Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
Research output: Contribution to Journal/Magazine › Journal article › peer-review
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TY - JOUR
T1 - Re-thinking nature-culture : anthropology and the new genetics.
AU - Franklin, Sarah
PY - 2003/3
Y1 - 2003/3
N2 - This article explores the implications of 'the new genetics' for anthropology as questions of articulation, connection, and relation ndash; or as the production of difference. Using Marilyn Strathern's model of merographic connection, and drawing on recent ethnographic work on the new genetics, including my own, the question of what kinds of connections and relations are being forged through emergent forms of genetic information is critically explored both empirically and theoretically. In particular, the theme of a genetic 'gap', between 'objective' genetic facts and socially-forged identities and categorizations, provides the occasion to contrast different ethnographic and theoretical models of the social meaning of DNA. I argue that the ways in which genetic information is always partial - in both senses, of being already invested with presumptions and always incomplete - have consequences for how genetic connections are formed, and genetic relationships are understood. The desire to extract 'clear' biological messages from genes conflicts with the desire to instruct, and alter, them, recapitulating a familiar hybridity at the heart of English kinship thinking - that our biology is both made and bred.
AB - This article explores the implications of 'the new genetics' for anthropology as questions of articulation, connection, and relation ndash; or as the production of difference. Using Marilyn Strathern's model of merographic connection, and drawing on recent ethnographic work on the new genetics, including my own, the question of what kinds of connections and relations are being forged through emergent forms of genetic information is critically explored both empirically and theoretically. In particular, the theme of a genetic 'gap', between 'objective' genetic facts and socially-forged identities and categorizations, provides the occasion to contrast different ethnographic and theoretical models of the social meaning of DNA. I argue that the ways in which genetic information is always partial - in both senses, of being already invested with presumptions and always incomplete - have consequences for how genetic connections are formed, and genetic relationships are understood. The desire to extract 'clear' biological messages from genes conflicts with the desire to instruct, and alter, them, recapitulating a familiar hybridity at the heart of English kinship thinking - that our biology is both made and bred.
KW - genetic identity • human embryos • kinship • merography • nature-culture debates
U2 - 10.1177/1463499603003001752
DO - 10.1177/1463499603003001752
M3 - Journal article
VL - 3
SP - 65
EP - 85
JO - Anthropological Theory
JF - Anthropological Theory
SN - 1741-2641
IS - 1
ER -