Alpoim Guedes Is Poverty In Our Genes: An Analysis

Anthropologists throughout the history of the discipline have utilized race as a mode of inquiry. In early anthropology, racial and ethnic differences became the focal point of anthropological studies due to a perceived inherent or biological dissimilarity between people of separate races. In turn, these interpretations of racial difference were used to justify and explain systemic racialized institutions and practices such as Orientalism, colonialism, and imperialism. The aftereffects of anthropology’s preoccupation with race are still apparent even today as many contemporary anthropological studies examine people of color living in the Global South. Understandings of race have evolved from biologically determined, fundamental truths

Guedes proves the thesis of the original paper ("The 'Out of Africa' Hypothesis”) fundamentally flawed in both methodology and collected data. Their approach to race appears especially suspect. For example, Ashraf and Galor (the authors of the original paper) base their presumptions of economic success upon Western intellectual ideals of what constitutes achievement (in this case, academic paper output). As a result, Western nations with the ideal level of diversity (not too much, not too little) show favorable amounts of attainment while countries situated in the Global South indicate less economic prosperity (Guuedes 77). Ashraf and Galor also fail to realize that European innovation is not an ancient occurrence. Had their research been more thorough (or less racially biased) they may have acknowledged that Western achievements (such as farming) directly borrows form earlier Near Eastern influences (77). From the beginning, Ashraf and Galor position the West as the supreme model for advanced society while ignoring significant feats made by the subjects their material

The Karitiana people of Brazil, for example, are used to represent the population of Brazil writ large. The Karitiana people, however, are not nearly as genetically diverse as the rest of Brazil due to their relative isolation within the rainforest. Had they collected date from other populations, they might have realized that Brazil’s diversity correlates with South America as a whole and does represent an outlier (Guedes 75). This reliance on misleading and selective data corroborates troubling theories while further normalizing problematic studies regarding race. While intellectual investigations applying nuanced methods have positively shaped the field of anthropology, studies conducted with faulty methodology touting misleading figures epitomizes “bad science” and remains both prevalent and malignant (Guedes