Decoding Race and Human Difference in a Genomic Age

Abstract

jenny reardon is Assistant Research Professor of Women's Studies and Scholar in Genome Sciences and Policy at Duke University. In the academic year 2004-2005 she will be a Scholar in Residence at the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women at Brown University. Her book Race to the Finish: Identity and Governance in an Age of Genomics is forthcoming with Princeton University Press in December of 2004.

Handboeken aardrijkskunde en de reproductie van een racistisch en etnocentrisch wereldbeeld bij Vlaamse jongeren

“…As such, the present use of these anthropometric classifications entails the acceptance and reproduction of racist ideas of nineteenth century anthropologists. As has been indicated already by the 1977 textbook cited at the end of section 2.3, it is clear that the genetic variability between people cannot be reduced to a limited number of races, sub-races and mixed races (Reardon, 2004). School geography should remove all references to the biological meaning of race and replace it with a refutation of the racial classifications based on the progress made in genetics and biochemistry (cf.…”

Finding the global in the local

“…At the same time, that research itself tended to naturalize and reify those assumptions by showing that, in many cases, genetic differences could indeed be found between the populations so defined. While the precise relationship of these genetic differences to other forms of racial, ethnic or geographical difference continued to be debated, the circular reasoning underlying much of that research went largely unremarked, thereby helping to sediment assumptions that racial and ethnic differences are at least partly rooted in biology (see, inter alia, Bangham, 2015;Gannet, 2001Gannet, , 2003Gannet and Griesemer 2004;Gormley, 2009;Lipphardt, 2014;Marks, 2012;Reardon, 2004Reardon, , 2005Smocovitis, 2012).…”

Race, post‐genomic science and good intentions: from racial science to anti‐racism?

“…This is not to say that there has been no engagement as such between social scientists and scientists working on questions about race. During the past decade we have seen growing bodies of literature that explore the ways in which post‐genomic research in the sciences has produced, or is in the process of producing, new understandings of race (Braun ; Condit ; El‐Haj ; Fausto‐Sterling ; Reardon ). It is also clear that a number of scholars have begun to address the implications of genomics for how we study racialized inequalities, social theory and related fields (Hochschild, Weaver and Burch ; Meloni ).…”