Anthropology In Context

Introduction For decades, archaeology claimed that the first humans arrived in North America about 13,000 years ago via an ice-free corridor from Siberia (Gannon, 2019). This theory, known as “Clovis First,” was first presented as scientific fact. But the story of the first humans on this continent was never about evidence; it was about who had the authority to tell history. The Clovis model ignored and dismissed Indigenous knowledge, revealing how colonial power shaped not j

Introduction Race-based medicine is rooted in the belief that racial categories reflect biological differences. This belief has shaped diagnoses, treatments and medical education but in itself rooted in scientific racism. Race is a social classification, not a biological one, yet it continues to appear in clinical decisions today. Modern genetics and anthropology both make it clear that trace has no real biological basis, and when medicine treats race as genetic, it often lea

Introduction Whiteness is often treated as a natural or the neutral category, as if it has always existed. But historians and anthropologists show that whiteness was invented to create and maintain social power. It emerged alongside European colonial expansion and slavery, where it became a tool to organize human hierarchies (Baird, 2021). Whiteness doesn’t describe a culture or ethnicity; it’s a social and political category designed to segregate those who are protected by s