Human Biology Open Access Pre-Prints

Document Type

Article

Anticipated Volume

95

Anticipated Issue

1

Abstract

This paper historically situates human biology research by engaging with feminist science and technology scholars to show how a key mechanism of embodiment, plasticity, is used to re/produce sex and gender binaries in anthropological research and beyond. I begin by defining embodiment and demonstrating its reliance on plasticity. Next, I discuss plasticity and review how and why it has been taken up in human biology research. After, I engage with the works of feminist, trans, and queer scholars who have examined the connection between embodiment, plasticity, and the creation of Western binarized sex and gender. Further, I present how the re/production of a sex and gender binary is entwined with the justification of racial hierarchies through plasticity. While deterministic frameworks are often the most criticized in biology for harmful racist and sexist understandings of race and gender, plasticity and gene-times-environment interaction frameworks are not without fault. Even with large shifts in scientific understanding, in this case from determinism to plasticity, science, in particular human biology, can still be a tool to create and maintain racist, patriarchal, cis- and hetero-normative systems. I conclude with recommendations and possible pathways forward for embodiment and plasticity research in human biology, suggesting that human biology research should engage with feminist science and technology critiques to be mindful of the way in which our concepts might be re/producing harm.

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