Paper short abstract:

In the paper, I bring to attention the tensions, conflicts and contradictions that the use of anthropometry in GenomeIndia project engenders and ask in what ways we can understand continuities within knowledge systems that discount epistemic corruption while claiming integrity simultaneously.

Paper long abstract:

Historically, human variation studies have been a site of attraction for researchers of many disciplinary hues and significant contestations. In contemporary times, the science of population genetics has fully embraced DNA and genomics as a mode of knowledge production. The tools and techniques of physical anthropology, including anthropometry, typology, craniology, and biochemical indexes, are now replaced by epistemic objects like ‘frequencies of alleles’ and ‘single nucleotide polymorphisms’. The erstwhile methods employed by social sciences to study human variation have now ceased to provide trusted knowledge. The paradigmatic shift from old race science to population genetics is thus seemingly complete. However, scholars have argued that the concepts and practices of population genetic studies of human variation overlap and exhibit continuities. In this paper, I draw on my ongoing fieldwork of the GenomeIndia project (GIP), which aims to create a catalogue of genetic variations in Indians through whole genome sequencing of 10,000 representative individuals. Nevertheless, apart from the whole genome sequencing and genomic analyses, the study individuals had to undergo several blood and anthropometric tests. If the methods of anthropometry lack integrity and hence are brimmed with epistemic corruption, and genomics alone has the power to arbitrate truth, it is perplexing why an ambitious national project is engaging with multiple epistemic devices. In the paper, I bring to attention the tensions, conflicts and contradictions that the use of anthropometry in GIP engenders and ask in what ways we can understand continuities within knowledge systems that discount epistemic corruption while claiming integrity simultaneously.