{"id":23296,"date":"2012-05-22T13:39:41","date_gmt":"2012-05-22T13:39:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=23296"},"modified":"2012-05-22T17:51:57","modified_gmt":"2012-05-22T17:51:57","slug":"sequencing-the-trellis-the-production-of-race-in-the-new-human-genomics","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=23296","title":{"rendered":"Sequencing the Trellis: The Production of Race in the New Human Genomics"},"content":{"rendered":"

Sequencing the Trellis: The Production of Race in the New Human Genomics<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Brown University
\nDecember 2003
\n185 pages<\/p>\n

Brady Dunklee<\/a><\/strong>, Executive Director
\nATRAVES US<\/em><\/p>\n

In partial completion of the requirements for honors.<\/em><\/p>\n

Note on the Title: \u201cTrellis\u201d refers to an analogy that NHGRI director Francis Collins uses to describe race and human evolution, emphasizing mixture between \u201craces,\u201d in opposition to evolutionary trees which emphasize divergence. \u201cSequencing\u201d refers to the main activity of recent genomic research, and is meant to suggest both this activity and the differentiation of groups of people, which is the subject of this thesis.<\/em><\/p>\n

Human genomic science has emerged in the past decade as a powerful new biological field, combining molecular and population genetics with advanced information technologies, allowing DNA sequencing and analysis in a rapid, high throughput fashion. In addition to producing a vast quantity of scientific data, the Human Genome Project and other efforts in human genomics have produced claims about the social implications of their work. The result has been a complex expert discourse on the nature of the human.<\/p>\n

A particularly rich subset of this discourse has addressed the meanings, use and reality of race and ethnicity in light of new genomic knowledge. A great variety of positions on racial and ethnic difference have been put forth, best known of which is the contention that race is biologically meaningless.<\/p>\n

This thesis shows that this claim is not the whole story. Genomic discourse has, since its beginnings, deployed and produced race in a constant, if variegated manner. A \u201ctechnology of difference\u201d has been produced, a set of terms, meanings, and ways in which knowledge is structured and authorized, whose collective action is to differentiate people racially and ethnically.<\/p>\n

This thesis examines this technology of difference, showing that genomics is in fact making race, and demonstrating some of the ways in which it does so. My approach is an analysis of discourse, which addresses terminology, formal configurations and epistemology in the literatures produced by genomic scientists. The dominant characteristic in this discourse is instability. Meanings, forms, and claims shift and change on a variety of levels.<\/p>\n

This thesis shows that surprising patterns can be seen in this instability, and that instability is itself a constitutive factor giving strength and cohesion to the genomic production of human racial and ethnic difference.<\/p>\n

I suggest, further, that now is a crucial time for interventions to be made in the genomics of human difference. Those who want an end to race, or who want positive, livable transformations of race, can find both opportunity and danger in these new differentiations.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n