Culture, ‘Race’
and Racism
The Study of a Cultural Category
and its Effects
Evolution of the Human
Species
• Thought to have originated in Africa 2 1/2 million years
ago.
• Followed a long, dry period: Bipedalism, opposable
thumbs evolved that gave early homo sapiens an
adaptive advantage in hunting on the savannah.
• Australopithecus was an early forerunner of homo
sapiens, with homo erectus being an intermediate
species.
• All three originated in central, eastern Africa and from
there migrated to Asia and Europe and finally to North
and South America.
Archeological Evidence Supports the Hypothesis
that there was a single origin of humankind, and
that similar adaptive pressures over the millennia
have produced a single human species. The
selective pressures have been uniform throughout
the presence of homo sapiens on earth. Homo
sapiens practised hunting-gathering until b.p.
14,000: adaptive pressures on hunter-gatherers
are similar to wolves and both consist of a single
species.
Migration, Language,
Culture
• The main anatomical indicator of the species
homo sapiens sapiens is the presence of a
cranial capacity of 1200 cc, a doubling of the
brain size over the austropithecenes.
• Enabled the emergence of a sophisticated form
of language, as compared with the great apes.
• Language enabled the communication of
learned behaviour to a much greater extent, and
provided the basis for the major adaptive
feature of homo sapiens, i.e. culture.
‘Race’ has been shown
to be an unscientific
concept
• In the 19th century, there was a common
classification of people into 3 or 4 major
‘races’: mongoloid, caucasoid, negroid.
• Attempts were made to show a different
origin for each and to attribute different
characteristics to each, e.g. intelligence.
• Subsequent studies have disproved this
repeatedly.
Fallacies of the ‘racial’
concept
• No correlation between skin colour, blood type, shape of
nose, or any other superficial physical characteristic.
• Traits such as skin colour are not good indicators of who
is related to whom, and who is descended from whom.
• There is between 8 and 9 times greater variation within
‘races’ than between them and about the same variation
within regions than between them.
Born in the late 18th century in eastern Cape province of South Africa.
Became a servant for an English family there.
Persuaded by her employer to go to England, where she was exhibited
nude in a cage in Picadilly circus.
Later, she was ‘exhibited’ nude before a group of zoologists and
physiologists, and was painted in the nude.
Died in 1816 at 27 of pneumonia.
George Cuvier, a noted anatomist, dissected her remains, paying
special attention to her buttocks, ears and sexual organs.
Her genitalia and buttocks were described as much larger than those
of middle-class European women, and Cuvier hypothesized that
they were ‘typical’ of all African women.
European prostitutes, i.e. deviant women, often from poor families,
were also thought to be genetically ‘hypersexual’ and to possess
the same anatomical characteristics as Sarah Bartmann.
Her remains lay in the Musee de L’Homme in Paris until 1995, when
the post-Apartheid government protested to the French
government.
Her remains were finally returned to South Africa in 2002.
How Culture Influences
‘Biology’: Menopause in
North America and Japan
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Studies of menopause cross-culturally have become
important as populations of industrialized countries age.
Very different experiences of menopause in North America
and Japan.
Japanese women in the 1990s reported very few of the
symptoms of menopause that North American women did,
esp. hot flashes, irritability, and night sweats.
Indeed, menopause was not a known ‘physical’ disorder in
Japan until western doctors introduced the concept in the
1920s.
– Different biological symptoms are related to different cultural
expectations of what menopause means in the two cultures.