HLTHAGE 2G03 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Drapetomania, Reductionism, Haloperidol
13 Mar 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
We use phenotypic features to determine race; it"s not a biologically meaningful category. We take a couple visible traits and give them much more meaning than they actually have. Biologically speaking, this is worthless unless talking about something like skin colour. There is just as much differentiation btwn arabs, whites, blacks, as there is between racial groups. Not really helpful to us in any kind of meaningful way. No such thing as a pure race, nor are there pure people. It"s a category assigned by others, but it"s powerful, which makes it meaningful. It"s constantly used as a way of promoting some and denigrating others. Psy-disciplines are largely the creation of european and north american societies, and because of that reflect the values of those societies. Much of modern psychology is based on this. We can"t separate research from the culture of the researchers. What we deem appropriate and inappropriate are grounded in social construct.
