title: Race and History: Comments from an Epistemological Point of View.
abstract: The historiography of race is usually framed by two discontinuities: Theinventionof race by European naturalists and anthropologists, marked by Carl Linnaeus'sSystema naturae(1735); and thedemiseof racial typologies after WWII in favor of population-based studies of human diversity. This framing serves a similar function as the quotation marks that almost invariably surround the term. "Race" is placed outside of rational discourse as a residue of outdated essentialist and hierarchical thinking. I will throw doubt on this underlying assumption, not in order to re-legitimate race, but in order to understand better why race has been, and continues to be, such a politically powerful and explosive concept.
authors: University of Exeter, Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, Berlin, S.E.W.Mueller-Wille@exeter.ac.uk.
authors: Staffan
authors: S
authors: Müller-Wille