Topic
Biological anthropology
About: Biological anthropology is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 1126 publications have been published within this topic receiving 12757 citations. The topic is also known as: biological anthropology & somatology.
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01 Jan 2014TL;DR: In South Africa, physical anthropologists have followed a strange pathway divorced from its sister field of sociocultural anthropology as mentioned in this paper, and the separation of social and physical anthropology and the emphasis on typology were only broken in the 1970s, but this came too late for the subject to meaningfully engage in the sociopolitical development of the country either in support or in rejection of apartheid.
Abstract: South African physical anthropology has followed a strange pathway divorced from its sister field of sociocultural anthropology. Physical anthropology was a research subject in the museums and medical schools which focused heavily on the nature of racial types. Its practitioners believed that it was a pure science which should not concern itself with ‘unscientific’ political issues. The separation of social and physical anthropology and the emphasis on typology were only broken in the 1970s, but this came too late for the subject to meaningfully engage in the sociopolitical development of the country either in support or in rejection of apartheid. There was a resurgence of self-defined ethnicity after the first democratic election in 1994. This was driven by claims for land by those dispossessed during apartheid but most specifically amongst the Khoesan descendants who were disposed of their land and culture in the Colonial period. The new heritage legislation of 1999 has been developed particularly to deal with these issues of claims for heritage, and very precise controls have been placed over the excavation of human remains. Although facilitating reburial is a central plank in the new legislation, physical anthropology continues to be an important academic subject that is helping to provide knowledge about the past peoples in South Africa’s ancient heritage.
5 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the contributions of Alvaro Froes da Fonseca on anthropology are analyzed, analyzing some of his research developed at the Laboratory of Anthropology of the Museu Nacional and others published in the journal of this institution between the 1920s and 1930s.
Abstract: The physician and anthropologist Alvaro Froes da Fonseca lived in several cities in Brazil during his career in the first half of the 20th century. He worked in the chair of Medical-Surgical Anatomy at the Faculties of Medicine of Porto Alegre, Bahia and Rio de Janeiro. As an anthropologist, he held activities at the Museu Nacional do Rio de Janeiro and, in the 1960s, at the Instituto de Antropologia Tropical of the Faculty of Medicine in Recife. In this article, I intend to recover the contributions of Froes da Fonseca on anthropology, analyzing some of his research developed at the Laboratory of Anthropology of the Museu Nacional and others published in the journal of this institution between the 1920s and 1930s. During this period, he brought together scientists, developed and directed several works on physical anthropology and the 'anthropological types', focusing on developing methods and patterns of racial classification, i.e., on producing concepts and techniques to guide anthropological practice. He refuted the scientific racism of the period, so the research conducted by Froes da Fonseca reflected on the 'race problem' and the issue of miscegenation in favor of Brazil's future.
5 citations
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TL;DR: Caroline Bond Day as mentioned in this paper used the techniques of physical anthropology to demonstrate that mixed-race African Americans were in no way inherently deformed or inferior, and she found herself not only fighting preconceptions about the racial inferiority of African Americans but also serving as a liaison between her research subjects and mainstream, White-dominated physical anthropology.
Abstract: This article examines the significance of Caroline Bond Day's vindicationist anthropological work on mixed-race families early in the 20th century. Day used the techniques of physical anthropology to demonstrate that mixed-race African Americans were in no way inherently deformed or inferior. Using Day's published work and unpublished correspondence, I show that her study was noteworthy for two reasons. First, unlike most other anthropologists of her time, but presaging later scholars, she studied her own family and social world, a perspective that both gave her unique data unavailable to others and removed barriers between herself and her subjects. Second, as a mixed-race African American woman, she found herself not only fighting preconceptions about the racial inferiority of African Americans but also serving as a liaison between her research subjects and mainstream, White-dominated physical anthropology. This article argues that Day's importance as a scholar lies not only in her argument against racial inferiority but also in the outsider-within status that allowed her to make her case within academic anthropology in the early 20th century.
5 citations