The Diagrammatics of ‘Race’: Visualizing Human Relatedness in the History of Physical, Evolutionary, and Genetic Anthropology, ca. 1770-2020

Marianne Sommer
Open Book Publishers
2024-07-30

This is the first book that engages with the history of diagrams in physical, evolutionary, and genetic anthropology. Since their establishment as scientific tools for classification in the eighteenth century, diagrams have been used to determine but also to deny kinship between human groups. In nineteenth-century craniometry, they were omnipresent in attempts to standardize measurements on skulls for hierarchical categorization. In particular the ’human family tree’ was central for evolutionary understandings of human diversity, being used on both sides of debates about whether humans constitute different species well into the twentieth century. With recent advances in (ancient) DNA analyses, the tree diagram has become more contested than ever―does human relatedness take the shape of a network? Are human individual genomes mosaics made up of different ancestries? Sommer examines the epistemic and political role of these visual representations in the history of ‘race’ as an anthropological category. How do such diagrams relate to imperial and (post-)colonial practices and ideologies but also to liberal and humanist concerns?

The Diagrammatics of 'Race' concentrates on Western projects from the late 1700s into the present to diagrammatically define humanity, subdividing and ordering it, including the concomitant endeavors to acquire representative samples―bones, blood, or DNA―from all over the world. Contributing to the ‘diagrammatic turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, it reveals connections between diagrams in anthropology and other visual traditions, including in religion, linguistics, biology, genealogy, breeding, and eugenics.

Metadata Formats

Publisher Links

Included in Packages

Keywords

  • Society & social sciences
  • Anthropology
  • Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography
  • Mixed heritage / mixed race groups or people
  • Anthropology
  • Social and cultural anthropology
  • family trees
  • race and diversity
  • Anthropology, Archaeology and Religion
  • Economics, Politics and Sociology
  • Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies
  • Social and cultural anthropology
  • GN34.3.C43
  • Ethnic studies
  • Ethnic groups and multicultural studies
  • Ethnic groups and multicultural studies
  • Anthropology
  • Politics and Sociology
  • Science: History of Science
  • anthropology
  • diagrams
  • history of science
  • visual representation

The Diagrammatics of ‘Race’: Visualizing Human Relatedness in the History of Physical, Evolutionary, and Genetic Anthropology, ca. 1770-2020

Marianne Sommer

Open Book Publishers

2024-07-30

CC BY-NC-ND

This is the first book that engages with the history of diagrams in physical, evolutionary, and genetic anthropology. Since their establishment as scientific tools for classification in the eighteenth century, diagrams have been used to determine but also to deny kinship between human groups. In nineteenth-century craniometry, they were omnipresent in attempts to standardize measurements on skulls for hierarchical categorization. In particular the ’human family tree’ was central for evolutionary understandings of human diversity, being used on both sides of debates about whether humans constitute different species well into the twentieth century. With recent advances in (ancient) DNA analyses, the tree diagram has become more contested than ever―does human relatedness take the shape of a network? Are human individual genomes mosaics made up of different ancestries? Sommer examines the epistemic and political role of these visual representations in the history of ‘race’ as an anthropological category. How do such diagrams relate to imperial and (post-)colonial practices and ideologies but also to liberal and humanist concerns?

The Diagrammatics of 'Race' concentrates on Western projects from the late 1700s into the present to diagrammatically define humanity, subdividing and ordering it, including the concomitant endeavors to acquire representative samples―bones, blood, or DNA―from all over the world. Contributing to the ‘diagrammatic turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, it reveals connections between diagrams in anthropology and other visual traditions, including in religion, linguistics, biology, genealogy, breeding, and eugenics.

Download Formats

Included in Packages

Topics

  • Society & social sciences
  • Anthropology
  • Social & cultural anthropology, ethnography
  • Mixed heritage / mixed race groups or people
  • Anthropology
  • Social and cultural anthropology
  • family trees
  • race and diversity
  • Anthropology, Archaeology and Religion
  • Economics, Politics and Sociology
  • Ethnic minorities & multicultural studies
  • Social and cultural anthropology
  • GN34.3.C43
  • Ethnic studies
  • Ethnic groups and multicultural studies
  • Ethnic groups and multicultural studies
  • Anthropology
  • Politics and Sociology
  • Science: History of Science
  • anthropology
  • diagrams
  • history of science
  • visual representation