The nature of difference : sciences of race in the United States from Jefferson to genomics / edited by Evelynn M. Hammonds and Rebecca M. Herzig.

Format:

Book

Contributor:

Hammonds, Evelynn Maxine.

Herzig, Rebecca M., 1971-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Race--Study and teaching--United States--History.

Race.

Race--Study and teaching--United States--History--Sources.

Science--Social aspects--United States--History.

Science.

Science--Social aspects--United States--History--Sources.

Difference (Psychology)--Social aspects--United States--History.

Difference (Psychology).

Difference (Psychology)--Social aspects--United States--History--Sources.

Race awareness--United States--History.

Race awareness.

Race awareness--United States--History--Sources.

Race relations.

History.

Difference (Psychology)--Social aspects.

Science--Social aspects.

Race--Study and teaching.

United States--Race relations--History.

United States.

United States--Race relations--History--Sources.

Genre:

Sources.

Physical Description:

xv, 380 pages, 6 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations (some color) ; 23 cm

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. : MIT Press, [2008]

Summary:

The Nature of Difference documents how distinctions between people have been generated in and by the life sciences. Through a wide-ranging selection of primary documents and insightful commentaries by the editors, it charts the shifting boundaries of science and race through more than two centuries of American history. The documents, primarily writings by eminent scientists intended for their professional peers, show how various sciences of race have changed their object of study over time: from racial groups to types to populations to genomes and beyond. The book's thematic and synthetic approach reveals the profoundly diverse array of practices-countless acts of observation, quantification, and experimentation-that enabled the consequential categorizations we inherit.

The documents-most reproduced in their entirety-range from definitions of race in dictionaries published between 1886 and 2005 to an exchange of letters between Benjamin Banneker and Thomas Jefferson; from Samuel Cartwright's 1851 "Report on the Diseases and Physical Peculiarities of the Negro Race" to a 1950 UNESCO declaration that race is a social myth; from a 1928 paper detailing the importance of the glands in shaping human nature to a 2005 report of the discovery of a genetic basis for skin color. Such documents, given context by the editors' introductions to each thematic chapter, provide scholars, journalists, and general readers with the rich historical background necessary for understanding contemporary developments in racial science.

Contents:

Dictionary definitions of "race"

Anatomical observations

Immunity and contagion

Evolution and degeneration

Techniques of measurement

Glandular differences

Hybridity and admixture

Toward genetics

The end of race?

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9780262083751

0262083752

9780262582759

0262582759

OCLC:

165956690