Racial Hybridity, Physical Anthropology, and Human Biology in the Colonial Laboratories of the United States

In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. physical anthropologists imagined Hawai‘i as a racial laboratory, a controllable site for the study of race mixing and the effects of migration on bodily form. Gradually a more dynamic and historical understanding of human populations came to substitute for older classif...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:	Current anthropology 2012-04, Vol.53 (S5), p.S95-S107
Main Author:	Anderson, Warwick
Format:	Article
Language:	eng
Subjects:	20th century African American culture African Americans Ancestry Anthropological museums Anthropological theory Anthropologists Biological anthropology Biology Children Colonialism Elites Eugenics Hawaii Human biology Human evolution Hybridity Laboratories Migration Mixed race Multiculturalism & pluralism Museum exhibits Physical anthropology Political economy Polynesian studies Racial attitudes Racial Differences Racial differentiation Racism U.S.A
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Summary:	In the 1920s and 1930s, U.S. physical anthropologists imagined Hawai‘i as a racial laboratory, a controllable site for the study of race mixing and the effects of migration on bodily form. Gradually a more dynamic and historical understanding of human populations came to substitute for older classificatory and typological approaches in the colonial laboratory, leading to the creation of the field of human biology and challenges to scientific racism. Elite U.S. institutions and philanthropic foundations competed for the authority to define Pacific bodies and mentalities during this period. The emergent scientific validation of liberal Hawaiian attitudes toward human difference and race amalgamation or formation exerted considerable influence on biological anthropology after World War II, but ultimately it would fail in Hawai‘i to resist the incoming tide of continental U.S. racial thought and practice.
ISSN:	0011-3204 1537-5382