Notes on the Anthropology Wars: Evidence from Prestige School PhD Placements
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Physical anthropology began as racial anthropology—as the science of race. Although Boas and his students had been challenging scientific racialism since the turn of the century, the Boasian critique did not become politically significant until the 1930s when Ruth Benedict and other students of Boas at Columbia University began to mount a frontal challenge. Even after Auschwitz, racialism refused to relinquish its hold on the scientific mind. It was not until after the antisystemic turn of the 1960s that Boasian antiracism got the upper hand on racial anthropologists in the larger discourse. That turning point can be dated quite precisely. It was when Coon was pushed out as the President of the AAPA in 1963. Still, it is clear that the scientific status of race remained contested territory since otherwise Lewontin's famous intervention in 1972 (showing that racial taxonomy could explain no more than a negligible fraction of human genetic variation) would not have been necessary. By 1994 certainly, Boasian antiracism had become hegemonic in the larger discourse, as became evident in the controversy surrounding the publication of
Notes on the Anthropology Wars: Evidence from Prestige School PhD Placements
Notes on the Anthropology Wars: Evidence from…
Notes on the Anthropology Wars: Evidence from Prestige School PhD Placements
Physical anthropology began as racial anthropology—as the science of race. Although Boas and his students had been challenging scientific racialism since the turn of the century, the Boasian critique did not become politically significant until the 1930s when Ruth Benedict and other students of Boas at Columbia University began to mount a frontal challenge. Even after Auschwitz, racialism refused to relinquish its hold on the scientific mind. It was not until after the antisystemic turn of the 1960s that Boasian antiracism got the upper hand on racial anthropologists in the larger discourse. That turning point can be dated quite precisely. It was when Coon was pushed out as the President of the AAPA in 1963. Still, it is clear that the scientific status of race remained contested territory since otherwise Lewontin's famous intervention in 1972 (showing that racial taxonomy could explain no more than a negligible fraction of human genetic variation) would not have been necessary. By 1994 certainly, Boasian antiracism had become hegemonic in the larger discourse, as became evident in the controversy surrounding the publication of