Population genetics and belonging : a cultural analysis of genetic ancestry

244 Pages·2018·2.01 MB·English

by  Oikkonen

Population Genetics and Belonging
A Cultural Analysis of Genetic Ancestry
VENLA OIKKONEN
Population Genetics and Belonging
Venla Oikkonen
Population Genetics
and Belonging
A Cultural Analysis of Genetic
Ancestry
Venla Oikkonen
Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies
University of Helsinki
Helsinki, Finland
ISBN 978-3-319-62880-6 ISBN 978-3-319-62881-3 (eBook)
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62881-3
Library of Congress Control Number: 2017948382
© The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s) 2018
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Acknowledgments
This book is an outcome of my postdoctoral project, “The Politics of
Belonging: National Narrative in the Genomic Age” (2011–2016). The
project was funded by a three-year Academy of Finland Postdoctoral
Researcher’s grant (grant decision number 256997) and Kone Foundation’s
postdoctoral research grant. I finished the book manuscript while work-
ing as a research fellow at Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies. I
thank the Academy of Finland, the Kone Foundation, and the Collegium
for making it possible to engage in a multiyear project—a true privilege
in today’s fast-paced academic world.
Part of the research was conducted during several research visits to the
Centre for Gender and Women’s Studies at Lancaster University. I pre-
sented very early versions of some of the analyses during my visits and
received insightful and helpful comments. Thank you Maureen McNeil,
Celia Roberts, Lucy Suchman, Anne-Marie Fortier, and all you wonder-
ful people. Special thanks to Maureen for hospitality and intellectual gen-
erosity and for introducing me to the Lake District.
Most of the book was researched and written while I worked in the
Gender Studies unit at the University of Helsinki. Warm thanks go to my
gender studies colleagues, many of whom I have known for years. Thank
you Johanna Kantola, Marjaana Jauhola, Heini Kinnunen, Aino-Maija
Hiltunen, Marjut Jyrkinen, and all of you.
v
vi Acknowledgments
This book was inspired by discussions with Finnish Science and
Technology Studies scholars working on related topics. I want to thank
Karoliina Snell, Heta Tarkkala, and Aaro Tupasela for their inspiration
and for believing that it makes sense to approach population genetics
from a cultural studies viewpoint. Very special thanks go to Mianna
Meskus, who read drafts and pushed me to rethink my concepts and
refine my arguments. Thanks also to Hanna Pihkola for numerous inspir-
ing discussions on everything related to science and technology during
our Sunday morning walks to yoga class.
My colleagues at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Studies have
been absolutely wonderful and supportive. Thank you (in no particular
order) Katja Ritari, Elina Hartikainen, Josephine Hoegaerts, Monika
Krause, Barbie Zelizer, Ann Phoenix, Florencia Quesada, Mike Schmidli,
Henning Trüper, Ilkka Lindstedt, Minna Palander-Collin, Maija
Väätämöinen, and all of you for making sure there was always enough
laughter and intellectual debate around. Also, thank you Taru Lilja for
sorting out some very messy references.
As always, particularly heartfelt thanks go to family, parents, and
friends, and especially to those nearest and dearest: Joseph Flanagan and
Liam and Fiona. Thank you. You made this book possible.
* * *
Some of the chapters draw on my previously published work. Chapter
2 builds on “Mitochondrial Eve and the Affective Politics of Human
Ancestry,” published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society
40.3 (2015): 747–772. Parts of Chaps. 3 and 4 develop analysis initially
published in “Kennewick Man and the Evolutionary Origins of the
Nation” in Journal of American Studies 48.1 (2014): 275–290. I thank the
University of Chicago Press and Cambridge University Press for permis-
sion to include the work here.
Contents
1 Studying Population Genetics and Belonging 1
2 Mitochondrial Eve and the Affective Politics of Scientific
Technologies 23
3 Imagining Origins Through Ancient Human DNA 73
4 Evolutionary Nostalgia and the Temporality of Belonging 131
5 Genetic Communities and the Boundaries of Belonging 173
6 Reflections on Methodology and Biotechnological
Change 221
Index 231
vii
1
Studying Population Genetics
and Belonging
In the past 20 years, a number of biotechnological practices have emerged
around the field known as “human population genetics.” Transnationally
framed scientific initiatives such as the Genographic Project or the
HapMap Project have sought to identify genetic variation across world
populations. Ancient human remains are increasingly subjected to DNA
analysis to gain knowledge about human prehistory. Commercial genetic
ancestry tests are marketed widely as a way of discovering our personal
evolutionary roots. Nation-states have established their own genetic proj-
ects to identify molecular-level variation within the national population.
A growing number of biobanks are being launched to facilitate the devel-
opment of what is hoped to become personalized medicine. Pharmaceutical
drugs are marketed to particular racialized groups based on the assump-
tion that populations respond differently to pharmaceutical substances.
Criminal investigations are using DNA in the hope of identifying the
ethnic background of the suspect who left their DNA at the crime scene.
These diverse population genetic practices shape human lives and societ-
ies on manifold levels, including personal, communal, institutional, eco-
nomic, national, and transnational spheres of social organization and
existence.
© The Author(s) 2018 1
V. Oikkonen, Population Genetics and Belonging,
DOI 10.1007/978-3-319-62881-3_1
2 1 Studying Population Genetics and Belonging
What is particularly striking about these biotechnological practices is
the multiple ways in which they invoke emotions or become entangled
with political questions. For example, the use of forensic DNA analysis and
forensic genetic databases in criminal investigation may support a politics
of surveillance and fear; commercial genetic ancestry tests may generate
powerful emotional experiences of rootedness and exciting discovery; and
the genetic analysis of ancient human remains may appear as serving a
shared need to trace the footsteps of early humans, and thus as ideologically
neutral. How does population genetics yield such a range of biotechnologi-
cal practices? How can it be mobilized to enact mutually conflicting social,
cultural, and epistemic projects? Why does population genetics become
integrated so easily into mutually contradictory narratives of belonging,
and why tensions between those narratives seldom attract attention?
My book addresses these questions in the context of nonmedical popu-
lation genetics, that is, population genetic research and practices that seek
to understand human evolutionary ancestry. The book focuses on an
issue at the heart of nonmedical population genetics: belonging. Population
genetics is about establishing connection between modern humans and
prehistoric populations. By tracing the inheritance and gradual mutation
of ancestral molecular structures—particular mitochondrial or
Y-chromosome haplogroups, for example—population genetics seeks to
locate geographic sites of origins, foundational moments of prehistoric
migration, or events that led to the divergence of human populations. In
doing so, population genetics produces roots, ties, and belonging.
Furthermore, population genetics is about measuring variation among
modern populations. By identifying, for example, single nucleotide poly-
morphisms (SNPs; pronounced “snips”)—that is, specific loci in the
human genome where people vary—population genetics seeks to place
modern human populations within the wider patterns of human evolu-
tion. While we all belong to the rest of the natural world through our
genetic roots, modern human populations belong differently to specific
geographic sites or evolutionary landscapes. Likewise, some populations
emerge as more closely connected to one another than others. Seen from
this vantage point, population genetics produces temporally and geograph-
ically organized webs of belonging. Yet, as the range of practices drawing on
population genetics demonstrates, this web of belonging is ontologically
Situating the Book 3
multiple in that it is enacted differently (Mol 2002) at various cultural
and technoscientific sites.
Population Genetics and Belonging interrogates this organizing ambigu-
ity of population genetic belonging. The book argues that analyzing this
ambiguity is pivotal to understanding how population genetics is shaping
belonging and our ways of relating to each other. Science studies and
critical social studies literature has explored extensively the ways in which
population genetic practices may shore up problematic assumptions
about racial differences (e.g. Hinterberger 2012; Koenig et al. 2008;
Reardon 2005; TallBear 2013; Wailoo et al. 2012; Wald 2006; Whitmarsh
and Jones 2010). While some scholars locate conservative politics in soci-
etal applications of population genetics, such as the use of forensic DNA
in criminal investigation, others have argued that population geneticists’
way of conceptualizing variation through geographically localized popu-
lations is in itself inseparable from the idea of distinct, biologically
grounded races. These critical analyses have provided analytically insight-
ful and culturally important ways of evaluating the role of population
genetics in society, and they inform my discussions throughout the book.
However, I approach the connection between population genetics and
politics from a somewhat different angle: I highlight the ambivalence of
population genetics as a tool for political and cultural projects. Both pop-
ulation genetic research and its societal applications are ontologically
blurry and affectively manifold, with the result that population genetics
can be invoked to support mutually contradictory political and cultural
imaginaries. Indeed, this affective and epistemic ambiguity is precisely
why population genetics resonates so widely across culture and society. In
the chapters that follow, I trace the ways in which population genetics
simultaneously both expands and curtails the ways in which belonging
can be imagined and enacted in technoscientific societies.
Situating the Book
Population genetic projects emerged as objects of extensive critical analy-
sis especially in the early years of the new millennium. This scholarly
interest arose largely from the public debates in the 1990s surrounding