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Paper short abstract:

The paper analyses connection between representations of human DNA and the idea of race (Rabinow, Rose 2006. Particular ethnographical analysis of Czech genomics and reproductive medicine field is concerned.

Paper long abstract:

Rethinking the human obsession with classifying the world, the proposed presentation is trying to point at the powerful consequences of these cognitive activities. In general, the paper focuses on knowledge/power processes of appropriation of the world through the creation of the social and cultural taxonomies. Nowadays one of the most powerful modern classifying idea ― idea of race — is turned around concepts like ethnicities, human populations, human variations, human genetic diversity, family tree, etc. The presentation is a sociological and anthropological conceptualisation and analysis of the representation of human DNA as the specific information about origin and variability of human populations above all. Taking advantage of interpretative and critical social theory (Rabinow, Rose, Foucault, Agamben, etc.), this paper examines the narrative concerning complementarity of sameness and difference in the production of knowledge within interpretation of various imaginations of DNA, genom. The connection between human DNA and the idea of race, like the main theme of distribution the sameness and difference, is critically analyses within broader area of contemporary forms of the biopower and biosociality: questions of race, reproductive medicine and genomic (Rabinow, Rose 2006).

Particular ethnographical analysis of Czech genomics and reproductive medicine field concerning the popular/emic representations of ethnic dimensions of DNA is concerned. Particularly observation of religious and scientific discourses mainly, interviews with genetics, priests, healers, IVF process actors as well are focused on.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper will draw on a recent research project in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to examine discourses of race and mestizaje as they appear in genomic science that focuses on "ancestry", human diversity and population genetics.

Paper long abstract:

This paper will draw on a recent research project in Brazil, Colombia and Mexico to examine discourses of race and mestizaje as they appear in genomic science that focuses on "ancestry", human diversity and population genetics. The paper explores how "race" is both reproduced and transformed - and what it means for "race" to be reproduced and transformed in a Latin American context, when the concept itself is so multivalent in that context. What is it exactly that is being reiterated and refigured?

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Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the dynamics between science and emerging political subjectivities in post-Apartheid South Africa. In order to discuss the political and analytical dimensions of race, it looks at the relationship between disciplinary histories and contemporary categorizations as well as the notion of descendant community vs. population.

Paper long abstract:

This paper seeks to explore the dynamics between science 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 from the early twentieth century onwards as part of the scientific projects of physical anthropology, anatomy and archaeology, descendant communities have frequently (though not always) embraced population genomics as a means of proving their claims to ancestral remains and collective identity. While physical anthropology in these debates is being criticized as race science, genetics is often viewed as a more neutral and, above all, beneficial discipline. However, the sampling strategies of contemporary population geneticists largely overlap with those of earlier disciplinary conventions.

In order to understand the different interpretations of the meaning of race and population in these debates as well as their impact on perceptions of citizenship and political subjectivity, I will look at two interrelated themes: firstly, at the relationship between disciplinary histories and contemporary categorizations and secondly, at the notion of descendant community vs. population. I will discuss how race is not a fixed variable in these debates but situationally produced and undone - often in surprising constellations.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper offers both theoretical discussion and ethnography on black experience of race in post-apartheid South Africa.

Paper long abstract:

The research upon which this paper is based seeks to understand how the black middle class in a South African city understand, define and experience race after apartheid. The work reflects on experiences of aversive racism in particular and hopes to show how blacks negotiate these experiences while attempting to achieve social mobility. The research thus far suggests that once employed, black South Africans continue to experience racial discrimination and find it difficult to advance regardless of affirmative action policies and practices. The paper asks whether this is because aversive racism is not acknowledged or fully understood in South Africa since most people are used to interrogations of blatant forms of social racism.

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Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how the concept of race has been applied and criticized in contemporary Brazilian anthropology. The implementation of Affirmative Action policies in Brazil has raised an intense debate in anthropology, in which the concept of race is being both questioned and reaffirmed.

Paper long abstract:

This paper aims to discuss how the concept of race has been applied and criticized in contemporary Brazilian anthropology. In the last decade, the implementation of Affirmative Action policies in public institutions in Brazil has raised an intense debate in the academic and political fields, in which the concepts of both race and culture are being questioned and reaffirmed. The positions involved in such a critical reframing vary from those that consider race as an analytical concept to those that apply the word when referring to the native point of view. On the one hand, there are anthropologists who refuse to employ the word race as an analytical concept and tend to see it as an ideological and indigenous concept, since the majority of Brazilians do not classify themselves "neatly" into blacks and whites. This is the main argument of those who oppose Affirmative Action policies, claiming that these are inadequate to the Brazilian reality and would foster racism in a society in which the definition of one's ethnic belonging is fluid. On the other hand, there are intellectuals who support Affirmative Action and employ race as an analytical concept, for at least three reasons: 1) race reveals inequalities that are not explained by the concepts of social class and ethnicity; 2) culture should not be thought of as static, but rather as a field of disputes and convergence of ideas; 3) the chromatic classification in Brazil alludes to race, revealing that Brazil is a racialized country.

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Paper short abstract:

Looking through the three lenses—history, science, and the impact of race on the everyday lives of people (racism), this project presents the myths and realities of race, namely that race in the United States: 1)Is a recent human invention, 2) is about culture, not biology and 3)Race and racism are embedded in our institutions and everyday life. Although the materials that make up this project are aimed at a lay audience (a traveling museum exhibit, a public website, and educational materials as noted above) they parallel and complement what educators will want students to understand and discuss about race in the classroom. How do we in the 21st century link together race, culture, and structural inequality? How do we as anthropologists explore the importance of race inside the discipline of anthropology and outside the academy? What exactly do we have to say about race?

Paper long abstract:

In 2001, the AAA launched the planning for a public education project that we ultimately called "Race: are we so different?" (See www.understandingrace.org for a listing of the national advisory board, many organizational collaborators and the sponsors; NSF and the Ford Foundation.) The project is designed as a museum exhibit, a robust interactive website, and educational materials to educate scholars, undergraduate and graduate students, K-12 teachers, K-12 students, and the adult public about issues surrounding "race" and human variation. Because most adults in the United States continue to hold some version of the idea that race is based on some essentialist notions of biology and that biology must explain at least some of the racial differences in behavior, economic status and disease, one major purpose of this project is to develop an effective educational program and curricular materials to discredit these widely-held myths. The project is intended to show how culture actually creates race over time in a dynamic and ever-changing way. Specifically, the education program looks at the origins of "race"; explains human biological diversity and the biological implications of race; considers the social and cultural construction of race; provides a cross-cultural perspective on "race"; and addresses the misconceptions of "race" and human biological diversity that result in racism. Research implications from this almost decade old project will be discussed. Content from the project has been seen by over a million people. Presenter will share findings about what is being learned; and what new research questions are being asked.

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