Scupin and DeCorse, Anthropology: Use with Living Anthropologically

Scupin and DeCorse, Anthropology: A Global Perspective

Overview and integrating with Living Anthropologically:

Sections 1.1-1.7 on Human Nature and Race
Next: Scupin and Decorse Anthropology on Human Evolution and Primatology

The 7th edition of Scupin and Decorse, Anthropology: A Global Perspective seems to be a major upgrade to the 6th edition: it now has full-color photographs and diagrams, with a much more inviting format. The research and writing are generally solid and the authors have real four-fields experience. It is rather expensive, but by 2012 is coming in at $107 on Amazon, less than the encyclopedic Haviland Anthropology, but used prices in 2012 will not be much better than new.

Still, there is a lot to like here. I particularly like how Scupin and DeCorse herald Eric Wolf’s anthropology textbook and see themselves as working in that tradition (p. xiv). They have a nice “Anthropologists at Work” box about Wolf p.443. Part of that tradition is a lot of attention to issues of history, colonialism, and political economy, which is a welcome focus for Anthropology 101. However, I’m pretty sure Wolf’s Anthropology was not $107, even in 1964 prices.

1.1 Human Nature and Anthropology

In the preface, Scupin and DeCorse declare the first two unifying themes are “the diversity of human societies and cultural patterns the world over and the similarities that make all humans fundamentally alike” (p. xiv). It is unclear what position this means Scupin and DeCorse will adopt, but on p.226 they appear to positively endorse Donald E. Brown’s Human Universals (1991). They will then relate Donald Brown to a positive assessment of evolutionary psychology and The Adapted Mind (1992), saying “the field of evolutionary psychology is in its infancy and will most likely grow to offer another interactionist perspective on human thought and behavior” (248). However, see the blog-post Darwin in Mind–Evolutionary Psychology for a different assessment, that evolutionary psychology is basically over.

Scupin and DeCorse do not spend much time on infant development or maternal environment, but there is a brief mention of Meredith Small’s work in Our Babies, Ourselves (1998) and Kids: How Biology and Culture Shape the Way We Raise Young Children (2001). Their one quote is crucial: “Small emphasizes that biology intersects with culture in infant and child development, but that we are neurologically ‘unfinished’ and brain growth is inextricably connected with social and cultural devlopment” (p.236). I use Small’s “Our Babies, Ourselves” article from Applying Anthropology to emphasize the same point, and it would be nice to see further elaboration or an earlier mention in the textbook.

1.2 Evolution and natural selection, anthropologically

Scupin and DeCorse-Anthropology has a fairly standard account of evolution, but their phrasing of natural selection “as one of four major guiding forces” (p.50) makes it sound like natural selection has a guiding aim or goal. They reiterate this on p.57, saying how the other three processes–mutation, gene flow, and genetic drift–do not provide direction, but natural selection does. Scupin and DeCorse then clarify that “evolutionary ‘success’ can be evaluated only in relative terms” (p.58), but this comes as a qualification to the directedness of natural selection. Scupin and DeCorse-Anthropology does not discuss later evolutionary ideas such as niche construction. Their four forces are a long way from Jablonka and Lamb’s Evolution in Four Dimensions (2005)

1.3 Racism and biological anthropology

Like many anthropology textbooks, Scupin and DeCorse-Anthropology saves the discussion of contemporary race and ethnicity for the late chapter 23, p.516. Although they include a section on “The Cultural and Social Significance of Race” (p.517), they do not here discuss social inequality–this is briefly discussed later in the chapter once the terms have shifted to “Ethnicity” and one paragraph on “African Americans Today.” Better organization of this chapter could make this much clearer.

1.4 Human skulls: Boas head shape studies revalidated

Although Scupin and DeCorse do not specifically talk about Boas’s immigrant head shape studies, they mention Boas’s work on the subject in two places, during a discussion of historical particularism (p.285) and in the “Race and Ethnicity” chapter:

Boas and his students took precise assessments of the physical characteristics of different populations, including cranial capacity and brain size. His research began to challenge the scientific racist views, demonstrating conclusively that the brain sizes and cranial capacities of modern humans differ widely within all so-called races. This anthropological research resulted in irrefutable findings that there were no “superior” or “inferior” races. Boas’s research also confirmed that there were no direct links among race, brain size, cranial capacity, and intelligence levels. (p.517)

Certainly interesing to read those lines in the light of the 2011 reassessment of Gould (see blog-post Mismeasuring Gould in “The Mismeasure of Science”). Scupin and DeCorse do not discuss present craniometrics.

1.5 Race revival

In chapter 23 on “Race and Ethnicity,” Scupin and DeCorse do refer to “a number of groups such as the Pioneer Fund persist in supporting research that purports to demonstrate scientifically that races differ in their brain size, mental abilities, and intelligence” and they note how “anthropologists are actively criticizing these erroneous views with sound, scientifically based research” (p.517). They here cite a 2011 chapter by Lieberman and Scupin in Race and Ethnicity: The United States and the World (2nd Edition). However, they portray this as a “persistence” rather than a revival–they do not discuss “A Family Tree in Every Gene” (Leroi 2005) or race-based medicine–see Is Race “Real”? Scupin and DeCorse-Anthropology does include a box on “Race and Genetics: The Human Genome Project” (pp.136-137), but does not discuss how such groupings have been used to re-assert the validity of race.

1.6 “Race Reconciled” re-debunks race

Scupin and DeCorse-Anthropology debunks race in chapter 6 on “Human Variation.” They begin with a catalog of all kinds of human variation and then proceed to note how it does not sort along typical race-classification lines. They have some good contemporary references, such as Jablonski and Chaplin (2010) on skin color. However, their primary evidence for debunking are still the idea of clines and the research from Lewontin (1972). Scupin and DeCorse do not discuss evidence and race identification from forensic anthropology–they discuss forensic anthropology in a later section on applied anthropology (pp.566-569).

1.7 Race becomes biology

In the “Human Variation” chapter, Scupin and DeCorse include a short section on how “culture also influences human–and sometimes genetic–variation” and how laws prohibiting interracial marriages can “inhibit gene flow and contribute to genetic drift within a population” (p.129). They then discuss “the impact of modern urban life” including lower birth weight babies around Love Canal. Although the Love Canal reference may be dated for contemporary students, it would seem like a perfect place to discuss how social notions of race can become biology and environmental racism. Scupin and DeCorse-Anthropology does not entirely close the loop here, but they do put the pieces close enough for readers to do the rest. They discuss The Bell Curve and intelligence starting p.135, and although Scupin and DeCorse do not connect it to a race revival, they convincingly debunk such arguments using some contemporary citations such as Stephen Molnar’s Human Variation: Races, Types, and Ethnic Groups (6th Edition). As mentioned above, they do not connect to possible biocultural arguments when discussing IQ.