move.” 1 This special issue on Mobility and Race has