Teaching and Learning Guide for: Ethnographic approaches to race, genetics and genealogy
Authors: Tyler Katharine 
Published: July 2009

Author’s introduction

Over the last 20 years, there has been a technological advance and commercial boom in genetic technologies and projects. These developments include a renewed scientific interest in the biological status and genetic constitution of race. This aspect of genetic research is of interest to sociologists and others working in the field of race and ethnicity studies. While the consensus among sociologists is that race is a social construction with no biological foundations, innovations in genetic research have pushed sociologists and other social scientists to reflect upon the ways in which ideas of biology mediate everyday understandings of race. Anthropologists, cultural geographers and sociologists have begun to study the complex and ambivalent ways in which laypeople think about the biological and genetic constitution of racial identities. Central to this area of inquiry has been analysis of laypeople’s engagements with the new reproductive technologies, such as IVF. In addition, social scientists have begun to study laypeople’s uses of genealogical technologies that claim to trace family ancestries, including racial descent and ethnic origins. Ultimately, such studies enable a deeper understanding of the social construction of ‘race’, and in the course of so doing provide an important research avenue to challenge racism.

Author recommends

Wade, Peter 2002. Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. London: Pluto Press.

In this book, Peter Wade argues that anthropological studies of kinship provide a lens to think about how ideas of nature and culture mediate the formation of racial identities. Drawing upon studies from within anthropology, Wade contends that an increasing emphasis upon the ‘gene’ at the everyday level does not necessarily signify a growing genetic/biological determinism in laypeople’s conceptions of race and human nature. Rather, he suggests anthropological studies that explore the biological and social ‘origins’ of persons can be deployed to unpack ‘everyday’ understandings of the relationship between ideas of ‘race’, ‘nature’ and ‘culture’. In his review of anthropological approaches to the study of ‘race’, Wade (2002, 15) writes that, ‘People…move between the biological and the social, the given and the developing, the permanent and the changeable, in ways that blur the boundary between them’.

Skinner, D. 2006. ‘Racialized Futures: Biologism and the Changing Politics of Identity.’Social Studies of Science 36: 459–88.

In this paper, David Skinner examines sociologists’ and scientists’ reflections on the social and ethical implications of recent research on race and genetics. He argues research on race and genetics has led to both utopian and dystopian visions of the future: ‘one in which scientific racism is revived, the other in which science finally abolishes race thinking’. Skinner contends that detailed critical attention needs to be paid to existing notions of relatedness, personhood and nature/culture, to understand the implication of genetic science on racial thinking.

Franklin, S. and S. Mckinnon (eds) 2001. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.

This book provides a collection of articles that represent the diversity of perspectives that constitute the ‘new kinship studies’ within anthropology. Chapters by Kath Weston, Charis Thompson and Signe Howell focus explicitly upon how ideas of biology, blood and culture mediate the formation of racial identities within everyday and popular discourses. In this vein, Thompson explores how kinship ideologies become reconfigured by people who take‐up the opportunities offered by the new reproductive technologies, for example, ova and sperm donation. In so doing, Thompson’s study illuminates the ways in which these recent clinical practices have opened a space for anthropologists to examine how ideas about biogenetic and social relatedness within families and across generations become intersected with ideas about the inheritance of ethnic and racial identities.

Wade, Peter (ed.) 2007. Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics. Oxford: Berghahn, New York.

This book brings together a collection of essays written by scholars who worked collaboratively for 3 years exploring everyday articulations of race, ethnicity and genetics across Europe in the face of innovations in genetic science. The book draws upon a rich array of anthropological studies of ‘assisted reproduction, transnational adoption, mixed‐race families, Basque identity politics and post‐Soviet nation‐building’ to explore how ideas of race, ethnicity, nation and nature are lived and experienced by people within differing European social contexts.

Tyler, Katharine, 2009. ‘Whiteness Studies and Laypeople's Engagements with Race and Genetics.’New Genetics and Society 28 (1): 36–48.

In this paper, Tyler proposes a research strategy for examining laypeople’s thoughts and reflections on innovations in the science of race and genetics. While some sociologists have shown a reluctance to engage in such discussions, Tyler argues that social scientists need to take such views seriously. To do this, the paper brings together an anthropological approach to the study of scientific literacy and recent scholarship in the field of Whiteness studies. The combining of these literatures raises a set of interesting and sometimes uncomfortable questions about the ways in which social scientists and research participants contribute to the reproduction of White power and dominance in Western societies.

Online materials

‘Ten commandments’ of race and genetics issued, Science in Society

http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn14345‐ten‐commandments‐of‐race‐and‐genetics‐issued.html

This website describes 10 ‘guiding principles’ for the scientific community in relation to research on race and genetics. These principles were written by a multidisciplinary group including geneticists, psychologists, historians and philosophers. At the end of the principles are reflections from readers of the New Scientist.

Motherland: A Genetic Journey, BBC Documentary, Director Archie Baron; Producer Tabitha Jackson

http://www.rootsforreal.com/motherland_en.php

The programme analysed the DNA of 228 Black African Caribbean descent men and women living in the United Kingdom. The research participants were selected on the criteria that they had two generations of paternal and maternal grandparents that were of Black African Caribbean descent. Twenty‐six percent of the Black male participants were told that their Y chromosome, inherited through the male line, traced them back to a European ancestor. The tests also showed that mitochondria DNA that is inherited through the maternal line affiliated many of the research participants with ancestors from African tribal groups. The documentary follows the journeys of three research participants who used their newly acquired genetic kinship to interrogate either their Black/African or their White/European ancestry, depending on which aspect of their identity was important to them. In this regard, the viewer is left with the impression that an individual’s DNA can be objectively coded, separated and divided into its racially distinct component parts. However, when the research participants embarked on their journeys to forgotten African and Caribbean ancestral home‐places, they unexpectedly discovered the entanglement of White and Black people’s colonial histories and origins. In this way, knowledge of genetic ancestry when combined with social relationships and history can be put to work to undermine the idea of racially pure lines of descent within families.

‘Roots for Real, your ancestry discovered’

http://www.rootsforreal.com/?gclid=CNbs86LYu5kCFQ00QwodliIP6A

‘Roots for Real’ is a commercial organisation that offers a DNA tracing service, as used in the BBC programme, Motherland, to the general public. Deploying an ‘at home saliva test’, this service promises to analyse individual’s maternal and paternal ancestry, and match it with the company’s database of samples from all over the world. A map is sent to the genealogist (i.e. the client) estimating the location of the client’s ancestral origins. The website includes links to testimonies from people who have used this site, press coverage of this service and a description of ‘ancient migrations’.

‘African American Lives 2’

http://www.pbs.org/wnet/aalives/

This website accompanies Professor Henry Louis Gates, Jr, television series that traced famous African American people’s ancestries back to slave times. The research deploys the same kinds of genealogical techniques used in the Motherland experiment, as well as archival and historical research. Gates’ guests include Tina Turney, Morgan Freeman and Maya Angelou. The website provides information about the television series, video clips from the series, including interviews with famous African Americans, background on the scientific and scholastic research, and resources for people to learn more about their own family history and genealogy.

‘Oxford Ancestors Ltd’

http://www.oxfordancestors.com/

Oxford Ancestors was the first provider of DNA‐based services in the UK. The founder is Professor Bryan Sykes, a geneticist at Oxford University. Through the use of a saliva test, Sykes claims to be able to trace an individual’s European maternal ancestry back to one of seven ‘clan mothers’, who are ultimately all related to ‘Mitochondrial Eve’ the original mother. Catherine Nash has written extensively about the gendered and ethnic meanings embedded within the work of Bryan Sykes in the following article: Nash, C. 2004 ‘Genetic Kinship.’Cultural Studies 18: 1–33.

Sample syllabus

Overview of the course

This course introduces students to the contemporary debates in the sociological and anthropological study of race, ethnicity and racism. Historical material, social theories and ethnographic studies will be used to illustrate the social construction of race and ethnicity and the reproduction of racial power in western societies.

Lecture 1 – Meanings of race and ethnicity

What is race? What is ethnicity? How do race and ethnicity relate to racism? The era post‐1945, it has been argued, marked a shift from ‘biological racism’ to ‘cultural racism’ in which culture, rather than biology, forms the reference point for defining identities previously seen as racial. We consider to what extent such a shift has actually taken place. We shall also examine the ways in which this shift corresponds with a change in social policy and academic debates from the use of the term ‘race’ to ‘ethnicity’.

Anthias, F. and Yuval‐Davis 1992. Racialised Boundaries. Routledge.

Barker, M. 1981. The New Racism: Conservatives and the Ideology of the Tribe. Junction Books.

Goldberg, D. T. 1993. Racist Culture: Philosophy and the Politics of Meaning. Blackwells.

Malik, K. 1996. The Meaning of Race. New York University Press.

Wade, P. 2002. Race, Nature and Culture. Pluto Press.

Post‐race: The end of race?

Lecture 10 – Interracial Identities

With a marked rise in the number of children of mixed parentage, there is a growing body of literature that explores the experiences and identities of the members of interracial families. This body of literature challenges simplistic understandings of ‘race’, nation and culture through an interrogation of what it means to be the parent of mixed‐race children and/or to grow up and claim a ‘mixed’ identity.

Ali, S. 2003. Mixed‐Race, Post‐Race. Berg.

Alibhai‐Brown, Yasmin 2001. Mixed Feelings: The Complex Lives of Mixed‐Race Britons. The Women’s Press.

Brah, A. and Coombes, A. 2000. Hybridity and its Discontents. Politics, Science and Culture. Routledge (see Part 1 of this book titled ‘Miscegenation and Racial Purity’ that include essays by Stoler, Labanyi, Phoenix and Owen, Treacher).

Frankenberg, R. 1993. White Women, Race Matters: The Social Construction of Whiteness. Routledge (chapter 5).

Howell, S. 2001. ‘Self‐Conscious Kinship: Some Contested Values in Norwegian Transnational Adoption’, in Franklin, S. and Mckinnon, S. (eds), Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Duke University Press.

Ifekwunigwe, J. 1999. Scattered Belongings: Cultural Paradoxes of ‘Race’, Nation and Gender. Routledge.

Parker, D. and Song, M. 2001. Rethinking ‘Mixed Race’. Pluto Press.

Root, M. (eds) 1992. Racially Mixed People in America. Sage.

Tizard, B. and Ann Phoenix 1993. Black White or Mixed‐Race? Race and Racism in the Lives of Young People of Mixed Parentage. New York: Routledge.

Twine, F. W. 2000. ‘Bearing Blackness in Britain: The Meaning of Racial Difference for White Birth Mothers of African‐Descent Children.’ Pp. 76–108 in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, edited by H. Ragone and F. W. Twine. Routledge.

Tyler, K. 2005. ‘The Genealogical Imagination: The Inheritance of Interracial Identities.’The Sociological Review 53 (3): 475–94.

Wilson, A. 1987. Mixed Race Children: A Study of Identity. Allen and Unwin.

Zack, N. (ed). American Mixed‐Race: The Culture of Microdiversity. Rowman and Littlefield Pub.

Lecture 12 – Race, genealogy and genetics

Recent research into human genetics has probed the relationship between human characteristics and the meaning of racial difference. Some social critics have warned that such research will heighten racist attitudes, whereas others argue that the new genetic research opens the way to a post‐racial future. In this lecture, we shall examine this debate and in doing so inquire into the interpretations that laypersons might hold of the relationship between race, genetics and human nature.

Brodwin, P. 2004. ‘Genetics, Identity and the Anthropology of Essentialism.’ Pp. 116‐122 in Mixed Race Studies: A Reader, edited by J. O. Ifekwunigwe. London: Routledge.

Condit, C. M, et al. 2002. ‘Lay Understandings of the Relationship Between Race and Genetics: Development of a Collectivized Knowledge Through Shared Discourse.’Public Understandings of Science 2: 373–87.

Cross, K. 2001. ‘Framing Whiteness: The human Genome Diversity Project (As Seen on TV).’Science as Culture 10 (3).

Essed, P. and D. T. Goldberg 2002. ‘Cloning Cultures: The Social Injustices of Sameness.’Ethnic and Racial Studies 25 (6).

Franklin, S. and Ragone, H. 1998. Reproducing Reproduction: Kinship, Power and Technological Innovation. University of Pennsylvania Press.

Franklin, S. and Mckinnon, S. 2001. Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies. Duke University Press.

Gilroy, P. 2000. Between Camps: Nations, Cultures and the Allure of Race. Penguin.

Haraway, D. 2000. ‘Deanimations: Maps and Portraits of Life Itself.’ in Hybridity and its Discontents. Politics, Science and Culture, edited by A. Brah and A. Coombes. Routledge.

Inhorn, M. C. 2000. ‘Missing Motherhood: Infertility, Technology, and Poverty in Egyptian Women’s Lives.’ in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, edited by H. Ragone and F. W. Twine. Routledge.

Marks, J. 2001. ‘We’re Going to Tell These People Who They Really Are,’ in Relative values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, edited by S. Franklin and S. Mckinnon (eds). Duke University Press.

Moore, D., Kosek, J and Pandian, A. 2003. Race, Nature and the Politics of Difference. Duke University Press.

Nash, C. 2002. ‘Genealogical Identities.’Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 20.

Nash, C. 2004. Genetic Kinship. Cultural Studies 18: 1–33.

Palsson, G and Haroardottir, K. E. 2002. ‘For Whom the Cell Tolls.’Current Anthropology 43 (2).

Reardon, J. 2001. ‘The Human Genome Diversity Project: A Case Study in Coproduction.’Social Studies of Science 31 (3).

Ragone, H. 2000. ‘Of Likeness and Difference: How Race is Being Transfigured by Gestational Surrogacy.’ in Ideologies and Technologies of Motherhood: Race, Class, Sexuality, Nationalism, edited by H. Ragone and F. W. Twine. Routledge.

Steinberg, D. L. 2000. “Reading Genes/Writing Nation: Reith, ‘Race’ and the Writings of Geneticist Steve Jones.” in Hybridity and Its Discontents. Politics, Science and Culture, edited by A. Brah and A. Coombes. Routledge.

Skinner, D. 2006. ‘Racialized Futures: Biologism and the Changing Politics of Identity.’Social Studies of Science 36: 459–88.

Skinner, D. 2007. “Groundhog Day? The Strange Case of Sociology, Race and ‘Science’.”Sociology 41: 931–44.

Thompson, C. 2001. ‘Strategic Naturalising: Kinship in an Infertility Clinic.’ in Relative Values: Reconfiguring Kinship Studies, edited by S. Franklin and S. Mckinnon. Duke University Press.

Tyler, K. 2007b. “Race, Genetics and Inheritance: Reflections Upon the Birth of ‘Black’ Twins to a ‘White’ IVF Mother.” Pp. 33–51 in Race, Ethnicity and Nation: Perspectives from Kinship and Genetics, edited by Peter Wade. Berghahn Books.

Tyler, K. 2009. ‘Whiteness Studies and Laypeople’s Engagements with Race and Genetics.’New Genetics and Society, 28 (1): 35–48.

Tyler, K. 2008. ‘Ethnographic Approaches to Race, Genetics and Genealogy.’Sociology Compass, 2 (6): 1860–77.

Wade, P. 2002. Race, Nature and Culture: An Anthropological Perspective. Pluto Press.

Wailoo, K. 2003 ‘Inventing the Heterozygote: Molecular Biology, Racial Identity and the Narrative of Sickle‐Cell Disease, Tay‐Sachs and Cystic Fibrosis.’ in Race, Nature and the Politics of Difference, edited by D. Moore, J. Kosek and A. Pandian. Duke University Press.

Wiegman, R. 2003. ‘Intimate Publics: Race, Property, and Personhood.’ in Race, Nature and the Politics of Difference, edited by D. Moore, J. Kosek and A. Pandian. Duke University Press.