Race and place in extreme physiology
Heggie argues that altitude, heat, and cold physiology kept colonial race–place assumptions alive, using blood both as fluid and as hereditary identity.
Source
Blood, race and indigenous peoples in twentieth century extreme physiology
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Race and place in extreme physiology
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The International Biological Programme ran from 1964 to 1974.
Perhaps the largest example is the International Biological Programme (1964–1974), a 10-year project inspired by the IGY that intended to provide a similar survey of the organic (rather than inorganic) features of the Earth
What is extreme physiology?
extreme physiology’ (a term referring to the study of the human body at what are believed to be the limits of survival or of acclimatisation) this article
What they did
The article reads expedition and military physiology, Stefansson and Rodahl on circumpolar metabolism, Macfarlane’s desert work, blood-group ancestry tools, and the International Biological Programme, against histories that stop at nineteenth-century seasoning or Tropical Medicine.
What they found
Acclimatisation remained a live research question because polar, desert, and aviation war demanded it. Circumpolar studies often denied racial cold adaptation and praised ‘going native’ (diet and technique). Altitude work mixed blood-as-physiology with blood-as-race. US military money still funded studies of non-white bodies in extremes into the 1960s.
The limits
What it doesn't show
This is not a new physiology experiment. IBP dates and grant examples are cited from sources. It does not measure modern VO2 max by ancestry.
Key terms
- Extreme physiology
- Study of the body at supposed limits of survival or acclimatisation (heat, cold, altitude).
- Seasoning / acclimatisation
- Short-term adaptation of bodies (often White) to new climates, versus racialised long-term ‘adaptation.’
- Going native
- Adopting Indigenous diet and technique so non-Indigenous bodies supposedly match local cold resistance.
- Blood (double sense)
- Bodily fluid in altitude physiology and a metaphor for hereditary racial identity.
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Heggie’s case study field is?
Common questions
Did Tropical Medicine end seasoning research?
No. Heggie says acclimatisation stayed militarily and politically important through the twentieth century.
What did Stefansson claim?
High-meat ‘Eskimo diet’ raised metabolic rate in anyone, so cold resistance was not a racial trait.
Why military money?
Forces still needed to know how White and non-white bodies would fight in heat, cold, and altitude.
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