“Geographical Distribution Patterns of Various Genes”: Genetic studies of human variation after 1945

Lipphardt, Veronika

doi:10.1016/j.shpsc.2014.05.006

Cited by 29 publications

(23 citation statements)

References 40 publications

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“…At the same time, that research itself tended to naturalize and reify those assumptions by showing that, in many cases, genetic differences could indeed be found between the populations so defined. While the precise relationship of these genetic differences to other forms of racial, ethnic or geographical difference continued to be debated, the circular reasoning underlying much of that research went largely unremarked, thereby helping to sediment assumptions that racial and ethnic differences are at least partly rooted in biology (see, inter alia, Bangham, 2015;Gannet, 2001Gannet, , 2003Gannet and Griesemer 2004;Gormley, 2009;Lipphardt, 2014;Marks, 2012;Reardon, 2004Reardon, , 2005Smocovitis, 2012).…”

Section: Populations and Disease Genes In The 1950s To 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding the global in the local

Sturdy¹

2020

Global Health and the New World Order

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Section: Populations and Disease Genes In The 1950s To 1970smentioning

confidence: 99%

Finding the global in the local

Sturdy¹

2020

Global Health and the New World Order

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“…Using a handful of genetic markers (such as blood groups), human geneticists hoped to study human variation more precisely than anthropometric and anthropological methods permitted (Lipphardt 2014). After WWII, many institutions and founding bodies allocated enormous financial sources for genetic research on populations around the globe.…”

Section: Genetic Characterization Of Mexican Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Prominent human geneticists promoted human variation studies in many countries including Dobzhansky in Brazil (Barahona and Ayala 2005a, Lipphardt 2014), Luca Cavalli-Sforza (1980), and Rubén Lisker in Mexico (Barahona 2009). Many debates concerning the new trend of using gene frequencies in physical anthropology in the postwar years drew attention to the importance of correlating data from both disciplines to have a more accurate picture of human evolution (Lipphardt 2014). One of the leaders of this trend was Cavalli-Sforza, whose studies on the genetics of human populations using linguistic data produced a body of data from which many correlations would be followed up (Cavalli-Sforza 1980).…”

Section: Genetic Characterization Of Mexican Populationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Medical Genetics and the First Studies of the Genetics of Populations in Mexico

Barahona

2016

Genetics

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Following World War II (WWII), there was a new emphasis within genetics on studying the genetic composition of populations. This probably had a dual source in the growing strength of evolutionary biology and the new international interest in understanding the effects of radiation on human populations, following the atomic bombings in Japan. These global concerns were shared by Mexican physicians. Indeed, Mexico was one of the leading centers of this trend in human genetics. Three leading players in this story were Mario Salazar Mallén, Adolfo Karl, and Rubén Lisker. Their trajectories and the international networks in human genetics that were established after WWII, paved the way for the establishment of medical and population genetics in Mexico. Salazar Mallén's studies on the distribution and characterization of ABO blood groups in indigenous populations were the starting point while Karl's studies on the distribution of abnormal hemoglobin in Mexican indigenous populations showed the relationships observed in other laboratories at the time. It was Lisker's studies, however, that were instrumental in the development of population genetics in the context of national public policies for extending health care services to the Mexican population. In particular, he conducted studies on Mexican indigenous groups contributing to the knowledge of the biological diversity of human populations according to international trends that focused on the variability of human populations in terms of genetic frequencies. From the start, however, Lisker was as committed to the reconstruction of shared languages and practices as he was to building networks of collaboration in order to guarantee the necessary groundwork for establishing the study of the genetics of human populations in Mexico. This study also allows us to place Mexican science within a global context in which connected narratives describe the interplay between global trends and national contexts.

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“…Although biologists were sometimes disconcerted, in the 1960s biology began to encompass issues such as biological productivity and human welfare that hitherto had not been considered genuine biological problems like cracking the DNA code or understanding the role of species diversity in nature (Aronova, Baker and Oreskes, ). In the 1950s and 1960s, biologists often collaborated with ethnologists and linguists to approach native populations (Lipphardt, , pp. 50–61; Widmer, ).…”

Section: Biocca's Epistemologymentioning

confidence: 99%

Ethno-biology during the Cold War: Biocca's Expedition to Amazonia

Cozzoli

2016

Centaurus

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This article focuses on the ethno‐biological expedition to the Amazon headed by Ettore Biocca between November 1962 and July 1963. Biocca, a parasitologist by training, assembled a multidisciplinary team to carry out an ethno‐biological study of Amazon natives. The expedition work covered the natives' customs, myths, chants, diseases and the hallucinogenic compounds and curare they used, and took into account plants and animals common to the Amazon environment. This article aims to contribute to the understanding of the 20th‐century Western approach to the Amazon people and its cultural importance. It sets out to show how Biocca's encyclopaedic work related to the centrality of Amazonia and its peoples in scientific and cultural debates on modernity and Western culture in the 1960s, and how it connects to Cold War anxieties about the disappearance of ‘uncorrupted’ peoples.

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“Geographical Distribution Patterns of Various Genes”: Genetic studies of human variation after 1945

Cited by 29 publications

References 40 publications

Finding the global in the local

Finding the global in the local

Medical Genetics and the First Studies of the Genetics of Populations in Mexico

Ethno-biology during the Cold War: Biocca's Expedition to Amazonia

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