How can evolutionary and biological anthropologists engage broader audiences?

OBJECTIVES: With our diverse training, theoretical and empirical toolkits, and rich data, evolutionary and biological anthropologists (EBAs) have much to contribute to research and policy decisions about climate change and other pressing social issues. However, we remain largely absent from these critical, ongoing efforts. Here, we draw on the literature and our own experiences to make recommendations for how EBAs can engage broader audiences, including the communities with whom we collaborate, a more diverse population of students, researchers in other disciplines and the development sector, policymakers, and the general public. These recommendations include: (1) playing to our strength in longitudinal, place-based research, (2) collaborating more broadly, (3) engaging in greater public communication of science, (4) aligning our work with open-science practices to the extent possible, and (5) increasing diversity of our field and teams through intentional action, outreach, training, and mentorship. CONCLUSIONS: We EBAs need to put ourselves out there: research and engagement are complementary, not opposed to each other. With the resources and workable examples we provide here, we hope to spur more EBAs to action.

Race and perception of human diversity: Five European case studies.

Against the background of the results of surveys carried out previously on American, Polish, and European academics, we present new data on the perception of races among non-biological anthropologists. In five case studies, we surveyed 585 respondents belonging to the academic community (of biologists and cultural anthropologists) and ordinary people from three European countries: Poland, Czech Republic and England. All groups were concordant on the question "Are there [biological] races in humans?" - replying mostly in the affirmative. For the number of races that humans can be divided into, respondents' views were discordant depending on the society they live in. Regarding opinions about supposed racial characteristics, the response patterns of all groups were again much alike: The vast majority of the participants thought of human races in terms of morphological differences, but mostly did not see an association between race and intelligence, personality and religion. We suggest that the persistence of racial thinking about human diversity depends, to a large extent, on schooling and education, and certainly is a consequence of lack of academic and public discourse on race.

Somos una banda: Los médicos como grupo antropológico / We are a band: an anthropological vision of the medical community

Este artículo trata de explicar cómo, desde el punto de vista antropológico, el colectivo médico se comporta como una tribu similar a las que pueblan el Amazonas o la sabana africana. La familia como unidad fundamental de la banda de cazadores define a su vez el centro de salud y a los médicos que lo habitan, como grupo igualitario en el que los miembros trabajan por el bien de la tribu. Los líderes de la tribu, también llamados directores de centro, también son similares a los grandes hombres de la Polinesia o a los aborígenes que lideran la partida de caza. Incluso los enfrentamientos entre médicos, en torno a sus competencias respecto a los pacientes, han sido descritas a lo largo de la historia por los antropólogos y repiten los patrones de los grupos segmentarios. Se concluye con que esta visión de tribus enfrentadas se ha de superar para avanzar hacia la mejora de la salud de la población

In this paper we try to explain, using an anthropological point of view, how the medical community behaves like a tribe like those who inhabit the Amazon forests or the African Savanna. The Family as fundamental unit of a band of hunter-gatherers also defines the Primary Care Centre and the professionals who work there, as an egalitarian group in which every member works for the good of the tribe. The leaders of the tribe, also called "Health Centre Managers", are also comparable to the "big men" of Polynesia or the aborigines, who leads hunting parties. Even the clashes between physicians about the responsibilities as regards patients have been described throughout history in the anthropological literature, and they repeat the patterns of the segmental groups. We finish by concluding that this vision of warring tribes has to be overcome in order to advance towards the improvement of our community's health

Race and diversity in U.S. Biological Anthropology: A decade of AAPA initiatives.

Biological Anthropology studies the variation and evolution of living humans, non-human primates, and extinct ancestors and for this reason the field should be in an ideal position to attract scientists from a variety of backgrounds who have different views and experiences. However, the origin and history of the discipline, anecdotal observations, self-reports, and recent surveys suggest the field has significant barriers to attracting scholars of color. For a variety of reasons, including quantitative research that demonstrates that diverse groups do better science, the discipline should strive to achieve a more diverse composition. Here we discuss the background and underpinnings of the current and historical dearth of diversity in Biological Anthropology in the U.S. specifically as it relates to representation of minority and underrepresented minority (URM) (or racialized minority) scholars. We trace this lack of diversity to underlying issues of recruitment and retention in the STEM sciences generally, to the history of Anthropology particularly around questions of race-science, and to the absence of Anthropology at many minority-serving institutions, especially HBCUs, a situation that forestalls pathways to the discipline for many minority students. The AAPA Committee on Diversity (COD) was conceived as a means of assessing and improving diversity within the discipline, and we detail the history of the COD since its inception in 2006. Prior to the COD there were no systematic AAPA efforts to consider ethnoracial diversity in our ranks and no programming around questions of diversity and inclusion. Departmental survey data collected by the COD indicate that undergraduate majors in Biological Anthropology are remarkably diverse, but that the discipline loses these scholars between undergraduate and graduate school and systematically up rank. Our analysis of recent membership demographic survey data (2014 and 2017) shows Biological Anthropology to have less ethnoracial diversity than even the affiliated STEM disciplines of Biology and Anatomy; nearly 87% of AAPA members in the United States identify as white and just 7% as URM scholars. These data also suggest that the intersection of race and gender significantly influence scholarly representation. In response to these data, we describe a substantial body of programs that have been developed by the COD to improve diversity in our ranks. Through these programs we identify principal concerns that contribute to the loss of scholars of color from the discipline at different stages in their careers, propose other directions that programming for recruitment should take, and discuss the beginnings of how to develop a more inclusive discipline at all career stages.

Participation, representation, and shared experiences of women scholars in biological anthropology.

American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA) membership surveys from 1996 and 1998 revealed significant gender disparities in academic status. A 2014 follow-up survey showed that gender equality had improved, particularly with respect to the number of women in tenure-stream positions. However, although women comprised 70% of AAPA membership at that time, the percentage of women full professors remained low. Here, we continue to consider the status of women in biological anthropology by examining the representation of women through a quantitative analysis of their participation in annual meetings of the AAPA during the past 20 years. We also review the programmatic goals of the AAPA Committee on Diversity Women's Initiative (COD-WIN) and provide survey results of women who participated in COD-WIN professional development workshops. Finally, we examine the diversity of women's career paths through the personal narratives of 14 women biological anthropologists spanning all ranks from graduate student to Professor Emeritus. We find that over the past 20 years, the percentage of women first authors of invited symposia talks has increased, particularly in the sub-disciplines of bioarchaeology, genetics, and paleoanthropology. The percentage of women first authors on contributed talks and posters has also increased. However, these observed increases are still lower than expected given the percentage of graduate student women and women at the rank of assistant and associate professor. The personal narratives highlight first-hand the impact of mentoring on career trajectory, the challenges of achieving work-life satisfaction, and resilience in the face of the unexpected. We end with some suggestions for how to continue to improve equality and equity for women in biological anthropology.

Rethinking Human-Nonhuman Primate Contact and Pathogenic Disease Spillover.

Zoonotic transmissions are a major global health risk, and human-animal contact is frequently raised as an important driver of transmission. A literature examining zooanthroponosis largely agrees that more human-animal contact leads to more risk. Yet the basis of this proposition, the term contact, has not been rigorously analyzed. To understand how contact is used to explain cross-species spillovers, we conducted a multi-disciplinary review of studies addressing human-nonhuman primate (NHP) engagements and pathogenic transmissions and employing the term contact. We find that although contact is frequently invoked, it is employed inconsistently and imprecisely across these studies, overlooking the range of pathogens and their transmission routes and directions. We also examine a related but more expansive approach focusing on human and NHP habitats and their spatial overlap, which can potentially facilitate pathogenic transmission. Contact and spatial overlap investigations cannot, however, explain the processes that bring together people, animals and pathogens. We therefore examine another approach that enhances our understanding of zoonotic spillovers: anthropological studies identifying such historical, social, environmental processes. Comparable to a One Health approach, our ongoing research in Cameroon draws contact, spatial overlap and anthropological-historical approaches into dialog to suggest where, when and how pathogenic transmissions between people and NHPs may occur. In conclusion, we call for zoonotic disease researchers to specify more precisely the human-animal contacts they investigate and to attend to how broader ecologies, societies and histories shape pathogen-human-animal interactions.

Anthropologists' views on race, ancestry, and genetics.

Controversies over race conceptualizations have been ongoing for centuries and have been shaped, in part, by anthropologists. OBJECTIVE: To assess anthropologists' views on race, genetics, and ancestry. METHODS: In 2012 a broad national survey of anthropologists examined prevailing views on race, ancestry, and genetics. RESULTS: Results demonstrate consensus that there are no human biological races and recognition that race exists as lived social experiences that can have important effects on health. DISCUSSION: Racial privilege affects anthropologists' views on race, underscoring the importance that anthropologists be vigilant of biases in the profession and practice. Anthropologists must mitigate racial biases in society wherever they might be lurking and quash any sociopolitical attempts to normalize or promote racist rhetoric, sentiment, and behavior.