Beyond the Cephalic Index

Negotiating Politics to Produce Unesco’s Scientific Statements on Race

Datos Bibliográficos

ID7740944
AutoresPerrin Selcer (autor de correspondencia)
Año2012
Volumen53
NúmeroS5
PáginasS173-S184
Fecha de publicación2012-04-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessNo
TipoARTICLE
RevistaCurrent Anthropology (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 0011-3204 • E-ISSN: 1537-5382
EditorialUniversity of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US)
DOI10.1086/662290
OpenAlexW2205472103
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas32
Referencias citadas46

This paper analyzes the production and reception of UNESCO’s Statements on Race from 1950, 1951, and 1964 to track the consolidation of a scientific consensus on the biological significance of race. The race statements played a key role in the establishment of the postwar liberal antiracist orthodoxy, and their history illuminates broader dynamics in the production of scientific scripts intended to influence political debates. The consensus was rooted in the synthesis of physical anthropology and population biology but depended on a parallel strengthening of antiracist social norms in the international community. As much as race, conflicts over the race statements were disputes over scientific authority—over who, if anyone, should be authorized to speak for science. Because international civil servants and activist scientists had to negotiate disciplinary, national, and international politics to achieve an acceptable consensus, a close reading of this history reveals the importance of shifting political and social meanings of equality on scientific statements of biological facts. Two central ironies that emerge are the shifting association of bell curves from representations of liberal racial tolerance to icons of enduring racism and the importance of increasing racial and national diversity in the international scientific community to discrediting biological determinism

Discipline · Environmental ethics · International relations · Political science · Politics · Population · Race (biology · Racism · Social science · Sociology · Toleration · Gender Studies · Law · Race, Genetics, and Society