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Audrey Smedley

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description Audrey Smedley Overview

Audrey Smedley was an American social anthropologist whose work examined the historical formation of race as a system of social classification. In Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview, first published in 1993, she argued that race is a modern cultural and historical construct rather than a fixed biological division. Her scholarship also addressed racism, identity, and the relationship between biological variation and social categories, and she was professor emerita at Virginia Commonwealth University.

help Audrey Smedley FAQ

What is Audrey Smedley's main argument about race?

Smedley argues that race is a modern cultural and historical system of classification rather than a set of naturally separate human types. Her work examines how social institutions and political interests gave racial categories authority.

When was Race in North America: Origin and Evolution of a Worldview published?

The first edition was published in 1993. The book traces the development of racial thinking across more than three centuries of North American history. [Routledge edition](https://www.routledge.com/Race-in-North-America-Origin-and-Evolution-of-a-Worldview/Smedley/p/book/9780429494789)

How does Smedley connect race to eighteenth- and nineteenth-century history?

She shows how eighteenth-century ideas about supposedly fixed human groups were expanded in the nineteenth century to justify slavery, hierarchy, and unequal treatment. Her historical approach explains why racial categories can have powerful social effects even when they lack a stable biological basis.

Is race the same thing as ethnicity in Smedley's framework?

No. Race refers to a historically produced worldview that classifies people as supposedly natural groups, while ethnicity more often describes cultural affiliation, language, ancestry, or shared identity. Smedley's argument is that the two concepts should not be treated as interchangeable.

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