Conference: Biological Normalcy: A Workshop Investigating Relationships Between Statistical Norms and the Normative: Santa Fe, NM, October 2019

该奖项为2019年10月在新墨西哥州圣达菲高级研究学院举办的为期数天的研讨会提供支持。讲习班的参加者将发展“生物正常”的概念，通过使用一系列案例研究来了解人口内生物变异的统计规范和规范的社会观点之间的关系，以及这些关系的更广泛含义。通过揭示用于描述人类生物变异的规范（通常以种族-生物为中心）语言，研讨会的目标是揭露和减少关于生物变异的话语中的偏见，并开发描述它的新方法。用于描述人类变异的语言与临床和公共卫生直接相关，其中治疗和政策可能旨在使被视为“不正常”、异常或病态的生物措施“正常化”。为了最大限度地发挥本次研讨会的影响力，在最后阶段将专门为每位参与者和小组制定传播计划，重点是学术、应用和公众外展，强调沟通和教育以及公众参与。生物常态作为一个概念框架，可以从生物文化的角度更好地理解和描述人类的生物变异。本次研讨会的成果将通过阐述这一强调生物学与文化之间双向关系的框架来推进人类学中的生物文化研究。在过去的25年里，生物文化人类学家对社会或文化因素如何影响生物学有了很多了解，但对种群中生物特征的分布如何影响社会规范的研究相对较少。在生物正常的框架下，对正常的两种含义进行了梳理，揭示了两者之间的关系，揭示了人类生物变异话语中可能存在的种族-生物中心主义观点。工作坊是一个为期三天的密集会议，每天都有个人演讲、小组讨论和小组研究。参与者将重点关注统计规范和规范观点之间关系的原因和后果，每个人都提供关于特定生物或生物行为特征（如生长、身体比例、睡眠、饮食等）的材料，并调查种族生物中心观点可能存在于关于这些特征及其在人群内部和跨人群中的可变性的话语中的方式。基金支持不同职业阶段的不同群体的参与者往返于新墨西哥州圣达菲高级研究学院的差旅费。该奖项反映了美国国家科学基金会的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的知识价值和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

This award provides support for a multi-day workshop to be hosted by the School for Advanced Research in Santa, FE New Mexico in October 2019. Participants in the workshop will develop the concept of "biological normalcy" by using a series of case studies to understand the relationships between statistical norms for, and normative social views of, biological variation within human populations, and the broader implications of these relationships. By bringing to light the normative (and often ethno-biocentric) language used to describe human biological variation, the goal of the workshop is to expose and reduce bias in discourse about biological variation and develop new ways of describing it. The language used to describe human variation has direct relevance to clinical and public health, where treatments and policies may be aimed at "normalizing" biological measures that are viewed as "non-normal," deviant, or pathological. To maximize the impact of this workshop, time during the final phase will be dedicated to developing dissemination plans for each participant and the group, with an emphasis on academic, applied, and public outreach that will emphasize communication and education as well as public engagement. Biological normalcy serves as a conceptual framework to better understand and describe human biological variation from a biocultural perspective. The outcomes of this workshop will advance biocultural research in anthropology by elaborating this framework, which emphasizes the bidirectional relationships between biology and culture. Over the past twenty-five years biocultural anthropologists have learned much about how social or cultural factors influence biology, but relatively little about how the distribution of biological traits in a population influence social norms. Using the biological normalcy framework, the two meanings of normal are untangled, revealing the relationships between the two, and the ways that ethno-biocentric views may exist in discourse about human biological variation are exposed. The workshop is structured as a three day intensive session, with each day having a mix of individual presentations, group discussion, and small group research. Participants will focus on the causes and consequences of relationships between statistical norms and normative views, with each providing material on specific biological or biobehavioral traits (such as growth, body proportions, sleep, diet, among others), and investigate the ways that ethno-biocentric views may exist in discourse about these traits and their variability within and across populations. Funds support travel costs for a diverse group of participants in various career stages to and from the School for Advanced Research in Santa Fe, NM.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.