Haunting biology : science and indigeneity in Australia / Emma Kowal.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Kowal, Emma, author.

Series:

Experimental futures

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Aboriginal Australians--Research--History.

Aboriginal Australians.

Human biology--Research--Social aspects--Australia.

Human biology.

Human genetics--Research--Social aspects--Australia.

Human genetics.

Anthropology--Research--Australia.

Anthropology.

Ethnohistory--Australia.

Ethnohistory.

Scientific racism--Australia--History.

Scientific racism.

Anthropology--Research.

Australia.

Genre:

History.

Physical Description:

xv, 248 pages : illustrations, maps ; 23 cm.

Place of Publication:

Durham : Duke University Press, 2023.

Summary:

"In Haunting Biology Emma Kowal recounts the troubled history of Western biological studies of Indigenous Australians and asks how we now might see contemporary genomics, especially that conducted by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scientists. Kowal illustrates how the material persistence of samples over decades and centuries folds together the fates of different scientific methodologies. Blood, bones, hair, comparative anatomy, human biology, physiology, and anthropological genetics all haunt each other across time and space, together with the many racial theories they produced and sustained. The stories Kowal tells feature a variety of ghostly presences: a dead anatomist, a fetishized piece of hair hidden away in a war trunk, and an elusive white Indigenous person. By linking this history to contemporary genomics and twenty-first-century indigeneity, Kowal outlines the fraught complexities, perils, and potentials of studying Indigenous biological difference in the twenty-first century"-- Provided by publisher.

Contents:

Living with ghosts

Blood, bones, and the ghosts of the ancestors

A century in the life of an Aboriginal hair sample

Race and nation : Aboriginal whiteness and settler belonging

Indigenous physiology : metabolism, cold tolerance, hibernation, and the "racial factor"

Spencer's double : the decolonial afterlife of a postcolonial museum prop.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Other Format:

Online version: Kowal, Emma. Haunting biology.

ISBN:

9781478025375

1478025379

9781478020592

1478020598

OCLC:

1370485242

Publisher Number:

99996552116