Genetic Essentialism: How Science Education Shapes Perceptions of Race and Gender

This book examines how science education can either reinforce or counteract genetic essentialism, a misperception that social groups share genes which determine their cognitive and behavioral characteristics.

The first chapter examines genetic essentialism’s key features, current manifestations and impacts, and historical precedents. The middle chapters analyze how science textbooks and curricula enable and may amplify essentialist reasoning through simplified explanations of genetics, reproductive biology, and human evolution. These chapters build a more accurate view through research in fields including anthropology, biology, education, history of science, psychology, and sociology. The final chapter compares egalitarianism and stratification across evolutionary time scales to demonstrate that inequality and essentialism are interrelated and socially constructed. The overall aim is to spotlight genetic essentialism in instructional resources and refute it through evidence and education.

The book is intended for scholars and students in the human sciences, biological sciences, health and medicine, and journalism, as well as readers in any field who are interested in confronting the conceptual underpinnings of racism and sexism.

Elizabeth D. Whitaker is a biocultural anthropologist specializing in human health, social history, and the history of scientific ideas. She lectures at the University of Bologna and has also taught at several universities in the United States. Among her academic honors are three Fulbright awards for research and teaching in Italy. Her publications include four other Routledge titles: The trouble with human nature: Health, conflict, and difference in biocultural perspective; Health and healing in comparative perspective; A Macat analysis of Marcel Mauss’s The gift: The form and reason for exchange in archaic societies; and, A Macat analysis of Betty Friedan’s The feminine mystique.