Eighteenth-century ethnology fused bodily and cultural notions of race together

Evidence

However, he maintained that individual human bodies have lighter and darker parts and further that one could, even in colder climates, become dark after exposure to the sun. His views were more complex than previous iterations of weather-based theories and also more contradictory. Painter notes that while he argued that culture and climate played a determining role in human appearance, he also believed that certain groups maintained their distinctiveness over generations. Thus, the Swiss retained their “open countenance,” and the Turkish their “manly and serious” demeanor; Jews, despite living alongside gentiles for long periods, were marked by inherent difference which in their “eyes alone” could be seen the “breathe of the East.” What we see therefore is that both bodily and cultural notions of race developed coterminously. — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of Empire, 137

Categorization

• XREF: connects to: Race as a configuration dates only from the late eighteenth century; Bodily and cultural notions of race developed together from the start — Deepa Kumar, Islamophobia and the Politics of…, 125; Eighteenth century ethnology secularized racism into a scientific ideology justifying conquest. (+8 more)

Broader Connections

• Nineteenth-century ethnology subsumed caste into biologically determined race essences #expands (0.85) — Ambedkar, B R, Annihilation of Caste_ The Annotated…, 1067
• Race operates to tie culture, body, and behavior together #corroborates (0.85)
• Race as a configured ideology only appears after the late eighteenth century #contradicts (0.80)
• Race functioned as an organizing principle tying bodies to social statuses #corroborates (0.80) — Michael Omi, Howard Winant, Racial Formation in the United States, 85
• Eighteenth-century naturalists laid groundwork for scientific racism as ideology justifying slavery #expands (0.75)
• Colonial paperwork fused physical and moral definitions of racial identity #corroborates (0.75) — Ann Laura Stoler, Along the Archival Grain_ Epistemic…, 905
• Race gained formal codification and state authority from the eighteenth century #complicates (0.70)