Internet Exercises

Internet Exercises

1. Ethnic Discrimination in Japan: Go to and read the interview with Nadamoto Masahisa on his work as a Buraku abolitionist (http://www.nancho.net/kyoto/nadamoto.html).
   1. Who are the burakumin? How far do they go back in history? What kind of jobs have they traditionally performed?
   2. How have the burakumin been treated since World War II? How have conditions changed?
   3. How are burakumin treated today? What steps have the Japanese government taken to improve the status of burakumin?
   4. Why is it important to view the burakumin as a socially constructed category?
      
      
2. Eugenics: Go to the Image Archives of the American Eugenics Movement hosted by the DNA Learning Center of the Cold Springs Harbor Laboratory at http://vector.cshl.org/eugenics/. Read the chapters, and view the images to answer the questions below.
   1. What was the Eugenics movement? What was its social and scientific basis?
   2. What were the scientific flaws in the eugenics research?
   3. In which three areas of law did the eugenics movement seek reform? How successful were they? What kinds of eugenics-based laws have been passed in the 20^th century?
   4. Do you think that eugenics is just a thing of that past? How does an anthropological understanding of race undermine the assumptions of the eugenics movement?