The Order of People: Contesting Bio-Scientific Human Classifications

Human classifications: An examination of underlying epistemologies, ambiguities, and politics that reveals how concepts such as race, ethnicity, and ancestry are employed in the life sciences today.

Scientific concepts and segregational politics have long been mixed together in attempts to ordering and classifying people by those in power. The contributors to this volume critically examine bioscientific concepts of human diversity as they are applied across various national contexts and within different life science disciplines, including genetics, medicine, forensics, anthropology, epidemiology, and microbiome research. They unpack the epistemologies, ambiguities, and politics of key classifications such as race, ethnicity, ancestry, and migration background. This results in a multidisciplinary analysis of the complex implications of efforts to capture and categorize biological human variation.

• | Author: Andrea zur Nieden, Veronika Lipphardt, Tino Plumecke, Nils Ellebrecht, Jenny Reardon, Isabelle Bartram
• | Publisher: Transcript Verlag
• | Publication Date: Dec 08, 2025
• | Number of Pages:
• | Language:
• | Binding: Paperback / softback
• | ISBN-13: 9783837672374
• | ISBN-10: 3837672379