BOOK
REVIEW
Wailoo,
Keith,
Alondra Nelson,
and Catherine Lee, eds.
2012. Genetics and the Unsettled Past:
The Collision of DNA, Race, and History. New
Brunswick: Rutgers University Press.
ISBN:
978-0-8135-5255-2.
[Another short
review of this work will appear in Contemporary
Sociology]
What a
pleasure to review a timely, serious, and yet accessible critique of
what one editor refers to as “the social life of DNA” - a life
that has only broadened and intensified since the decoding of the
human genome was coupled to the marketing of DNA analysis. Such
analysis have given us unique insights into human evolution, medical
treatments, and for many consumers, genealogies establishing ethnic,
racial and personal identities.
The
three introductory essays by the editors each present a different
perspective – or better, an avenue of approach – to the
constellation of knowledge that unites DNA, genealogy, history, the
authority of science, the scientific ideologies of race, and the all
too frequent effacement of gender in the search for origins and
identity. This “social life of DNA” is clearly not meant as a
simple rhetorical flourish or mere abstraction. Instead, it is used
here as a description of the multiple social positions which derive
authority from genetic data, on the one hand, while on the other
hand, the phrase describes the varied knowledges that can be derived
from the collection of genetic material: personal and familial
history; differences and affinities with others, groups, and
populations; and the means to construct a vision of our own past
lives as embedded in the history of human migration and variation.
The
editors’ essays nicely frame the important themes of the
collection. What is for some – i.e., those few with the capital to
access to the technologies and not the vast multitudes who are
instead put to use as mere components of populations – the genomic
era is one in which genealogical connections are simultaneously
essential while also deeply ambiguous in their complexity. This is
especially true for those who can claim multiple ancestries, as
Wailoo demonstrates in “ Who Am I? Genes and the Problem of
Historical Identity”.
“Any one of us has multiple pathways for
building a strong historical sense of self. Genetic analysis offers
its own multiple pathways of self-knowledge. In some ways, the
social logic of ancestry if not so different from the logic of
genetic ancestry, for both depend on selective data that require us
to make deliberate human choices in reconstructing the past. Both
also depend upon complicated social machinery that makes the past
available to us in the present. Finally, both depend upon
assemblages of arbitrary databases, mixed with suppositions and
memories.... (Wailoo, 20).
In
circumstances of intense social conflict, genomic knowledge promises
to provide a basis for recognition and reconciliation (Nelson). In
such circumstances, genetic knowledge might very well serve to
undermine or shatter illusions of racial/national/ethnic superiority
or exclusivity – a perspective which may have been at the bottom
of Bill Clinton’s declaration that the decoding of the genome had
shown race to be an outmoded concept. Genomic knowledge offers
itself up as a positive social force, promoting inclusion and
recognition along with the possibility for reconciliation and
reparations for past injustices:
“With reconciliation projects, the insights of
genetic science are applied to the discovery or confirmation of
ancestry in the hopes of securing social inclusion, including rights
and reparation. But to what extent can DNA identification be
efficacious for African diasporic and/or racial reconciliation? What
might be the consequences of the genetic mediation of African
diasporic cultural politics that have historically involved social
movement tactics and civil rights organizations? ....reconciliation
projects also raise interesting and fraught contradictions: they
threaten to reify race in the pursuit of repair for injury; they
suggest how justice pursuits can be uneasily intertwined with
commercial enterprises; they may substitute genetic data for the just
outcomes that are sought, and indeed, they demonstrate well that
facts may not, in and of themselves, secure justice” (Nelson, 29)
So, not
all is bleak nor are we heading irresistibly towards a velvet
neo-eugenics, but neither do we have any assurance that another bar
is not about to be welded to the Iron Cage.
Catherine
Lee’s essay “The Unspoken Significance of Gender in Constructing
Kinship, Race, and Nation” reminds the reader that while the
meaning and use of race is central in the unsettled genomic era;
categories and assumptions about gender are called into question, but
left unresolved and under-examined. For example, in the tracing of
genealogical descent by male linage, a practice where women appear as
breaks or gaps in the genealogical line of descent. The effacement
of gender in genealogical practice brings claims of descent into
question these are, finally, claims about the descent and
distribution of property as they are about genetics.
“People conceive of nations as imagined
communities, wherein members can conceptualize links to one another
across time or generations or space that are preternatural.... We can
also see the ways in which DNA testing, in the context of the family,
can literally transform the family into a microcosm of the nation....
Genetic genealogy that ignores complex gendered processes is not
unlike other nation-building activities, which rely on the symbolic
and physical work of men and women’s bodies while denying the
existence of such efforts” (Lee, 36-38).
After
the introductory pieces, the second section provides more involved
descriptions of the methods of sample collection and the science of
genetic analysis. As such, the essays in this section are very goods
examples of making complex genetic knowledge accessible to a wide
range of readers. The various authors raise the question: What are
the effects of genetic science in the courtroom, medical research, in
the production of knowledge, for identity claims, and perhaps just as
important, as commercial ventures? These essays also highlight the
pitfalls and limitations of using genetics to make historical claims
about personal ancestry, racial origins, and human history. Using as
one example the recent work of the International HapMap Consortium,
Peter Chow-White’s “The Informationalization of Race” discusses
the creation of populations and paradox that the genome’s
destruction of the concept of race brings with it an
“informationalization of race” that sorts humans into new
categories while also inviting the reconstruction of scientific
ideologies with a veneer of respectability offered by new information
technologies.
This
concern for classification is found in Lundy Braun and Evelynn
Hammond’s essay “The Dilemma of Classification”. Bruan and
Hammond do not attempt a general critique of classification (and
unfortunately do not situate theirs in relation to earlier
critiques). Rather than being a critique of classification, it is an
attempt to trace the political ramifications of the construction of
populations. To do so they “focus on Africa to historicize
conceptual problems that plague the notions of populations and
groups, whether macro or micro, and their use in genetic research....
Once named and studied in depth, knowledge of African societies was
further flattened as anthropologists in the United States, notably
Georges Peter Murdock, constructed internationally accessible atlases
and databases, thereby making natural the existence of populations as
bounded entities” (Bruan and Hammonds, 68).
Also
deserving of special mention is the essay by the biologist Abram
Gabriel on how the limitations, gaps, and biases in the collection
and analysis of genetic material have often ignored in the rush to
expand a genomic and genetic genealogy industry. As it is, the
“concerns of this essay are how race has become part of our current
discussions of genomics and whether it belongs there” (44).
Gabriel’s essay will enlighten many readers who have had, as I
have, a genetic sample analyzed for genealogical research.
 |
| The reviewer's origins map, according to one DNA genealogy company. |
“As a molecular biologist, I realize that my field has entered the
limelight and that knowledge about DNA is no longer the esoteric
province of academic researchers. I take pride in the fact that the
study of DNA and genomics has progressed so far so fast, and that the
science is being recognized as a powerful tool for fundamental
advances in disciplines as disparate as bio-medicine and human
history. But I feel trepidation, too, that the transitional process
is moving faster than the science itself, potentially leading to
public misconceptions, oversimplifications, and unverifiable claims
about the power of these discoveries, with consequent lowering of
society’s trust in its scientists” (43-44).
Given
this concern, the two chapters that remind us of the close connection
between forensics and racial classification will many in a time when
forensic detective dramas and reality shows remain quite popular.
The contradictions between eyewitness descriptions, assumptions about
race, and genetic analysis in forensics comes under critical review
by Jonathan Khan in an effort to understand biases within the past 20
years of work in the field of criminal forensics. “In effect,
forensic scientists have simply adopted the broad categories of race
and ethnicity used in the U. S. Census in order to organize their
genetic data.... Taken together, the persistent conceptualization of
race as genetic, the confusion of statistical with forensic
significance, and the deep-seated American identification of violent
crime and race may be understood to frame and facilitate the inertial
power of race to perpetuate itself as a salient category of forensic
DNA analysis long after its practical legal utility has passed”
(Khan, 130, 136-137). Pamela Sankar takes a critical look using the
British Night Stalker – whose identification as a “light-skinned
black man” seemed “at odds with the image” (Sankar, 110-111)
distributed by the authorities – as a means to explore the supposed
promise of DNA to allow forensic phenotyping of suspects.
 |
| "Police artist sketch of British serial rapist, dubbed the Night Stalker. The sketch was accompanied by the statement that the subject was probably a 'light-skinned black man,' a description that some observers thought was at odds with the image" (Sankar,110) |
 |
| Delroy Easton Grant, who was convicted of the Night Stalker rapes in a mug shot (remember where those originate!) and in an earlier surveillance video image. |
The
essay by Rajagopalan and Fujimura is a bookend to Gabriel’s piece.
Going further than either Gabriel or Bruan and Hammond, they attempt
to
“untangle the relationships between continental
ancestry, geography, history, population, and race in the practices,
technologies, research designs, and research analyses/results of some
admixture mapping studies in U.S. biomedical research.... Discourses
of race and ancestry are deeply entangled in the constitution of
genetic histories in contemporary bio-medicine, in ways that are
contingent and mutually reinforcing. These discourses as embedded in
the technologies of admixture mapping, have consequences for how
disease studies, medical practices, public health policies, and
popular culture use and interpret genetics to construct categories of
difference” (Rajagopalan and Fujimura, 160).
The
section “Stories Told in Blood” brings together a number of
thoughtful and provocative essays that bring together notions of
history, genealogy and identity. These essays range from a critique
of the attempt to mark the genetic differences between French
Canadians and native peoples, to the use of genetics to foster the
process of reconciliation in South Africa, to argue for slavery
reparations, or in for the control of historical knowledge and
cultural artifacts such as the Kenniwick Man.
Several
themes crisscross the essays that might be summarized as (in my words
and not theirs): the social coding of DNA, which first consists of
the commercialization and commodification of genetic data; second in
the return of the repressed; and thirdly in the assertion of yet
another new end of history. The social coding of DNA itself takes
two ultimately intersecting paths: the first around issues of
identity, genealogy, origin(s), nation and race; and the second
around the actual coding of DNA in informatics and medicine. Both
paths may well converge in their classifications of populations that
re-inscribe and naturalize conceptions of “original stocks” that
mingle only at the margins.
The
discussions of the commercialization of DNA also take two broad
approaches. In the first, medicine and pharmaceuticals are obviously
important emerging markets, while paralleling this is the second
route where forensics and judicial power increasingly rely upon
genetic science to establish the guilt or innocence of the accused.
Perhaps one of the most popular success in commercializing genetic
analysis has been the use of genetics in personal genealogical
research. All too often, the genetic analysis is marketed in such a
way as to assist in the production of exclusive identities through
the demarcation of populations, admixture mapping, and charting the
degree of deviation from one of the parent populations. Spencer
Wells, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., National Geographic, 23 and Me,
Ancestry.com, and have profited from the rapid expansion of an
industry that promise the consumer access to hidden, lost,
diagnostic, or even forbidden knowledge of their own past. Several
contributors point out that although the consumer may desire
knowledge of their identity, the level of commercial genetic analysis
can not actually provide it with any real certainty.
Another
theme suggests a return of the repressed behind the use of genetic
knowledge in promoting processes of repatriation and reconciliation
to resolve historical social conflicts. Conversely, always lurking
nearby are eugenics, degeneracy, and a watered-down polygenism. The
practitioners and funders of the new genomics have conveniently
repressed the notion that they represent the apparent survival of
these earlier wretched knowledges raise for the sociological
understanding of contemporary science.
The
third theme of the collection is related to this refusal and
repression of the past: the notion of living in the genomic era
announces a new end of history In response, these essays critique
the view that DNA is a kind of indestructible link to the past that
supersedes History. Genetic history is made to appear as a seemingly
apolitical narrative imbued with an aura of scientific authority.
DNA analysis brings the notion of pre-history into the present and
makes all of human existence “historical” at the very moment it
abolishes from consideration – except as mere superstructure –
the social forces that produce human history. The potential to
reduce social life to the ebbs and flows, migrations and admixtures
of genetic populations is clearly present. Reanne Frank’s essay on
“the forbidden knowledge argument” addresses best the reluctance
by geneticists and biologists to discuss the issues raised so well in
this volume. Those who wish to avoid these questions often respond
that they are heroically pursuing scientific knowledge. The very fact
that their work is being criticized or even rejected by most of their
peers is presented as the best evidence that they are being punished
for revealing to us the “true” meaning of race. In deploying
such arguments, Frank notes ironically, these self-declared martyrs
for Science are placing their work outside of the history of science.
Though Genetics and the Unsettled Past went to press before
the most recent book by Nicholas Wade, it serves as a pre-critique of
his use of genetic knowledge. Although he is mentioned only twice,
reading this work in the context of the current controversy over
Wade’s book speaks directly to the concerns raised by the continued
publication of scientific ideologies packaged as popular scientific
communication.
Many
thoughts come to the reader upon reaching the conclusion of this
collection. One, and it is purely speculative, is that the social
construction of race may not be synonymous with the social life of
DNA. They may constitute different modes of thinking about human
variation, although it is certainly true that at times they seem to
be the same coin struck in different years. Perhaps this similarity
is an indication that both stand in similar relation to the
reproduction of everyday life, i.e., to the practices of domination
and authority that are stitched into the repetitions that structure
everyday life in the modern world. As a result, the complexity of
everyday life causes the social construction of race and the social
life of DNA to diverge as critiques only to converge as explanations
of social conflict.
As the
object created through social construction, race refers to the
social reproduction of a supposed essential quality that is
manifested by the human body and though a corresponding ensemble of
social relations. It carries with it a form of alienation, of
something natural to each person that comes to stand apart and
against them. In this instance, human variety as developed through
the scientific ideology of race and its deployment in social policy.
In the social life of DNA, we are confronted with the
possibility that DNA represents the materiality of this essential
quality and the visible manifestations are therefore secondary to the
demarcations and exclusions of humans according to what Kant called
our lineal stem stocks. At most, the visible differences in the skin
simply serve as confirmation of the genetic material. And this is
exactly the point where the social life of DNA meets the social
construction of race. It is at this moment of convergence that both
use race to confirm the meaning of human variety. Slipping back and
forth between the two each to explain the other, because both express
the scientific ideology of race in everyday life through the attempts
to prove the value of race for understanding human difference. We
find ourselves confronting a central problem that is not a return of
the repressed because it was never repressed, and this problem now
takes the form of the admixture of populations. Lurking in the
nearby rubble dwells the figure of the Hybrid, a frequent object of
earlier 17th-19th century attempts to understand race as
the essential difference between humans. Rather than the genome
finally allowing us to be done with race, one must ask to what degree
might we be constantly speaking about the identification of
homogeneous parent populations against which the deviations and
degeneracy of the Hybrid can be measured?
The
editors are to be commended not only for their own contributions, but
in the selection of essays and the organization of the collection.
Genetics and the Unsettled Past
is a work that deserves a wide reading by sociologists and historians
of science, medicine and technology, health policy analysts and
ethicists, geneticists, genealogists and by students of related
fields. The scholarly and critical depth of this volume is not at
all compromised by its accessibility, making it a valuable source for
students, scholars, and for those interested in the social
implications of recent advances in the science of human genetics.
B. Ricardo Brown, Ph.D
Professor of Social Science & Cultural Studies
Department of Social Science & Cultural Studies
Pratt Institute
