Understanding Race

Erscheinungsjahr 2022
ISBN: 978-1-009-05558-1
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 188 Seiten, Format (B × H): 123 mm x 171 mm, Gewicht: 226 g

Reihe: Understanding Life

The human species is very young, but in a short time it has acquired some striking, if biologically superficial, variations across the planet. As this book shows, however, none of those biological variations can be understood in terms of discrete races, which do not actually exist as definable entities. Starting with a consideration of evolution and the mechanisms of diversification in nature, this book moves to an examination of attitudes to human variation throughout history, showing that it was only with the advent of slavery that considerations of human variation became politicized. It then embarks on a consideration of how racial classifications have been applied to genomic studies, demonstrating how individualized genomics is a much more effective approach to clinical treatments. It also shows how racial stratification does nothing to help us understand the phenomenon of human variation, at either the genomic or physical levels.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Desalle, Rob

Tattersall, Ian

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politikwissenschaft Allgemein Politische Theorie, Politische Philosophie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Sozialphilosophie, Politische Philosophie
• Sozialwissenschaften Ethnologie | Volkskunde Ethnologie Kultur- und Sozialethnologie: Allgemeines
• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein Gesellschaftstheorie

Inhaltsverzeichnis

1. The evolutionary background; 2. Race before evolutionary theory; 3. Race after Darwin; 4. Race in the era of genetics and genomics; 5. Variation in genomes, and how humans took over the world; 6. Clustering and treeing; 7. Race in medicine and complex phenotypic studies; 8. Human adaptations; 9. Race, science and pseudoscience.

Über Autor(innen)

Tattersall, Ian
Ian Tattersall is Curator Emeritus in the Division of Anthropology of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. His most recent research is on the emergence of modern human cognition. He is author of over 400 scientific papers, numerous books and is a prominent interpreter of palaeoanthropology to the public, and writes regularly for Natural History.

Desalle, Rob
Rob DeSalle is a Curator in the Sackler Institute for Comparative Biology and the Program for Microbial Research of the American Museum of Natural History, New York, USA. His research focuses on molecular systematics, microbial evolution, and genomics. He is the author of over 500 scientific papers and a wide range of books, from popular science titles to textbooks on genomics.