Identity Politics and the New Genetics

Katharina Schramm is Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Social Anthropology at Martin-Luther-University Halle-Wittenberg and Research Associate at the Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology. Her publications include African Homecoming: Pan-African Ideology and Contested Heritage (2010) and  Remembering Violence: Anthropological Perspectives on Intergenerational Transmission (co-editor, 2009).

“This wide-ranging, international collection considers many of the practical, ethical and political questions raised by the proliferation of genetic research and testing around the world…Almost all of the chapters deal in a sophisticated way with questions about how ideas of identity, race, and kinship are being shaped by their interaction with genetic technologies and the way those technologies are being interpreted.”  ·  Contemporary Sociology. A Journal of Reviews“Overall, the book successfully highlights the complex and often contradictory nature of the relationship between politics and science…[It]offers an original contribution to debates on identity, race and genetics…The overall strength of the collection (as the editors argue) lies in its use of a range of rich and illuminating case studies from locations across the globe.”  ·  Ethnic and Racial Studies“This is an important and extremely timely collection that will inform ongoing and evolving discussions within the social sciences and beyond about the changing relationship between identity and genomics. It captures and contributes to an emerging moment in social science engagement with genomics and issues of identity and the politics of difference.”  ·  Sahra Gibbon, University College London

• List of Illustrations and TablesAcknowledgmentsIntroduction: Ideas in Motion: Making Sense of Identity After DNAKatharina Schramm, David Skinner, Richard RottenburgChapter 1. ‘Race’ as a Social Construction in GeneticsAndrew Smart, Richard Tutton, Paul Martin, George EllisonChapter 2. Mobile Identities and Fixed Categories: Forensic DNA and the Politics of Racialised DataDavid SkinnerChapter 3. Race, Kinship and the Ambivalence of IdentityPeter WadeChapter 4. Identity, DNA, and the State in Post-Dictatorship ArgentinaNoa VaismanChapter 5. ‘Do You Have Celtic, Jewish, Germanic Roots?’ – Applied Swiss History Before and After DNAMarianne SommerChapter 6. Irish DNA: Making Connections and Making Distinctions in Y-Chromosome Surname StudiesCatherine NashChapter 7. Genomics en route: Ancestry, Heritage, and the Politics of Identity Across the Black AtlanticKatharina SchrammChapter 8. Biotechnological Cults of Affliction? Race, Rationality, and Enchantment in Personal Genomic HistoriesStephan PalmiéNotes on ContributorsBibliographyIndex