Cultural components in the concept of race / Edmund R. Leach.

  • Edmund Leach
Date:
[1974]
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: Cultural components in the concept of race / Edmund R. Leach. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Africans and Papuan Pygmies short Papuans (Buettner-Janusch, 1966: 416). It follows therefore that, as is the case with the morphological evidence, the genetic data can lead only to inferences of probability rather than certainty. “If adjacent populations are very similar genetically, then it is probable that they have a close common descent. But where distant populations have genetic similarities, these may have been produced in a variety of ways by the action of various evolutionary processes” (Birdsell, 1972 : 487). The converse point is equally important. “The action of various evolutionary processes” is at work all the time and though it is quite possible for separated distant populations to come to resemble each other, genetically and physically, as a result of accidental convergence or adaptation to similar conditions, the general probability is that populations which are spatially sufficiently separate to form breeding isolates (i.e. are approximately separate Mendelian populations) will continuously evolve so that they become more and more different with the succession of generations. On the face of it the conclusion from all this is almost wholly negative. Morphological racial differences palpably exist. Negroid Africans are visibly different from Caucasoid Europeans and it is at least probably the case that great regional populations of Man which resemble each other have some common lines of descent. But such crude statements about the phenotypic consequences of genetic inheritance have very little scientific utility. Indeed a scientific typology of races either on morphological grounds or on gene frequency grounds seems to be ruled out. All that can be usefully discussed by scientists are the processes by which racial differentiation comes about, and the environmental and social circumstances which lead to an increase or decrease in such differentiation over time. Nevertheless the view of racial difference which I have outlined above leads to a curious social paradox. Imagine a zero point in time (T.l) and a single Mendelian population (P.l) which forms a breeding isolate. At a later point in time (T.2), this population comes to be divided into two separate breeding isolates, P.1.1 and P.1.2. There are many possible causes for such a separation, e.g. part of the original population P.l may migrate to a remote island, some social or religious crisis may divide the population into two endogamous sub-groups, and so on. If the initial allocation of individuals to P.1.1 and P.1.2 is random, then, initially, the gene pools of these two sub-groups will be indistinguishable—they will be members of a single race. As time goes on, however, differential selection will generate differences in the frequency of the variable genes of the two gene pools. In this simple model situation, provided we rule out complicating possibilities such as a third population P.2 which interbreeds with both groups, the general expectation must be that the more prolonged the period of separation, the greater will be the racial difference between P.1.1 and P.1.2. While there are a variety of distinct evolutionary processes which may further such differentiation, the major factor is always selection. Roughly speaking we can say that the two populations concerned become genetically distinguishable over time because they are adapting to different environmental circumstances. Note however that “environ mental circumstances” here means the ecosystem in the broadest sense—not merely climate and terrain and natural resources but also many features of the environment which are the direct or indirect consequence of cultural activities among the populations concerned. For example, a genetic peculiarity is very likely to be a response to the prevalance of an endemic disease (e.g. malaria) the incidence of which is itself determined by human cultural activity. For such incipient racial differences to develop it is necessary that the environments to which the two populations are adapting should be continuously different even though they need not be stable. The same model schema may also be considered in reverse. Suppose we start at T.l with two racially distinguishable populations, P.a and P.b, which initially form separate breeding isolates, and then, at time T.2, because of migration or some social revolution, members of the two populations are brought together and reshuffled as members of a single pack, then clearly the whole notion of “adaptation to separate environments” becomes meaningless. The principle is obvious and may be reduced to a formula. (a) Whenever two populations persist over time in separate environ ments and there is no remixing of individuals, racial difference will tend to increase from generation to generation; (b) Whenever individuals from racially distinguishable populations are mixed up in the same environment, racial distinctions within the mixed population will tend to decrease from generation to generation. These latter conditions are precisely the ones in which “race as a concept” first acquires political significance. The only circumstances in which race difference can have cultural and hence political significance are ones in which there is a widely prevalent belief that the population, taken as a whole, is of mixed ethnic origin. If the belief is well founded, then it is also factually the case that racial difference is decreasing and will continue to decrease. The paradox is that although race prejudice is generated by resentment against the existence of racial diversity within what is potentially a single Mendelian population, the effect of race prejudice is to reinforce social barriers which inhibit random mating. The prejudice thus sustains the diversity which generates the prejudice in the first place. Incidentally, the mixing of populations of readily distinguishable ethnic origin does not always have these cultural implications. We need to understand much better than we do just why such mixture sometimes becomes a political issue and sometimes not. It is for the geneticists to spell out just how far human populations really differ from one another as biological collectivities; the rest of us would do well not to attach too much importance to superficial