Short Abstract

Genealogy communities are developing new practices and tools for making sense of genetic knowledge. We invite papers on these and other aspects of DTC testing and ask what are the implications of these developments? How do expectations of the future inform how people are navigating this terrain now?

Description

Over the last 10 years, direct-to-consumer (DTC) DNA testing has transferred access to genealogical information from state archives and family narratives to commercial databases, creating new genetic genealogy communities which are developing innovative practices for sharing and interpreting genetic data, renegotiating kinship through collective knowledge-making, and generating new forms of biological and social belonging.

This panel explores how DTC testing is configuring alternative futures (as well as reconfiguring accepted pasts) for kinship and identity. We examine how genetic genealogy communities navigate the shift from institutional to platform-based control over genealogical knowledge, respond to the ongoing instability of genetic interpretations, and develop practices outside of, or in resistance to, the commercialization of genetic data and its capacity to reveal surprises and family secrets.

As part of the challenges DNA matching presents to longstanding genealogical practices, communities must also adapt to platform changes, such as reconfiguration of family matching algorithms, or growth in reference populations which cause ethnic identifications to be added or deleted from profiles. Platforms which formerly concentrated on family tree building now incorporate health and trait prediction, while other companies are beginning to offer DTC testing for controversial applications such as talent/IQ prediction for existing children, or combining these with reproductive technologies to enable polygenic forecasting for pre-implantation embryos.

We invite contributions including (but not limited to) questions about:

- Ethical (and un-ethical) aspects, regulation of commercial DTC databases

- Morals, ethics and norms emerging within genetic genealogy communities

- DNA as an actant within webs of more-than-human relations

- Genetic genealogy as a citizen science

- The impact of expectations and imaginaries of greater genetic knowledge on the lived experience of reproduction, kinship, heredity and familial history

- Use of DTC by people with unknown parents for health and family identification

Contributors to the panel may also choose to be included in a potential special issue to follow.

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