Genomics and Identity Politics (I and II)

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     Last modified: April 21, 2005
     Presentation date: 07/14/2005 4:00 PM in ROZH 102
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Abstract
This session brings together experts from social sciences, anthropology, and philosophy at different stages of their career who explore various ways in which genomic knowledge has been used in society to underwrite or reject claims to group membership or group identities.

Ethical, social, and political discourses on genetic and genomic knowledge concentrate mainly on issues of privacy, autonomy in decision-making, and data-security. In such controversies genomic knowledge is considered dangerous in so far as the information gained may be used for discriminatory practices against the tested individual or a group (see the Arizona case). Genomic tests may be potentially dangerous for the stability of marriages but certainly useful for medical and forensic purposes. From this angle genomics in society appears to be mainly a question of proper governance and regulation.

There is, however, a vast range of employments of genomic tests which don’t fall under this description: Intersex patients and groups; the Lemba in Ethiopia and other groups who follow that route (the Gogodala); African-Americans tracing their ancestors and grounding their identity on the findings, paying for specialist travel agencies who organize their holiday to see ‘home’; medical and ancestry studies collide with more traditional understandings of group identity (Amish). Genetic and genomic information is increasingly used to identify groups, their local origin and particularities of their physiological function. There are multiple ways in which such knowledge can be and is made use of, by both, governmental and other institutions and the groups themselves or individual members. The consequences of such use are diverse.

The double session will consist in five presentations of about 20 minutes each and a one-hour panel and audience discussion on the use of genomics as a ‘tool’ for the endorsement of identity.

The aims of the double session are to bring together an interdisciplinary group of experts each of whom works on particular aspects of political and social struggles in which genomic ‘evidence’ is used, and to discuss the relationship between the form of information gained and the strategies employed by groups who use genomic testing techniques for their purposes.

Participants:

MA Ingrid Holme, PhD student, University of Exeter: ‘Sex Genetics and Personal Identity’
Professor Kwame Anthony Appiah, Princeton University: ‘Folk Biology and the Genetics of Race’
Jay Aronson, Carnegie Mellon University,
'Post Conviction DNA Testing in the American Criminal Justice System'
Professor Susan Lindee, University of Pennsylvania: ‘Provenance and the pedigree: The Pennsylvania Amish’
Professor Tudor Parfitt, University of London, SOAS: ‘Jewish Identities: The Gogodala in Papua New Guinea’
Dr phil. Christine Hauskeller, University of Exeter: ‘The Politics of Genomic Identity’

Multiple Paper Session:
Papers in this session:
The Politics of Genomic Identity
‘Folk Biology and the Genetics of Race’
Sex Genetics and Personal Identity
‘Provenance and the pedigree: The Pennsylvania Amish’
‘Jewish Identities: The Gogodala in Papua New Guinea’
Post Conviction DNA Testing in the American Criminal Justice System