Care of the Species: Cultivating

Biodiversity in Mexico & Spain

Plants & People•Native•Indigenous•Diversity•Hybrid•Population genetics•RACE

Displacements & Transpositions•Race is not singularly about humans.•Genetics is not principally focused on humans.

Thinking across species boundaries:

•Care of the Self•Racial/Social Formation

Race in Mexico & the U.S•Mexican Genomics and the Root of Racial Thinking,

Cultural Anthropology, 2013 •Translating “race” and “raza” between the United States and Mexico, North American Dialogues, 2013.

•“Looking for Race in the Mexican “Book of Life”: INMEGEN and the Mexican Genome Project,” “Knowing Race: Introduction,” and “Conclusion,” in Anthropology of Race: Biology, Genes, and Culture, SAR Press, 2013.

Raza in Mexico

LANGEBIO

Genomes sequenced: maiz, frijol, chile, aguacate, etc.

A unit of Cinvestav: Centro de Inves. y de Estudios Avanzados del Inst. Politecnico Nacional.

Objectives: to perform research leading to the characterization and sustainable use of Mexican biodiversity.

Secretaria de Educacion Publica (SED); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnologia (CONACyT); Secretaria de Agricultura, Ganaderia, Desarrollo Rural, Pesca, y Alimentacion.

LANGEBIO: Maiz

Raza in Mexico• razas de perros, toros, caballos, gallinas, ovejas, etc.

Nonhuman uses of race/raza•First uses of “race” (mid-1400s) is on nonhumans—dogs, horses, sheep, bulls, and certain crops. Principally on domesticated species; ≠ natural.•Usage on nonhumans did not end when it was applied to humans (in mid1700s). razas de perros, torros, caballos, gallinas, etc.•Darwin: Origin of the Species (1859): “the preservation of favoured races”—refers to “races of our domestic animals and plants”; no humans! Races of cabbage, pigeons, dogs, etc.

Racialization•An ideological process; Omi and Winant: “we employ the term racialization to signify the extension of racial meaning to a previously racially unclassified relationship, social practice or group.”

•Hugh Raffles, NYTimes 2011, critiques discourse on non-native plants/animals as “fear of being swamped by aliens.”

Dehumanization?•Michael Banton: “race” enters English as part of growing recognition in Europe “that plants, animals, and humans are linked to one another in a horizontal or classificatory chain such that individuals of each species shaded into those of the next” (1987).

•“the central problem of racial thought: What is the nature of species?”

Racial Thinking?•“Raza” highlights that “race” is not strictly about humans. •“Razas de maiz” aren’t extension of racial meaning to plants—it starts there.•Not about “nature”; species are plastic.•Without grasping the range of its uses on nonhumans we have only a truncated view of racial thinking.

Further Conversations…•http://www.aesopsanthropology.com/blog/

•https://twitter.com/aesopsanthro

•John Hartigan, University of Texas, johnhartigan@austin.utexas.edu