Anthropological Synthesis Essay

Anthropologists throughout the history of the discipline have utilized race as a mode of scholarly 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 today as many contemporary anthropological studies examine people of color living in the Global South and many in other fields rely on anthropological data to form knowledge. Understandings of race evolved from biologically determined, fundamental truths to a conceptualization of how and why racial categories developed, an understanding of the ways that race is studied by science, the way race impacted Orientalism and colonial forces, the flexibility of racial facts and fictions, and the ways in which race intersects with other factors to produce difference. Franz Boas, the father of

This gaze, aided by anthropological inquiry, scientific studies, and missionary work produced dominant ideas about different between the West and the East. Europe considered itself superior but required a population to be its inferior. Thus, the Orient existed as a site for the proliferation of knowledge about the “Other” (Said 87). Most understandings of the “Other” consider the racial implications of its formulation. People of the Orient—as analyzed by anthropologists and other experts—appeared in direct opposition to colonial ideals. Race became the fulcrum of knowledge production about the Orient. Their race seemed different and their cultural practices seemed different. Therefore, their lives existed in direct contrast to European