THE The scientist is a western white man

An analysis of Biology textbooks

Abstract

This article is the result of a broader research in which we are investigating the changes and permanencies in the discourse on Genetics and Evolution before and after the enactment of law 10.639/2003. In this article, we present a historically situated analysis of scientists’ representation in a Biology textbook collection. We analyzed books from three different years (1997; 2006 and 2016), which correspond to the period before, contemporary and after the enactment of the aforementioned law and the National Curriculum Guidelines for the Education of Ethnic-Racial Relations and for the Teaching of African and Afro-Brazilian History and Culture. In particular, we look for the presence of scientists and their representation in the Genetic and Evolutionary discourses. Our theoretical-investigative framework is based on Cultural Studies, highlighting the notions of representation, identity and difference. We examine how scientists are represented in the collections, taking into account writing text and images. In order to analyze scientists’ representation in the text we take into account their nationality and gender, while in the images we examine ethnic-racial and gender characteristics. The emphasis of our analysis was on nationality and ethno-racial representation, but without neglecting the issue of gender. For this process we used a methodology articulating content analysis, proposed by Bardin (2011), with discourse analysis systematized by Orlandi (2015), undertaking a discursive analysis. With the idea of ​​representation developed by Hall (2016) as a central axis, we seek to understand historical affiliations of scientist’s representation with the West and how this is constructed from regimes of inclusion and exclusion, that is, the production of identity and difference. We found that the discourses on Genetics and Evolution help to build the notion of a “universal” subject of Modern Science, namely the western white man and that this representation has changed little over time.

Keywords: representation; Cultural Studies; Biology teaching; education of ethnic-racial relations.