Marks, Jonathan (Author)
Current Anthropology
Volume: 53, no. S5
Issue: S5
Pages: 161-172
Publication date: 2013
Language: English
Edition Details: Part of a special section, “A Global Form of Reason”
Although we often date the conflict of molecules and morphology in biological anthropology to the 1962 Wenner-Gren conference Classification and Human Evolution, the roots of the conflict extend considerably deeper. In the first half of the twentieth century, two established research traditions applied genetic data to problems in physical anthropology: racial serology and systematic serology. These had a tense relationship with the more mainstream areas of racial anthropology and primate taxonomy. Both produced conclusions that were often difficult to reconcile with traditional physical anthropology but that laid claim to the authoritative voices of genetics and evolution. They were also less relevant and less threatening to general anthropology than the other movement for the application of genetics to anthropological problems---eugenics---had been. I discuss the relations of genetics to anthropology as manifested in the areas of eugenics, race, and primate taxonomy in the early twentieth century and the field's transformation into anthropological genetics in the 1960s.
...MoreArticle Lindee, M. Susan; Santos, Ricardo Ventura (2013) The Biological Anthropology of Living Human Populations: World Histories, National Styles, and International Networks: An Introduction to Supplement 5. Current Anthropology (pp. 3-16).
Similar Citations
Article
Sommer, Marianne;
(2012)
Human Evolution across the Disciplines: Spotlights on American Anthropology and Genetics
Article
Krivosheina, Galina;
(2014)
Long Way to the Anthropological Exhibition: The Institutionalization of Physical Anthropology in Russia
Chapter
Backenköhler, Dirk;
(2009)
Alles nur “Träume eines Mittagsschläfchens”? Darwins Evolutionstheorie und die Entstehung der biologischen Anthropologie im deutschsprachigen Raum (1860--1875)
Article
Bauduer, Frédéric;
(2008)
Histoire de l'anthropologie biologique de la population basque: De l'empirisme à la génétique moléculaire
Chapter
Proctor, Robert N.;
(2008)
Temporality as Artifact in Paleoanthropology: How New Ideas of Race, Brutality, Molecular Drift, and the Powers of Time Have Affected Conceptions of Human Origins
Book
Stone, Linda;
Lurquin, Paul F.;
(2005)
Genetic and Cultural Odyssey: The Life and Work of L. Luca Cavalli-Sforza
Book
Bashford, Alison;
Levine, Philippa;
(2010)
The Oxford Handbook of the History of Eugenics
Book
Jörg Pittelkow;
(2018)
Innovation und Tradition. Herbert Bachs Beitrag zur Anthropologie und Humangenetik
Article
Bangham, Jenny;
(2014)
Blood Groups and Human Groups: Collecting and Calibrating Genetic Data after World War Two
Article
Lipphardt, Veronika;
(2014)
“Geographical Distribution Patterns of Various Genes”: Genetic Studies of Human Variation after 1945
Book
Friedlaender, Jonathan;
Radin, Joanna;
(2009)
From Anthropology to Genomics: Reflections of a Pacific Fieldworker
Thesis
Iverson, Margot Lynn;
(2007)
Blood Types: A History of Genetic Studies of Native Americans, 1920--1955
Article
Radin, Joanna;
(2014)
Unfolding Epidemiological Stories: How the WHO Made Frozen Blood into a Flexible Resource for the Future
Article
Lindee, Susan;
(2014)
Scaling up: Human Genetics as a Cold War Network
Article
Bauer, Susanne;
(2014)
Virtual Geographies of Belonging: The Case of Soviet and Post-Soviet Human Genetic Diversity Research
Book
Jackson, John P., Jr.;
Weidman, Nadine M.;
(2004)
Race, Racism, and Science: Social Impact and Interaction
Article
Little, Michael A.;
(2013)
Human Population Biology in the Second Half of the Twentieth Century
Article
Mauro Capocci;
(2023)
Human genetics in post-WWII Italy: Blood, genes and platforms
Article
Mikels-Carrasco, Jessica;
(2012)
Sherwood Washburn's New Physical Anthropology: Rejecting the “Religion of Taxonomy”
Article
Smocovitis, Vassiliki Betty;
(2013)
Humanizing Evolution: Anthropology, the Evolutionary Synthesis, and the Prehistory of Biological Anthropology, 1927--1962
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Current Anthropology
Annals of the History and Philosophy of Biology
Centaurus: International Magazine of the History of Mathematics, Science, and Technology
Histoire des Sciences Médicales
Be the first to comment!