The analysis of these examples from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico reveals how crucial the nation is as a frame for understanding the way racialized concepts get reiterated and reworked in genomic science, in ways that make race both disappear and reappear.

Posted in Excerpts/Quotes on 2016-08-07 22:57Z by Steven

The analysis of these examples from Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico reveals how crucial the nation is as a frame for understanding the way racialized concepts get reiterated and reworked in genomic science, in ways that make race both disappear and reappear. Public health, multiculturalism, and forensics are all political and policy domains that directly invoke the biopolitical nation and its people in terms of their well-being, their diversity and unity, and their biological relatedness in procreation, violence, and death. The governance of these domains is of central interest to the state. Genomics also intervenes in these domains, with the promise of better health for the nation’s people, representations of both diversity and unity, and techniques for connecting bodies in ways that, it is hoped, will lead to reconciliations and peace. The idea of race, in previous times, figured explicitly in the way all these domains were conceptualized in all three countries—los problemas de la raza, to recall the title of the 1920 Colombian book cited earlier on, concerned precisely health, progress, unity, diversity, and conflict in the nation. Race was of course not the only factor to be considered—violent conflict, for example, also followed cleavages of class, region, religion, or political faction—but it was an important way of thinking about difference and the problems it might cause within the nation. The demise of race as an explicit discourse for talking about these matters did not mean that racialized concepts disappeared. Geneticists and medics continued to be interested in the racial mixture of their national populations in relation to public health, cultural commentators continued to reflect on diversity in terms of black, indigenous, and mestizo cultural traits, and indeed forensic scientists continued to classify bodies in more or less explicitly racial terms. Genomics, characterized by its very detailed examination of the structure of DNA sequences, generally rejects a language of race, both biologically and, in Latin America, socially. Brazil, where color/race labels operate in some domains, is a partial exception, while also being the country where the most vocal rejection of race is to be found. Yet, as we have seen, racialized concepts continue to appear implicitly (and occasionally more explicitly) in genomic analysis and are frequently harnessed to the idea of the nation.

Peter Wade, Vivette García Deister, Michael Kent, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, and Adriana Díaz del Castillo Hernández, “Nation and the Absent Presence of Race in Latin American Genomics,” Current Anthropology, 55, no. 5 (October 2014): 506. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/677945

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Nation and the Absent Presence of Race in Latin American Genomics

Posted in Anthropology, Articles, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Mexico on 2016-07-29 19:30Z by Steven

Nation and the Absent Presence of Race in Latin American Genomics

Current Anthropology
Volume 55, Number 5 (October 2014)
pages 497-522
DOI: 10.1086/677945

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

Vivette García Deister, Associate Professor
Social Studies of Science Laboratory
National Autonomous University of Mexico

Michael Kent, Honorary Research Fellow in Social Anthropology
School of Social Sciences
University of Manchester

María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Assistant Professor
Department of Design
University of the Andes, Bogotá, Colombia

Adriana Díaz del Castillo Hernández, Independent Researcher
Consultoría en Estudios Sociales Sobre Educación, Salud, Ciencia y Tecnología, Bogotá, Colombia

Recent work on genomics and race makes the argument that concepts and categories of race are subtly reproduced in the practice of genomic science, despite the explicit rejection of race as meaningful biological reality by many geneticists. Our argument in this paper is that racialized meanings in genomics, rather than standing alone, are very often wrapped up in ideas about nation. This seems to us a rather neglected aspect in the literature about genomics and race. More specifically, we characterize race as an absent presence in Latin America and argue that genomics in the region finds a particular expression of race through concepts of nation, because this vehicle suits the deep-rooted ambiguity of race in the region. To make this argument we use data from an ethnographic project with genetics labs in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico.

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Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America

Posted in Anthologies, Anthropology, Books, Brazil, Caribbean/Latin America, Health/Medicine/Genetics, Media Archive, Mexico on 2014-11-09 17:49Z by Steven

Mestizo Genomics: Race Mixture, Nation, and Science in Latin America

Duke University Press
April 2014
320 pages
4 photos, 2 tables, 6 figures
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-8223-5648-6
Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8223-5659-2

Edited by:

Peter Wade, Professor of Social Anthropology
University of Manchester

Carlos López Beltrán, Researcher
Instituto de Investigaciones Filosóficas, Coyoacán, México, D.F.

Eduardo Restrepo
Universidad Javeriana, Estudios Culturales

Ricardo Ventura Santos
Fundação Oswaldo Cruz, Escola Nacional de Saúde Pública
Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ)

In genetics laboratories in Latin America, scientists have been mapping the genomes of local populations, seeking to locate the genetic basis of complex diseases and to trace population histories. As part of their work, geneticists often calculate the European, African, and Amerindian genetic ancestry of populations. Some researchers explicitly connect their findings to questions of national identity and racial and ethnic difference, bringing their research to bear on issues of politics and identity.

Based on ethnographic research in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico, the contributors to Mestizo Genomics explore how the concepts of race, ethnicity, nation, and gender enter into and are affected by genomic research. In Latin America, national identities are often based on ideas about mestizaje (race mixture), rather than racial division. Since mestizaje is said to involve relations between European men and indigenous or African women, gender is a key factor in Latin American genomics and the analyses in this book. Also important are links between contemporary genomics and recent moves toward official multiculturalism in Brazil, Colombia, and Mexico. One of the first studies of its kind, Mestizo Genomics sheds new light on the interrelations between “race,” identity, and genomics in Latin America.

Contributors: Adriana Díaz del Castillo H., Roosbelinda Cárdenas, Vivette García Deister, Verlan Valle Gaspar Neto, Michael Kent, Carlos López Beltrán, María Fernanda Olarte Sierra, Eduardo Restrepo, Mariana Rios Sandoval, Ernesto Schwartz-Marín, Ricardo Ventura Santos, Peter Wade

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