Adaptation
Definition: An organism’s state of being adapted to a particular environment/a trait or characteristic possessed by an individual or population that benefits their survival
Example: Thermoregulation and Skin Color are human adaptations to UV radiation; for skin protection and for warmth
Biocultural Approach in Anthropology
Definition: Synthesis of the Biological and Cultural approaches to human diversity; interconnection of both perspectives which shape human health, behaviour, and development
Example: distribution of genetic variation that causes diseases due to biological, cultural, and environmental exposure (malaria/sickle cell)
Biological Determinism
Definition: The belief that social inequalities/differences are caused by ‘inherent’ biological differences (aka race)
Example: markers like athletics, intelligence, and IQ which are biologically and culturally shaped by race; scientific racism which disadvantages groups based on racial characteristics
Interactionism
Definition: A Perspective that emphasizes the interactions of biological and environmental factors to dynamically shape human traits and behaviours
Example: intelligence develops through genetics, environment, social support, and overall privileges
Race
Definition: Historical, Cultural, Social, and Biological Construct; Grouping of people according to common background and associated with biological markers (skin tone, hair texture, facial features)
Example: socially constructed racial categories (Black, White, Asian)
Racism
Definition: social phenomenon that maintains or exacerbates inequality among racialized groups and promotes, privileges, and sustains superiority of white people
Example: environmental racism which threatens marginalized groups and low-income communities
Social Constructionism
Definition: theory that racial categories are created and maintained through social processes, institutions, and shared (human-made) beliefs rather than biological realities
Example: the definition of racial categories changed and adapts over time; for example, the notion of ‘Whiteness’ adapts to benefit and privilege some groups
White Supremacy
Definition: an ideology of power and hegemony that promotes the superiority of “Whites,” which seeks to maintain their dominance and control over other races
Example: Jim Crow Era which segregated Black Americans from White ones
Whiteness
Definition: positional superiority, and ideological and relational category, and a conceptual and phenomenological reality of characterization of white people
Example: whiteness can be marked (recognized and analyzed as a racial identity embedded with privilege) or unmarked (invisible social norm)
Anthropology’s roles is the development of the concept of race and the aftermath
Anthropology as a discipline has evolved over time, especially as a white-dominated discipline. In the 18-19th centuries, anthropologists made use of biological determinism to exacerbate racial inequalities. Modern anthropology, however, rejects race as a biological fact, and instead views it as a socially constructed reality.
Relationships among race, biology, and genetics
Biological conditions and genetic variation are products of interactionism, which considers genetic, environmental, and social conditions which influence populations to adapt and evolve over time. Thus, race is not biologically concrete, and instead is a construction of the various influences that transform populations.
Interplay between environment, culture, and discourse
Existing notions of race are a product of the interplay between environment, culture, and discourse. Cultural ideologies and behaviours influence how race is perceived and accepted. For example, geography influences skin color and cultural practices influence health and treatment. This emphasizes the biocultural approach to anthropology, which centers on how bodies are shaped by lived experiences, structural inequalities, and environmental realities
Whiteness as an ideology and lived experience
Whiteness is a system of norms, power, and privilege which is shaped and supported by colonial histories and institutions of hegemony. As an ideology it is deeply embedded into how society operates and maintains racial hierarchies. As a lived experience, it operates as an unmarked norm that gives unnoticeable advantages
Week 2: Smedley: Antecedents of the Racial Worldview
This text focuses on the origins of racism as a concept which was cultivated through European colonialism and ethnocentrism. It discusses Indigenous oppression, land theft, labor politics, and early values of capitalism; all of which support the perpetuation of racist and anti-white rhetoric which forced minority groups to partake in unethical labor, slavery, and religious subjugation
Week 3: Anemone: Human Adaptation
This text focuses on thermoregulation and skin color as an example of adaptive interactionism. By detailing how thermoregulation and skin color differs geographically, the author is describing how these factors are simply results of environmental adaptation and the need to survive. For example, darker skin is more common at the equator due to high UV. In regards to race and racism, this text uses a biocultural approach to understand the interconnection of biology and culture in constructing human adaptation.
Week 3: Gravlee: Heredity, Environment, and Cranial Form
This text focuses on Franz Boas’s study which aimed to explore how the cranial form changed in response to environmental influence, rather than perceived genetic race. This test was revolutionary as it challenged the preconceived ideas of anthropology and gave concrete evidence of how cranial size, and many other so-called biological factors, were used to justify scientific racism and neglect.
Week 3: Fuentes: AAPA Statement on Race and Racism
This text focuses on how historically, Western science and medicine have adopted racist practices and belief systems that allow for and justify malpractice. As race was a significant player in the development and colonization of the “new world,” it was naturalized into the systems and structures that were born there. Essentially, this text details how Western disciplines which are meant to be objective and unbiased are actually steeped within racial rhetoric, which is incredibly harmful.
Week 5: Hartigan: Establishing the Fact of Whiteness
This text focuses on how whiteness functions as an often unmarked category that privileges certain groups, regardless of their opinions or knowledge. He identifies “white cultural practices” (housing segregation, waste‑dump siting, mortgage redlining, and medical institutional routines) that reproduce privilege for whites even when they do not hold supremacist beliefs, but simply as a result of how society has socio-culturally adopted these norms and beliefs of white superiority. Whiteness is a structural position of dominance that can be studied to expose how racial inequality is embedded in institutions and everyday life
Week 4: Anemone: Race, Intelligence, and Eugenics
This text focuses on the effects of social constructionism and how socially constructed notions of race tie into various aspects of life, such as: athletics, intelligence, and more. This text describes colonial descriptions of races, which are heavily biased, and devaluing of non-Western ideals of intelligence and progress. For example, being book-smart and religious are markers of intellect, yet these are not accessible to marginalized communities, who were then isolated and racially profiled.
Week 4: Gravlee: Race, Biology, and Culture
This text focuses on race as a socio-cultural construct. Undoubtedly there is interactionism of cultural and biological factors that contribute to how race is perceived across society. Gravlee critiques the “racial‑genetic” model that attributes residual disparities to unmeasured genetics after controlling for socioeconomic status. He proposes a multidisciplinary framework that integrates sociocultural, epigenetic, and genetic data whilst urging anthropologists to study the embodiment of racism rather than dismissing race as biologically irrelevant
Week 5: Frankenberg: The Mirage of an Unmarked Whiteness
This text focuses on the notion of race being socially constructed and “whiteness” is historically imagined as an unmarked, natural category. She outlines an eight‑point definition: structural advantage, standpoint, cultural practices, renaming, contested inclusion, intersecting privilege, historical relativity, and material effects. Whiteness has been continuously “dressed and undressed” since the rise of European imperialism, and this is a social illusion produced by systems of racial dominance and structural advantage. That being said, whiteness is not fixed, and inclusion within such constraints has also been challenged,
Week 5: Price: Canada, White Supremacy, and the Twinning of Empires
This text focuses on how Canadian settler‑state white supremacy was created through imperialism and colonialism, which then proceeded to produce racist and exclusionary politics, immigration, and rights. Laws were created that specifically targeted and barred non-White communities from engaging in and participating in society, this was particularly the case for immigrants who were policed based on Western perception of their countries (Ex. Japanese immigrants following WW2). Canada’s racist immigration regime was both locally enforced and globally coordinated and the legacy of these exclusions endures in contemporary anti‑Asian racism and ongoing Indigenous resistance
Week 6: Deliovsky
Chapter 1 focuses on how whiteness is not simply about being white, but it is also exacerbated through the creation of the “other.” Ideals of superiority and inferiority are culturally constructed, and this was successful because there was a separation, classification, and hierarchy of races.
Chapter 5 focuses on white femininity as a contrasting display of privilege. Agency is rarely afforded to women, however, due to the nature of race, white women are much more privileged and powerful. That being said, they are still subject to unrealistic and harmful standards of beauty, attitude, and subservience. Female bodies are still subjects of control, which goes to show how dominant patriarchal structures and discourses are, and how European women are still forced into precarious situations in work and life.
Chapter 6 focuses on reconfiguring white femininity. European women are situated in a unique binary which both empowers them and prohibits them. By being European or ‘White,’ they enjoy the privileges of their racial class; however, by logic of gender, they are still seen as inferior and treated as so. That being said, their bodies are controlled by reproductive prohibitance (no mixed-race marriage) by a racially pure society.
