Chapters 12 and 13

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Chapters 12 and 13

• Modern Human Diversity Race and Racism and Human
  Adaptation to the World

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Chapter Outline

• The History of Human Classification
• Race as a Biological Concept
• The Concept of Human Races
• The Social Significance of Race Racism
• Human Biological Diversity
• Adaptation to Environment
• Medical Anthropology
• Globalization and Health

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Human Diversity

• Humans are a single, highly variable species
  inhabiting the entire globe.
• Though biological processes are responsible for
  human variation, the biological concept of race
  cannot be applied to human diversity.
• The vast majority of human variation exists
  within populations rather than among populations.

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The History Of Human Classification

• Early European scholars tried to classify Homo
  sapiens into subspecies based on geography and
  features such as skin color, body size, head
  shape, and hair texture.
• The 18th- century Swedish naturalist Carolus
  Linnaeus divided humans into subspecies based on
  geography and classified all Europeans as
  white, Africans as black, American Indians as
  red, and Asians as yellow.

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The History Of Human Classification

• Historical efforts at classifying humanity into
  higher and lower forms were based on factual
  errors and ethnocentric prejudices regarding
  race.
• The notion of superior and inferior races had
  been used to justify brutalities ranging from
  repression to slavery to mass murder or genocide.

Ota Benga
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Race

• In biology, the taxonomic category of subspecies
  that is not applicable to humans because the
  division of humans into discrete types does not
  represent the true nature of human biological
  variation.
• In some societies race is an important social
  category.

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Race as a Biological Concept

• In biology, a race is a population differing
  geographically, morphologically, or genetically
  from other populations of the same species.
• There is no agreement on how many differences it
  takes to make a race.
• Any one race does not have exclusive possession
  of any particular variant of any gene or genes.
• The differences among individuals and within a
  population are generally greater than the
  differences among populations.

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People Vary Within Races
Sudanese women
African-American woman
Italian girl
Irish girl
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Racism

• A doctrine of superiority by which one group
  justifies the dehumanization of others based on
  their distinctive physical characteristics.
• It is not just about discriminatory ideas,
  values, or attitudes but is also a political
  problem.
• Racial conflicts result from social stereotypes,
  not known scientific facts.

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Race and Behavior

• Many people have assumed there are behavioral
  differences among human races.
• The innate behavioral characteristics attributed
  to race can be explained in terms of experience
  as well as a hierarchical social order affecting
  the opportunities and challenges faced by
  different groups of people, rather than biology.

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Race and Intelligence

• In the United States, IQ testing was used in the
  20th century to try to establish racial
  differences in intelligence.
• It is not possible to separate inherited
  components of intelligence from those that are
  culturally acquired.

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Skin Color A Case Study in Adaptation

• Skin color is a function of several factors
• transparency or thickness of the skin
• distribution of blood vessels
• amount of carotene and melanin
• Natural selection has favored pigmented skin as
  protection against strong solar radiation of
  equatorial latitudes.
• In northern latitudes, natural selection has
  favored depigmented skin, which can utilize weak
  solar radiation in the production of vitamin D.
  Clinal variation.

Guy from India
Kids from Africa
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Cultural and Biological Diversity

• Human gene pools still change in response to
  external factors.
• Many changes are the result of cultural
  practices
• Peoples with a dairying tradition possess the
  ability to digest milk sugars (lactose) into
  adulthood and a non- thrifty genotype.
• Populations that are lactose intolerant retain
  the thrifty genotype.

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Lactose

• A sugar that is the primary constituent of fresh
  milk.

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Lactase

• An enzyme in the small intestine that enables
  humans to assimilate lactose.

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Thrifty genotype

• Permits efficient storage of fat to draw on in
  times of food shortage.
• In times of scarcity, individuals with the
  thrifty genotype conserve glucose (a simple
  sugar) for use in brain and red blood cells as
  well as nitrogen (vital for growth and health).
• Regular access to glucose through the lactose in
  milk led to selection for the non-thrifty
  genotype as protection against adult-onset
  diabetes.

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Hormone Disrupting Chemicals

• At least 51 chemicals, many in common use, are
  known to disrupt hormones.
• Included are such supposedly benign and inert
  substances as plastics widely used in
  laboratories and chemicals added to polystyrene
  and polyvinyl chloride (PVCs) to make them more
  stable and less breakable.
• These plastics are used in plumbing, food
  processing, and food packaging.

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Human Adaptation To Natural Environmental
Stressors

• Developmental adaptation a permanent phenotypic
  variation derived from interaction between genes
  and the environment during growth and development
  (your body will change during early childhood
  depending on where you live)

Secular Trend differences among generations that
allow anthros to make inferences about
environmental affects on growth and adaptation
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High Altitude Adaptation

• High altitude need more oxygen.
• Acclimatization When lowlanders in high
  altitudes produce more red blood cells and
  hemoglobin (this is a longer-term effect that
  just breathing rapidly to physiologically adapt
  to altitude)

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Adaptation to Cold

• Bergmans rule mammals that live in cold
  climates are shorter and rounder than those that
  live in warm climates
• Allens rule mammals in cold climates have
  shorter appendages than those living in warm
  environments
• Hunting response cyclic expansion and
  contraction of blood vessels to get heat to the
  lower extremities

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Adaptation to Hot

• Bergman and Allens rules apply here. The more
  surface area on a body, the more sweat glands,
  which is useful in warm environments.
• Culture also helps with A/C, light clothing

Peruvian
Masai from Kenya
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Medical Anthropology

• A specialization of theoretical and applied
  approaches from cultural and biological
  anthropology to human health and disease
• Medical system A patterned set of ideas and
  practices relating to illness.
• Disease A specific pathology a biological
  abnormality
• Illness The meanings and elaborations given to a
  particular physical state

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Evolutionary Medicine

• An approach to human sickness and health
  combining principles of evolutionary theory and
  human evolutionary history
• E.g., SIDS babies usually slept with their
  mothers taking breathing cues
• E.g., Morning sickness keep expectant mothers
  from consuming anything harmful to the baby

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Political Ecology and Disease

• Simply describing disease in terms of biological
  processes leaves out the deeper, ultimate reasons
  that some individuals are more likely than others
  to become sick
• Case Study The Papua New Guinean case.

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Medical Pluralism

• The presence of multiple medical systems, each
  with its own practices and beliefs in a society
• Western biomedicine in combination with local
  beliefs and healing practices makes for the best
  type of medical care

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Globalization, Health, and Structural Violence

• Structural violence Physical/psychological harm
  caused by exploitative and unjust social,
  political, and economic systems
• Health disparity A difference in the health
  status between the wealthy elite and the poor in
  stratified societies