Document Type

Article

Journal/Book Title

Journal of Anthropological Research

Publication Date

5-13-2019

Publisher

University of Chicago Press

Volume

75

Issue

2

First Page

157

Last Page

182

Abstract

Nearly 50 years ago, Marvin Harris published a seminal paper that examined how Brazilians create taxonomic categories of racial identity. In the intervening decades, new cognitive theories and analytical approaches have enabled researchers to investigate cultural domains with increased sophistication and nuance. In this paper, we revisit, replicate, and extend Harris’s research by utilizing modern cognitive anthropological approaches such as multidimensional scaling and cultural consensus analysis. Utilizing the same facial portraits as in the original study, we ask a contemporary sample of 34 Brazilians to identify and sort these images by racial identity. We then compare Harris’s original data, reanalyzed with modern techniques, to show that Brazilians had, and still hold, structured and coherent models of race. This finding has important social ramifications for race in Brazil and highlights the importance of replicability in the social sciences.

Comments

Submitted (or Accepted) for publication to (by) Journal of Anthropological Research on 06/12/2019.

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