The Cultural and Biological Significance of Ethnic Substructure in New Mexican Hispanics

这项研究考察了新墨西哥州拉美裔人的社会文化和生物变异，新墨西哥州以其早期西班牙殖民和来自拉丁美洲的持续移民的独特历史而闻名。这个多学科团队正在从新墨西哥州不同阶层的公众那里收集关于种族、遗传学、形态和健康的数据，并使用这些数据来研究人们如何构建种族，种族的社会文化和生物学关联，以及经济不平等和健康差距的社会原因。该项目弥补了以前关于种族和民族的研究的局限性，包括：1)依赖静态的美国人口普查类别，没有完全反映人们对种族的看法；2)假设某个特定种族的人在文化和生物上是同质的；3)依赖间接或不充分的社会文化和生物变异测量；4)假设种族在空间和时间上是稳定的；5)不加批判地使用种族作为遗传祖先的代理；6)没有采用生物文化和进化的视角。该项目为几名拉美裔本科生和研究生提供培训。将与新墨西哥大学阿方索·奥尔蒂斯跨文化研究中心和种族与社会正义研究所的教职员工一起探索研究结果的公共卫生政策影响。结果将通过一个基于网络的展览和一个将在全州巡回演出的面板展览向公众公布。这项研究将生成一个来自其他美国拉美裔群体的比较数据库，供社会科学家和医疗卫生专业人员使用。结果将由研究人员和他们的学生在领先的科学期刊和专业会议上公布。

This research examines sociocultural and biological variation in Hispanic people in New Mexico, a state known for its unique history of early Spanish colonization and continuing immigration from Latin America. The multidisciplinary team is collecting data on ethnicity, genetics, morphology, and health from a diverse cross-section of the New Mexican public and using these data to examine how people construct ethnicity, the sociocultural and biological correlates of ethnicity, and the social causes of economicinequality and health disparity. The project redresses limitations of previous research on race and ethnicity, including: 1) reliance on static US Census categories that do not fully capture how people think about ethnicity, 2) the assumption that people from a particular ethnic group are culturally and biologically homogeneous, 3) reliance on indirect or inadequate measures of sociocultural and biological variation, 4) the assumption that ethnic groups are stable in space and time, 5) the uncritical use of ethnicity as a proxy for genetic ancestry, and 6) the failure to employ a biocultural and evolutionary perspective.The project provides training for several Hispanic undergraduate and graduate students. The public health policy implications of findings will be explored with faculty from the UNM Alfonso Ortiz Center for Intercultural Studies and the Institute for Race and Social Justice. Results will be communicated to the public via a web-based exhibit and by a panel exhibit that will travel throughout the state. The research will generate a comparative database from other US Hispanic groups that can be used by social scientists and medical health professionals. The results will be presented by the investigators and their students in leading scientific journals and at professional meetings.