Genetics, Biology, and Race: Understanding Human Difference
This virtual issue, organized by contributing editor Channah Leff and managing editor Sean Mallin, brings together articles published in American Anthropologist around race and biology, focusing on genetics as one way to understand—and counter misunderstandings about—human difference. From early work on immigration and evolution to more recent work on epigenetics, anthropologists have been at the forefront of conversations about what race is—and what it isn’t. These conversations are as important as ever, given the rise of new ethno-nationalisms and biological essentialisms, and the increasing use of genetic testing to bolster identity claims.
These articles reflect how anthropologists have addressed questions about race and evolution, genes and human behavior, and culture and biology, as well as how their interventions have changed over the past hundred years.
The entire issue is available here. Articles will be free to access until the end of 2018.
Boas, Franz. 1912. “Changes in the Bodily Form of Descendants of Immigrants.”
Garn, Stanley M. 1957. “Race and Evolution.”
Montagu, Ashley. 1962. “The Concept of Race.”
Washburn, Sherwood L. 1963. “The Study of Race.”
Jackson, Linda. 1986. “Sociocutural and Ethnohistorical Influences on Genetic Diversity in Liberia.”
Lieberman, Leonard, and Fatimah Linda C. Jackson. 1995. “Race and Three Models of Human Origin.”
Cartmill, Matt. 1998. “The Status of the Race Concept in Physical Anthropology.”
Templeton, Alan R. 1998. “Human Races: A Genetic and Evolutionary Perspective.”
O’Rourke, Dennis H. 2003. “Anthropological Genetics in the Genomic Era: A Look Back and Ahead.”
Armelagos, George. 2012. “Anthropology and the Genographic Project.”
Goodman, Alan H. 2013. “Bringing Culture into Human Biology and Biology Back into Anthropology.”
Marks, Jonathan. 2014. “Commentary: Toward an Anthropology of Genetics.”