Ordering the Human: The Global Spread of Racial Science(15 Race, Inequality, and Health)

Modern science and ideas of race have long been entangled, sharing notions of order, classification, and hierarchy. Ordering the Human presents cutting-edge interdisciplinary scholarship that examines the racialization of science in various global contexts, illuminating how racial logics have been deployed to classify, marginalize, and oppress. These wide-ranging essays--written by experts in genetics, forensics, public health, history, sociology, and anthropology--investigate the influence of racial concepts in scientific knowledge production across regions and eras. Chapters excavate the mechanisms by which racialized science serves projects of power and domination, and they explore different forms of resistance. Topics range from skull collecting by eighteenth-century German and Dutch scientists to the use of biology to reinforce notions of purity in present-day South Korea and Brazil. The authors investigate the colonial legacies of the pathologization of weight for the Maori people, the scientific presumption of coronary artery disease risk among South Asians, and the role of racial categories in COVID-19 statistics and responses, among many other cases. Tracing the pernicious consequences of the racialization of science, Ordering the Human shines a light on how the naturalization of racial categories continues to shape health and inequality today.

About the Author :
Eram Alam is an assistant professor in the Department of the History of Science at Harvard University. Dorothy Roberts is the George A. Weiss University Professor of Law & Sociology, Raymond Pace & Sadie Tanner Mossell Alexander Professor of Civil Rights, professor of Africana studies, and director of the Program on Race, Science, and Society at the University of Pennsylvania. Natalie Shibley is a visiting assistant professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Northeastern University.

Review :
Essential reading for scholars of racial science... provide[s] a pathbreaking and generative set of essays for understanding the application of race to policing, health, and the construction of national identity, among other topics.--Christopher D. E. Willoughby "American Historical Review" A groundbreaking work... a major contribution to the burgeoning internationalist scholarship that examines the coconstitutive relationships of racialization, science, and political power [and] will undoubtedly serve scholars across myriad disciplines, including anthropology, the history and philosophy of science, sociology, critical race studies, postcolonial studies, and comparative politics.--Nathan Cartagena, Wheaton College "H-Diplo" This scholarship exposes the enduring allure of racial categorizing and the equally enduring appeal of grounding such categories in science. While the continued thriving of race science may be discouraging, the health of scholarship about it is inspiring.--Simon A. Cole, University of California, Irvine "Metascience" Ordering the Human is a remarkable gathering of essays that are at once individually compelling and collectively vital. This urgent, wide-ranging book highlights how racism intersects with science and medicine worldwide to shape our understandings of a wide range of contemporary health issues, to the detriment of us all. This excellent book is required reading for all students, practitioners, and people who desire a more healthy, equitable world --Jonathan M. Metzl, author of Dying of Whiteness: How the Politics of Racial Resentment Is Killing America's Heartland It is easy for scholars to argue that "race" is a specific kind of concept located largely in Western science and medicine. The theoretically rich and broad geographical scope of this book brilliantly dispels such views. This is an indispensable contribution to our knowledge of the global reach of race concepts in modern biomedicine and science.--Evelynn M. Hammonds, coeditor of The Nature of Difference: Sciences of Race in the United States from Jefferson to Genomics This remarkable collection of intellectually and geographically expansive essays makes an essential contribution to our understanding of contradictory ideas of human difference across space and time. Ordering the Human should be read by anyone seeking to make sense of the global entanglements of racialization in science and technology and their practical effects on research, clinical practice, and everyday life. --Alondra Nelson, Institute for Advanced Study and author of The Social Life of DNA