Kennewick's Message of Unification

Preston, Douglas

doi:10.1111/an.1997.38.9.2.1

Cited by 4 publications

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“…Everyone acknowledges that the similarity of the population-based terms 'caucasoid', 'mongoloid', and 'negroid' to the common-sense terms 'white', 'Asian', and 'black', confuses issues of anthropological identification. Thus, Douglas Preston, who wrote a popularized account of the Kennewick Man case for the New Yorker magazine, suggested in AN that anthropologists could substitute their racial-sounding taxonomy with 'Group A', 'Group B' and 'Group C' (Preston, 1997b). Whether or not Preston meant this suggestion to be taken seriously, it raises an important point.…”

Section: Nonessentialism and Kennewick Manmentioning

confidence: 99%

Philosophical aspects of the ‘AAA Statement on “Race”’

Zack

2001

Anthropological Theory

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I apply philosophical analysis to the AAA Statement on "Race"' (American Anthropologica l Association, 1998) and the commentary on its earlier draft published in the Anthropology Newsletter (1997) . Racial essentialism is the theory that there are distinct and general huma n biological traits that determine racial membership and cause the presence of specific racial traits . This theory is false, as is the belief that a taxonomy of human races, or race, exists. But the 199 8 AAA Statement on "Race"'fails to repudiate racial essentialism explicitly. Instead, the Statement denies that race determines culture or psychology and thereby misses the broad logical point tha t race cannot determine anything, because it does not exist . In the AN discussion of Kennewick Man, which appeared to be a debate about racial essentialism, contributors spoke past one anothe r in confusing population-based measures of human diversity with race . The same confusion clouds contemporary concerns about the relevance of common-sense racial categories to medica l diagnosis and treatment. Education is the solution to the public's ignorance about the scientific foundation for its ideas about race . It is an empirical question whether such education will remed y racism or unjust treatment based on the false racial taxonomy. Although mixed-race categorie s are no more real than 'pure' ones, their acceptance may help unsettle the prevailing fals e taxonomy of race .

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Section: Nonessentialism and Kennewick Manmentioning

confidence: 99%

Philosophical aspects of the ‘AAA Statement on “Race”’

Zack

2001

Anthropological Theory

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“…Allan Goodman's (1997) attack on the use of typological language in the discussion of the affiliations of Kennewick Man -and his broader attack on the claims of forensic anthropology -was met with a rapid rebuttal (e.g. Preston 1997, Gill 1998aChatters 1998) --and, of course, a rebuttal of the rebuttals (Marks 1998). These rebuttals rejected various dimensions of Goodman's analysis, but also emphasized that typology remains useful for some anthropologists, and that anthropometric analysis by no means disappeared in the face of Boasian critique and advances in molecular genetics, but persists today in a refined form in a variety of functions ranging from the analysis of the human fossil record to a better understanding of who lies in the mass graves at El Mozote and Srebenica.…”

Section: Distinguished Lecture Given By Professormentioning

confidence: 99%

The Central States Anthropological Society: Bulletin

1998

CSAS Bulletin

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“…In 2017, Kennewick Man, also known as “The Ancient One,” was reburied. Sources for information and commentary: Anderson et al (), Chatters (), Goodman (), Jantz and Owsley (), Marks (), Owsley and Jantz (), and Preston ().…”

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confidence: 99%

Single (sub)species then and now: An examination of the nonracial perspective of C. Loring Brace

Smith

2018

American J Phys Anthropol

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C. Loring Brace's writings on the concept of race have been among the most influential within anthropology. A review of the development of Brace's perspective on race shows that his philosophical approaches to fossil and modern human variation are consistent and integrated. Brace's views on race are compared with those of Ashley Montagu and Frank Livingstone, who also proposed eliminating "race" from anthropology, and with those of Stanley Garn and Alice Brues, who accepted "racial" subdivisions of humans. Carleton Coon's writings are more divergent; the aftermath of the publication of his Origin of Races highlights significant political tensions of the 1960s that intersected with scientific changes in anthropology emanating from the Evolutionary Synthesis. Recent forensic and "no race" positions are compared to explore their differences and the possibility of reconciliation, and the role of Brace and others in combating proposals of intellectual differences among human groups is discussed. While a spectrum of anthropological opinion regarding race exists, the commonalities are sufficient to allow valuable, united commentary emphasizing the complexity of modern human cultural and biological variation. Another of Brace's valuable contributions to the discipline has been as an historian, and a major focus of his historical research and writing has been an examination of the history of racial categorization.Both historical and scientific considerations led him to advocate an abandonment of the race concept. He was preceded in this view by Montagu (1941Montagu ( , 1942Montagu ( , 1951, who later became his coauthor for a general bioanthropology text (Brace & Montagu, 1965). The second edition of that text (1977) contains a chapter which details the history of the race concept, a chapter which set the foundation for Brace's later writings on the subject.In evaluating the development and influence of Brace's ideas on race, it is helpful to look at the ideas of some of his colleagues who wrote and conducted research in this area. In addition to Montagu, the main researchers targeted here will be Frank Livingstone, Stanley Garn, Carleton Coon, and Alice Brues. Montagu was a student of Boas at Columbia, Livingstone obtained his PhD from the University of Michigan, and Garn, Coon, and Brues all obtained Harvard degrees. The Harvard "bias" is easily explained. Prior to 1950, if one desired to be a biological anthropologist there was no other major institution in the United States in which to matriculate that had an established program 104

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Kennewick's Message of Unification

Cited by 4 publications

References 0 publications

Philosophical aspects of the ‘AAA Statement on “Race”’

Philosophical aspects of the ‘AAA Statement on “Race”’

The Central States Anthropological Society: Bulletin

Single (sub)species then and now: An examination of the nonracial perspective of C. Loring Brace

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