Paper short abstract:

The paper explores the dynamics between genomics and political subjectivities in South Africa. It looks at the relationship between disciplinary histories and present categorizations; the notion of descendant community vs. population; the repositioning of South African science in a global field.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the dynamics between practices of genomics and emerging political subjectivities in post-Apartheid South Africa, a society with a long and highly contested history of race-based scientific sampling and typology.

In the wake of recent demands for the return of human remains that had been collected as part of the scientific projects of physical anthropology, anatomy and archaeology, descendant communities have frequently embraced population genomics as a means of proving their claims. While physical anthropology in these debates is being criticized as 'race science', genetics is viewed as a more neutral and beneficial discipline. However, the sampling strategies of contemporary population geneticists largely overlap with those of earlier disciplinary conventions.

In order to understand the interpretations of the meaning of race and population in these debates as well as their impact on perceptions of political subjectivity, I will look at three interrelated themes: firstly, at the relationship between disciplinary histories and contemporary categorizations; secondly, at the notion of 'descendant community' vs. population; and thirdly, at the repositioning of South African science as a global player in the much wider field of bio-mining for genomic diversity.