Saturday, April 28, 2012

Biological anthropology fields

Human biology

Human biology is an interdisciplinary academic field of biology, biological anthropology, nutrition and medicinewhich focuses on humans; it is closely related to primate biology, and a number of other fields.

Biomedical anthropology

Biomedical anthropology is a subfield of anthropology, predominantly found in U.S. academic and public health settings, that incorporates perspectives from the biological and medical anthropology subfields. In contrast to much of medical anthropology, it does not generally take a critical approach to biomedicine and Western medicine. Instead, it seeks to improve medical practice and biomedical science through theholistic integration of cross-cultural or biocultural, behavioral, and epidemiological perspectives on health. As an academic discipline, biomedical anthropology is closely related to human biology.
Currently, the only accredited degree program in biomedical anthropology is at Binghamton University . Other anthropology departments, such as that of the University of Washington , offer biomedical tracks within more traditional biological or biocultural anthropology programs.

Typology

Typology in anthropology is the categorization of the human species by physical traits that are readily observable from a distance such as head shape, skin color, hair form, body build and stature. During the late 19th and early 20th centuries anthropologists used a typological model to divide people from different ethnic regions into races, (e.g. the Negroid race, the Caucasoid race, the Mongoloid race, the Australoid race, and the Capoid race which was the racial classification system as defined in 1962 by Carleton S. Coon).
The typological model was built on the assumption that humans can be assigned to a race based on similar physical traits. However, author Dennis O’Neil says the typological model in anthropology is now thoroughly discredited. Current mainstream thinking is that the morphological traits are due to simple variations in specific regions, and are the effect of climatic selective pressures. This debate is covered in more detail in the article on race.

Somatotypes

Somatotypology is the study of somatotypes or constitutional types. The objective is to produce a classification system that enables an observer to make determinations of the susceptibiity of a person of a given type to physical or psychological diseases or disease generally. The Carus and Kretschmer typologies are examples as well as Sheldon’s constitutional theory of personality.
Racial mapping
Racial Mapping is the use of cartography to identify and situate racial groups using maps to highlight, perpetuate, and naturalize the differences of race through both literal and metaphorical means, mapmakers create a common knowledge by displaying specific data as representative the real world, and construct racial identity by framing, situating, and defining what race is.
As a result, there is a long tradition of cartography being used as a tool to support social Darwinism, physical anthropology, and evolution theories, which seek to promote specific people as superior to others.
Racism, as it is understood today in western thought, originates in the late 15th century as an expression of European superiority.However, the basis for racial mapping, at least in the western world, goes back to the Hellenistic tradition of mapping, where exotic “other” people were purported to live in far off lands. These “others” were usually based upon the writings of Herodotus, and later Greek cartographers spatially situated these groups in their maps. The use of maps to identify otherness was also present Medieval Europe through the use of mappaemundi. These maps displayed “monstrous races” along the periphery to denote the separation between the settled (Europe) and the unknown. While these old maps are originally seen as representation of Christian proselytizing influence, they also exude an ideal of European supremacy. European mapmakers continued this tradition into the colonial era, using the maps to replaceindigenous ideas of identity and spatial distribution. These maps, and others, were used to legitimize European imperialism through the use of racial delineation. Europeans were bringing their supposedly superior race, and the knowledge that went with that, to the world through their empires, and those empires were situated along a spatial understanding made possible through maps.
Racial ideology is not to be found entirely in maps of colonialization, it is also seen within the biopolitics of the early 19th century with the rise of the “population” as a unit of analysis, and a governmental concern with health and crime that led attempts to understand, and categorize, the population. The effects of grouping individuals into populations and having identities for the population, as opposed to the individual, presents the ability of a government to categorize people based upon knowledge. Many times this knowledge, and the categorization was done using cartography. Following the end of World War I, many of Europe’s borders were redrawn, often influenced by racial and eugenic ideologies. The decision behind this was that, “…territories remain stable and peace be guaranteed,”. The AGSassisted in the redrawing of Europe’s map through the project known as the Inquiry, and in doing so helped to determine what the territory and identity of people in Europe would be. Consequently, the redrawing of Europe’s map after World War I was directly influenced by the knowledge of racial purity.
Article Source:-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biological_anthropology
Biological anthropology fields figures
Biological anthropology
Biological anthropology
Biological anthropology
Biological anthropology
Biological anthropology

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