Based on intensive study of human origin illustrations, responses from students and colleagues and research into reconstructive illustration and feminist criticism of Western art, this ground-breaking book traces the subtle ways in which paleoanthropological conventions have influenced and have shifted in the creation of these illustrations. Wiber reveals that embedded meanings in these illustrations go beyond gender to include two other ubiquitous themes-racial superiority and upward cultural progress. Underlying all these themes, she found a basic conservatism in the paleoanthropological approach to evolutionary theory.

Erect Men/Undulating Women provides a deeper understanding of popularized illustrations of human origins, but, more importantly, it encourages readers to gain a sensitivity to the ways in which Western culture constructs "scientific" findings that are compatible with its deeply held beliefs and values.

Table of Contents for
Erect Men/Undulating Women: The Visual Imagery of Gender, "Race" and Progress in Reconstructive Illustrations of Human Evolution by Melanie G. Wiber

List of Figures

Acknowledgments

ONE: Of Gender, "Race," Progress and Evolution: Human Evolution Reconstructive Illustration

TWO: Contested Knowledge in the Human Evolution Story Field: Man the Hunter versus Woman the Gatherer

THREE: Reconstructive Human Evolution Illustrations: Utilizing Western Art Conventions in a Contested Story Field

FOUR: Gender: The Ubiquitous Story Operator

FIVE: Conflation and the Significant Other: Racism and Codes of the Primitive

SIX: Window or Mirror? Primates and Foragers: Analogies of the Pre-Cultural Life

SEVEN: Progress: Inevitable as Moral Rewards- The Ultimate Story Operator 153

EIGHT: Lucy as Barbie Doll: Eroticism in the Human Evolution Meta-Narrative

NINE: The Commodification of Human Evolution: Selling a Story Field through Illustrations

Figures

References Cited

Index

Melanie G. Wiber received her Ph.D. in anthropology from the University of Alberta. Her research interests include development studies, legal anthropology and gender studies. She is the author of Politics, Property and Law in the Philippine Uplands (WLU Press) and co-editor with Joep Spiertz of The Role of Law in Natural Resources Management, which is available in North America from WLU Press.