Redefining Race: The Potential Demise of a Concept in Physical Anthropology [and Comments and Reply]

Abstract

Analysis of physical anthropology textbooks published in the United States in the years 1932-79 reveals a significant decline in support for the race concept, expecially in the 1970s. Before 1970 the great majority of texts expressed the view that races exist and that the race concept is a valid tool for the description and study of human variation. In the 1970s an increasing proportion of texts rejected the race concept, with the no-race view becoming the most frequent one by 1975-79. Although the accumulation of new knowledge about human variation has contributed to the dramatic shift in textbook treatments of race, we argue that changes in the social context of anthropology have also been important. The political milieu of the 1960s coupled with the rapid institutional expansion of anthropology and the changing sociocultural characteristics of anthropologists and their students have contributed to the decline of the race concept in physical anthropology textbooks.