{"id":28765,"date":"2013-02-16T16:46:31","date_gmt":"2013-02-16T16:46:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=28765"},"modified":"2013-02-16T16:46:31","modified_gmt":"2013-02-16T16:46:31","slug":"prisoners-of-abstraction-the-theory-and-measure-of-genetic-variation-and-the-very-concept-of-%e2%80%9crace%e2%80%9d","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=28765","title":{"rendered":"Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of \u201cRace\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em><a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1007\/s13752-012-0048-0\" target=\"_blank\">Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of \u201cRace\u201d<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/link.springer.com\/journal\/13752\" target=\"_blank\">Biological Theory<\/a><br \/>\nJuly 2012<br \/>\n12 pages<br \/>\nDOI: <a href=\"http:\/\/dx.doi.org\/10.1007\/s13752-012-0048-0\" target=\"_blank\">10.1007\/s13752-012-0048-0<\/a><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/people.oregonstate.edu\/~kaplanj\/\" target=\"_blank\">Jonathan Michael Kaplan<\/a><\/strong>, Associate Professor of Philosophy<br \/>\n<em>Oregon State University<\/em><\/p>\n<p><strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rgwinther.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">Rasmus Gr\u00f8nfeldt Winther<\/a><\/strong>, Assistant Professor of Philosophy<br \/>\n<em>University of California, Santa Cruz<\/em><\/p>\n<p>It is illegitimate to read <em>any<\/em> ontology about \u201crace\u201d off of biological theory or data. Indeed, the technical meaning of \u201cgenetic variation\u201d is fluid, and there is no single theoretical agreed-upon criterion for defining and distinguishing populations given a particular set of genetic variation data. By analyzing three formal senses of \u201cgenetic variation,\u201d viz., diversity, differentiation, and heterozygosity, <strong>we argue that the use of biological theory for making claims about race inevitably amounts to a pernicious reification.<\/strong> Biological theory does not force the concept of \u201crace\u201d upon us; our social discourse, social ontology, and social expectations do. We become prisoners of our abstractions at our own hands, and at our own expense.<\/p>\n<p>Read the entire article <a href=\"http:\/\/philpapers.org\/archive\/KAPPOA.14.pdf\" target=\"_blank\">here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Prisoners of Abstraction? The Theory and Measure of Genetic Variation, and the Very Concept of \u201cRace\u201d Biological Theory July 2012 12 pages DOI: 10.1007\/s13752-012-0048-0 Jonathan Michael Kaplan, Associate Professor of Philosophy Oregon State University Rasmus Gr\u00f8nfeldt Winther, Assistant Professor of Philosophy University of California, Santa Cruz It is illegitimate to read any ontology about \u201crace\u201d [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,2039,8,6941],"tags":[13673,13671,13672,13670,13668,13667,13669],"class_list":["post-28765","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-health-medicine","category-media-archive","category-philosophy","tag-biological-theory","tag-jonathan-kaplan","tag-jonathan-m-kaplan","tag-jonathan-michael-kaplan","tag-rasmus-g-winther","tag-rasmus-grnfeldt-winther","tag-rasmus-winther"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28765","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=28765"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28765\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=28765"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=28765"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=28765"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}