People in Motion: Introduction to Transnational Movements and Transwar Connections in the Anthropological and Genetic Study of Human Populations

Abstract

The essays in this special issue shed new light on the transnational movement and exchange of researchers, data, theories, and scientific objects in the anthropological and genetic study of human populations in the twentieth century. Historians have long stressed how the study of race and human populations in this period served to create a national identity for emerging nation states. More recently, historical narratives of anthropology and human genetics have emphasized the global scale of research networks in these sciences. This issue explores the specific routes, crossings, and interactions between national and international contexts prompted by the study of races and populations. The essays reveal not only how transnational scientific practices were strongly connected to national aspirations and projects, but also how unequal social and geopolitical power relations