Darwinism Democracy And Race

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book’s focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas’s racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science.

Darwinism, Democracy, and Race examines the development and defence of an argument that arose at the boundary between anthropology and evolutionary biology in twentieth-century America. In its fully articulated form, this argument simultaneously discredited scientific racism and defended free human agency in Darwinian terms. The volume is timely because it gives readers a key to assessing contemporary debates about the biology of race. By working across disciplinary lines, the book's focal figures--the anthropologist Franz Boas, the cultural anthropologist Alfred Kroeber, the geneticist Theodosius Dobzhansky, and the physical anthropologist Sherwood Washburn--found increasingly persuasive ways of cutting between genetic determinist and social constructionist views of race by grounding Boas's racially egalitarian, culturally relativistic, and democratically pluralistic ethic in a distinctive version of the genetic theory of natural selection. Collaborators in making and defending this argument included Ashley Montagu, Stephen Jay Gould, and Richard Lewontin. Darwinism, Democracy, and Race will appeal to advanced undergraduates, graduate students, and academics interested in subjects including Philosophy, Critical Race Theory, Sociology of Race, History of Biology and Anthropology, and Rhetoric of Science.

This work fills a gap in recent studies on the history of race and science. Focusing on both the classification systems of human variety and the development of science as the arbiter of truth, Brown looks at the rise of the emerging sciences of life and society – biology and sociology – as well as the debate surrounding slavery and abolition.

Numerous books and articles have outlined Darwin's impact on American scientists, philosophers, businessmen, and clergy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Few, however, have undertaken a study of Darwinism in the form in which it was presented to most Americans -- popular newspapers and magazines. The main concern of this book is to identify how the press is treated as a part of our culture - - pointing to its ability to shape and to be shaped by the forces that act on the rest of society and its ability to be critical in the interpretation of ideas for "the masses."

This collection is an interdisciplinary edited volume that examines the circulation of Darwinian ideas in the Atlantic space as they impacted systems of Western thought and culture. Specifically, the book explores the influence of the principle tenets of Darwinism -- such as the theory of evolution, the ape-man theory of human origins, and the principle of sexual selection -- on established transatlantic intellectual traditions and cultural practices. In doing so, it pays particular attention to how Darwinism reconfigured discourses on race, gender, and sexuality in a transnational context. Covering the period from the publication of The Origin of Species (1859) to 1933, when the Nazis (National Socialist Party) took power in Germany, the essays demonstrate the dissemination of Darwinian thought in the Western world in an unprecedented commerce of ideas not seen since the Protestant Reformation. Learned societies, literary groups, lyceums, and churches among other sites for public discourse sponsored lectures on the implications of Darwin’s theory of evolution for understanding the very ontological codes by which individuals ordered and made sense of their lives. Collectively, these gatherings reflected and constituted what the contributing scholars to this volume view as the discursive power of the cultural politics of Darwinism.

An examination of political behaviour from a modern evolutionary perspective. Paul H. Rubin discusses group or social behaviour, including: ethnic and racial conflict; altruism and co-operation; envy; political power; and the role of religion in politics.

This innovative collection of original essays focuses on the ways in which geography, gender, race, and religion influenced the reception of Darwinism in the English-speaking world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The contributions to this volume collectively illustrate the importance of local social, physical, and religious arrangements, while revealing that neither distance from Darwin's home at Down nor size of community greatly influenced how various regions responded to Darwinism. Essays spanning the world from Great Britain and North America to Australia and New Zealand explore the various meanings for Darwinism in these widely separated locales, while other chapters focus on the difference it made in the debates over evolution.

"[...]contrary, for to the present day the Jews are more than fairly represented amongst artists, musicians, scientists and men of affairs; and in our own mercantile community, with the disadvantage of having two holidays in the week against the Gentile's one, the Jew more than holds his own in the race for wealth. Possible Racial Degeneration in Spain. We are not, however, bound to assume from these two examples that, bar political catastrophe, a race will always progress, or even continue to possess its original characteristics.[...]".