Anthropologists’ Attitudes Towards the Concept of Race: The Polish Sample

Kaszycka, Katarzyna A.; Štrkalj, Goran

doi:10.1086/339381

Cited by 19 publications

(15 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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“…No correlation between sex and views toward race was found, although considerably more men than women chose the populational definition of race, while considerably more women than men chose the ethnogeographic definition. In this study, in contrast to the 1999 one (see Kaszycka and Strkalj 2002), there was no correlation between the response and highest degree obtained, although there was still a very high correlation between the highest degree obtained and age (chi-square = 77.7; df=4; p< .001). The median age for the respondents with an M.Sc.…”

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confidence: 88%

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"Race"—Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings

Kaszycka

Strziko

2003

American Anthropologist

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The racial paradigm, which became rooted in physical anthropology at its very beginning, was, for decades, treated as a concept needing no verification. It was only in the mid-20th century that the first attempts were made to question the usefulness of the race concept in describing our species variation. Since then, an ever growing number of anthropologists, particularly in the United States, have rejected the concept (nearly seventy percent in 1999). In Poland, the situation is different-in the 2001 study, the race concept was rejected by only 25 percent; the remaining respondents differing widely as to the accepted meaning of race. Unlike the U.S. anthropologists, Polish anthropologists tend to regard race as a term without taxonomic value, often as a substitute for population. The discrepancy may stem from differences in the traditions of anthropological schools, the differing sociopolitical histories, education, semantics, and possible attitudinal factors. [

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confidence: 88%

“…An age gradient was also reported in the 1999 study of Kaszycka and Strkalj (2002), in which acceptance of race (as subspecies) clearly increased with age while rejection declined. Both then and now, we have related it primarily to education, traditions, and also to sociopolitical conditions.…”

supporting

confidence: 54%

"Race"—Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings

Kaszycka

Strziko

2003

American Anthropologist

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“…Thus, the South African populations from which the Dart Collection is derived are extremely diverse in their culture, linguistics, biology and genetics. The complex and conflicting nature of such concepts as 'race' and 'tribe' have been widely discussed (Cartmill, 1998;Kaszycka and Š trkalj, 2002;Wang et al, 2003;Lieberman et al, 2004), and is particularly acute given the socio-political context of South Africa (Morris, 1988;Ellison and de Wett, 1997;Š trkalj et al, 2004). Biological variation of local South African populations has been vigorously studied from the nineteenth century onwards (Nurse et al, 1984;Tobias, 1985;Dubow, 1995;Legassick and Rassool, 2000;Š trkalj, 2000;Morris, 2005), including both typological and more fluid concepts of 'race'.…”

Section: Documentation Of the Collectionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The history and composition of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

Dayal

Kegley

Štrkalj

et al. 2009

American J Phys Anthropol

168

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The Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons (Dart Collection) is housed in the School of Anatomical Sciences at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa, and comprises one of the largest documented cadaver-derived human skeletal assemblages in the world. This collection originated in the early 1920s as a result of the efforts of Raymond Dart and continues to grow. The skeletons included represent varied indigenous and immigrant populations from southern Africa, Europe and Asia. This contribution documents the history of the collection and provides an updated inventory and demographic assessment of this valuable research collection. According to a recent inventory the Dart Collection currently comprises 2,605 skeletons representing individuals from regional SA African (76%), White (15%), Coloured (4%) and Indian (0.3%) populations. A large proportion of the skeletons (71%) represent males. The recorded ages at death range from the first year to over 100 years of age, but the majority of individuals died between the ages of 20 and 70. The Dart Collection has been affected by collection procedures based on availability. All of the cadavers collected before 1958, and large proportions subsequently, were derived from unclaimed bodies in regional South African hospitals. Some details of documentation (age at death, population group) are estimates and some aspects of the collection demographics (sex ratios) do not closely reflect any living South African population. Our inventory and analysis of the Dart Collection is aimed to assist researchers planning research on the materials from this collection.

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“…The race concept, now generally abandoned by a large majority of American and western European physical anthropologists [e.g., LIEBERMAN et al 1989;CAVALLI-SFORZA et al 1994;CARTMILL 1998;KASZYCKA and ŠTRKALJ 2002;WANG et al 2002;KASZYCKA and STRZAŁKO 2003a,b;LIEBERMAN et al 2004;ELLISON and GOODMAN 2006], dominated the study of human variation for centuries. Until the mid-twentieth century, this typological framework formed the basis of racial research within which a large number of studies were generated [e.g., STOCKING 1968, STEPAN 1982, BARKAN 1992, WOLPOFF and CASPARI 1997, BIONDI and RICKARDS 2002, BRACE 2005.…”

Section: The Power Of Racial Sciencementioning

confidence: 99%

The alchemy of human variation: Race, ethnicity and Manoiloff’s blood reaction

Naidoo

Štrkalj

Daly

2007

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This paper examines the research on race determination conducted by Russian biochemist E.O. Manoiloff in the 1920s. Manoiloff claimed to have discovered a method which detected racial identity of an individual by a simple chemical reaction performed on a subject's blood sample. The method was published in one of the leading anthropological journals and it was not questioned for some time. It is obvious today that Manoiloff's claims were nothing short of ridiculous. The present study, based on the experimental history of sciences, tries to elucidate Manoiloff's procedures and reasons for his 'success'. His experiments were repeated using both original and modern equipment. It has been demonstrated that Manoiloff's procedures, although rigorous at first glance, were highly arbitrary and methodologically flawed. It would appear that the socio-political and scientific contexts of the early twentieth century which favoured belief in the existence of clearly distinguishable racial types played a crucial role in the initial positive response to Manoiloff's research. KEY WORDS: race, typology, history of scienceAnthropologists … are absorbed in their intellectual history -in learning from the mistakes of earlier generations of scholars. The more we understand those conceptual errors, which usually are visible only in hindsight, the more the science of the human species can grow -by the very process of proposal and disposal by which science functions.Jonathan Marks (1995: 3)

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Anthropologists’ Attitudes Towards the Concept of Race: The Polish Sample

Cited by 19 publications

References 7 publications

"Race"—Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings

"Race"—Still an Issue for Physical Anthropology? Results of Polish Studies Seen in the Light of the U.S. Findings

The history and composition of the Raymond A. Dart Collection of Human Skeletons at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa

The alchemy of human variation: Race, ethnicity and Manoiloff’s blood reaction

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