Race reconciled?: How biological anthropologists view human variation

Abstract

Maxwell Museum of Anthropology, University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, NM 87131In May 2006, the authors of this introduction had anargument about how best to describe and interprethuman biological variation. The disagreement focused onwhether human races exist, and, even if they do,whether we should continue to use the term ‘‘race’’ inour research and teaching. We eventually realized thatwe were re-hashing an argument that has no doubttaken place for generations (e.g., Mason, 1960; Montagu,1964; Mead et al., 1968; also see Anthropology Newslet-ter 1997-1998 and Caspari, this issue) and that our dif-ferent training, research interests, and life experienceshad led us to approach the study of human biologicalvariation from very different perspectives. One of us is agenetic anthropologist interested in the global pattern ofneutral genetic variation. The other is a bioarchaeologistinterested in how patterns of phenotypic variation areshaped by culture in the United States. Our exchange,coupled with our reading of recent literature from vari-ous subfields of biological anthropology, led us to suspectthat our inability to communicate is widespread withinour discipline and that it hampers effective collaboration.Inadequate communication and collaboration likely leadto less than optimum progress in solving important an-thropological problems and send conflicting signals abouthuman variation to our students and the public.To address these issues, we decided to organize ameeting of scholars who had made original and impor-tant contributions to the study of human variation. Thepurpose of the meeting would be to outline our differen-ces, to determine if they could be reconciled, and toexplore ways to more effectively communicate our heter-ogeneous views within and outside our various disci-plines.In May 2007, the Maxwell Museum and Departmentof Anthropology of the University of New Mexico hosteda symposium entitled, ‘‘Race Reconciled?: How BiologicalAnthropologists View Human Variation.’’ The symposiumwas attended by scholars who specialize in human biol-ogy, genetics, forensics, bioarchaeology, and paleoanthro-pology and who hold a wide spectrum of views about thenature, causes, and social and scientific implications ofpatterns of human biological variation. We had two spe-cific goals. The first was to communicate to one anotherour diverse views of human biological variation and thedata and methods we use to arrive at those views. Par-ticipants were asked to give 40-min lectures thataddressed the following questions:What is race? What is the relationship between yourdefinition of race and your view of the structure ofhuman biological variation? What specific data andmethods did you employ to reach this view? What arethe implications of your view for understanding one ormore of the following?human originshuman population history the relationship between human biology, language,and culture the genetic and environmental components of complexdisease forensic identification whether or how to use the term ‘‘race’’ in research andteachingThe second goal of the symposium was to identify com-mon ground and significant points of disagreement, andto determine how disagreements should be discussedwithin our discipline and communicated to the largerscientific community, to our students, and to the public.To achieve this goal, the participants were asked to con-sider the following questions:Can we reconcile our disparate views of biological vari-ation? If so, how? If not, how do we effectively (1) stimu-late communication and collaboration within anthropol-ogy and the larger academic community, and (2) commu-nicate our different views to our students and to thepublic in ways that make the points of agreement anddisagreement and their broader implications clear?