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How Ordinary Race Concepts Get to Be Usable in Biomedical Science: An Account of Founded Race Concepts

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2022

Sophia Efstathiou
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Abstract

This essay unpacks a seeming paradox: a concept used to formulate, promote, and legitimate oppressive ideologies—a concept used to formulate mistaken, because they were typological, biological theories about human diversity—is, it seems, the same concept that now promises to deliver wonderful, socially sensitized, innovative results in social and genetic epidemiology. But how could that be? How could scientists expect a concept as problematic as ordinary race to deliver useful scientific results? I propose that there is a process for retranslating Ballungen race concepts in appropriate ways to make them fit and work within social scientific and bioscientific contexts.

Type
Everyday Concepts and Scientific Concepts
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 79 , Issue 5 , December 2012 , pp. 701 - 713
Copyright
Copyright © The Philosophy of Science Association

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Footnotes

†

This essay is based on “The Use of ‘Race’ as a Variable in Biomedical Research” (PhD diss., University of California, San Diego, 2009), recipient of the University of California 2007–8 Andrew White Scholarship in Humanities and Medicine. Thank you for feedback and discussion to thesis advisor, Nancy Cartwright; committee members, Craig Callender, Gerry Doppelt, Steven Epstein, Arnold Gass, and Michael Hardimon; and colleagues at the LSE, Southampton, and NTNU, especially Ray Monk. This follows the PSA 2010 Symposium session “How Ordinary Things Travel to Science and Back,” made possible and fun by Anna Alexandrova, Hasok Chang, and Gregory Radick.

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