Race and Kinship

• Our world can be divided into 2 categories: Nature and Culture
  • Nature v. Nurture
• Why do we want to maintain such a distinction between nature and nurture?
• Culture is extraneous to our understandings

Is science racist?

• Science is supposed to be objective, real, natural
• Racism is subjective, created, cultural
• TITLE COMBINES BOTH NATURE AND NUTURE
  • FYI: there is no difference between the two, they are interrelated and interconnected

<aside> ❓ The question of this class: WHO AM I?

</aside>

• Can define yourself in relation to other people
• Who am I descended from? Who are my ancestors? We must position ourselves in a chain of descent...how are we related to the people around us
• Descent is biological
• We're all technically biologically connected

Kinship

• Kinship is about drawing boundaries

  • A way of making sense of these chains of descent

• Our understandings of relatedness are in a name-based system

• The king's descent says that he is "more special" is just as real as passing on a genetic disease

• Aristotle

  • had a lot of contributing thoughts to early understandings of humans
  • Believed that we were at the hierarchy over the natural world, adopts religious narrative