Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.

"Genetic Politics explores the history of eugenics and the rise of contemporary genomics, identifying continuities and changes between the past and the present. The authors reject the two extreme positions that human genetics are either fatally corrupted by, or utterly immune from, eugenic influence. They argue that today's forms of genetic screening are far from equivalent to the eugenics of the past, but eugenics cannot simply be dismissed as bad science, or the product of totalitarian regimes, for its values and practices continue to shape genetics today."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The promise of genetic engineering in the early 1970s to profoundly reshape the living world activated a variety of social interests in its future promotion and control. With public safety, gene patents, and the future of genetic research at stake, a wide range of interest groups competed for control over this powerful new technology. In this comparative study of the development of regulatory policy for genetic engineering in the United States and the United Kingdom, Susan Wright analyzes government responses to the struggles among corporations, scientists, universities, trade unions, and public interest groups over regulating this new field. Drawing on archival materials, government records, and interviews with industry executives, politicians, scientists, trade unionists, and others on both sides of the Atlantic, Molecular Politics provides a comprehensive account of a crucial set of policy decisions and explores their implications for the political economy of science. By combining methods from political science and the history of science, Wright advances a provocative interpretation of the evolution of genetic engineering policy and makes a major contribution to science and public policy studies.

It was through control of the shattering of wild seeds that humans first domesticated plants. Now control over those very plants threatens to shatter the world's food supply, as loss of genetic diversity sets the stage for widespread hunger. Large-scale agriculture has come to favor uniformity in food crops. More than 7,000 U.S. apple varieties once grew in American orchards; 6,000 of them are no longer available. Every broccoli variety offered through seed catalogs in 1900 has now disappeared. As the international genetics supply industry absorbs seed companies—with nearly one thousand takeovers since 1970—this trend toward uniformity seems likely to continue; and as third world agriculture is brought in line with international business interests, the gene pools of humanity's most basic foods are threatened. The consequences are more than culinary. Without the genetic diversity from which farmers traditionally breed for resistance to diseases, crops are more susceptible to the spread of pestilence. Tragedies like the Irish Potato Famine may be thought of today as ancient history; yet the U.S. corn blight of 1970 shows that technologically based agribusiness is a breeding ground for disaster. Shattering reviews the development of genetic diversity over 10,000 years of human agriculture, then exposes its loss in our lifetime at the hands of political and economic forces. The possibility of crisis is real; this book shows that it may not be too late to avert it.

An exploration of the role that special interest groups play in modern democratic politics.

A groundbreaking analysis of how the genomic revolution is transforming American society and creating new social divisions - some along racial lines - that promise to fundamentally shape American politics for years to come.The emergence of genomic science in the last quarter century has revolutionized medicine, the justice system, and our very understanding of who we are. We use genomics to determine guilt and exonerate the convicted; devise new medicines; test embryos; and discover our ethnic and national roots. Onemight think that, given these advances, most would favor the availability of genomic tools. Yet as Jennifer Hochschild explains in Genomic Politics , the uses of genomic science are both politically charged and hotly contested.The political divisions around genomics do not follow the usual left-right ideological divides that dominate most of American politics. Through four controversial innovations resulting from genomic science - genetically modified medicines that target African-Americans, who are demographically moresusceptible to heart disease; the use of DNA evidence in the criminal justice system; the current ancestry craze; and the use of genetic tests in prenatal exams - Hochschild reveals how the phenomenon is polarizing America in novel ways. Advocates of genomic science argue that these applicationswill make life better, but their opponents respond by pointing out the potential for misuse - from racial profiling to "selecting out" fetuses that gene tests show to have conditions like Down's Syndrome. Hochschild's central message is that the divide hinges on answers to two questions: Howsignificant are genetic factors in explaining human traits and behaviors? And what is the right balance between risk acceptance and risk avoidance for a society grappling with innovations arising from genomic science? A deeply researched and original analysis of the politics surrounding one of thesignal issues of our times, this is essential reading for anyone interested in how the genetics revolution is reshaping society.

Racial and ethnic categories have appeared in recent scientific work in novel ways and in relation to a variety of disciplines: medicine, forensics, population genetics and also developments in popular genealogy. Once again, biology is foregrounded in the discussion of human identity. Of particular importance is the preoccupation with origins and personal discovery and the increasing use of racial and ethnic categories in social policy. This new genetic knowledge, expressed in technology and practice, has the potential to disrupt how race and ethnicity are debated, managed and lived. As such, this volume investigates the ways in which existing social categories are both maintained and transformed at the intersection of the natural (sciences) and the cultural (politics). The contributors include medical researchers, anthropologists, historians of science and sociologists of race relations; together, they explore the new and challenging landscape where biology becomes the stuff of identity.