Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
categorised and evaluated, genetics gets 'under the skin'. It thus (apparently)
separates itself from everyday forms of racial categorisation. Indeed, making
a virtue of this separation, Risch
et al
., argued that a 'color-blind approach
...
will lead to a disservice to minorities' (2002: 11). Their argument here
was that
ignoring
the possibility of group-level biological differences in the
name of 'political correctness' may be as harmful as falsely imputing them.
Third, both these moves rest upon and reproduce a seemingly common-
sense distinction between 'facts' (the domain of science and rationality) and
values (the domain of culture, politics, feeling and emotion). It's not hard
to see the rhetorical similarities with metaphorical mapping and numbering
discussed a few pages ago.
Are these three related lines of defence strong enough to convince?
Arguably not. Several sociologists of science have shown that recent research
into race and genes is simply unable to maintain a Maginot Line between
social and natural categories (see Key Sources and Further Reading at the
end of this topic). The fundamental difficulty is this: in order to identify
people whose genes might be distinctive by virtue of their descent from
once separate gene pools, scientists must
use categories to identify those people
at the outset which cannot be purely scientific ones
. Duana Fullwiley (2007), in her
ethnographic investigations into the pharmacogenetic research of a team
led by Professor Esteban Burchard (in California), illustrates this difficulty
well. Research subjects sampled for DNA were recruited using standard US
census categories and were asked questions about their biological prede-
cessors. When quizzed about the selection process relating to people who
self-identified as Caucasian, a member of the research team revealed that
'There was really no set limit in terms of their background
...
They could've
...
been Italian, German, Jewish (
) from anywhere' (ibid.: 20). In other words,
the category Caucasian, which did not come into currency in the United
States until the 1910s and 1920s (the era of state-led eugenics), potentially
lumps together people of widely different genetic backgrounds who hap-
pen to have a recent ancestor from Europe. It lacks granularity, and yet
attains an unwarranted concreteness by organising the analytical efforts of
laboratory scientists. Likewise, the category 'African American' potentially
conflates groups of subtly different genetic characteristics because it pays no
heed to the regional differences between African populations that go back
thousands of years. In short, even when the research subjects under scrutiny
get to 'self-identify' their biological provenance, they can only do so using a
menu of categories that, despite their aspirations, have no clearly delineated
'natural basis'.
DOWN AND DIRTY: GETTING IN TOUCH WITH 'REAL NATURE'?
The third and final case of nature's 'construction' that I want to consider
in some detail takes us back to 'external nature' of the sort discussed earlier
