Various Authors - Cultural Studies Vol 18 1 Jan 2

First published 2004 by Routledge

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The print edition of this journal is typeset by Type Study

ISBN 13: 978-0-415-34732-7 (pbk)

ISSN 0950-2386

DOI: 10.4324/9781003209324

VOLUME 18 NUMBER 1 JANUARY 2004

Articles

Catherine Nash

Scott Wible

Katrien Jacobs

Sujeong Kim

David W. Park

DOI: 10.4324/9781003209324-1

The recent marketing of new genetic tests for popular genealogy is one significant interface between the science of new genetics and public culture in the West. These new commodities offer to situate individuals within global patterns of human genetic diversity; locate genetic origins and sort out true biological relatedness from practised kinship. Taking two cases of recent attempts to popularize genetic tests in popular genealogy, this paper considers how ideas of gender, reproduction, nation, race and relatedness are being shaped by and deployed within their discourses of genetic kinship. In these efforts to geneticize genealogy, the idiom of kinship and the gendering of narratives of reproduction and descent are used to make these tests meaningful and to distance them from ideas of race and ethnicity. Discourses of family relatedness provide a grammar for translating the complexities of new genetics into public culture. At the same time, geneticized genealogy produces new versions of genetic kinship, in the form of Y-chromosome genetic brotherhood, Mitochondrial DNA clan membership and global genetic kinship. Yet, notions of genetic kinship also provide cultural resources for the making of personal and collective identities in a myriad of ways and with diverse implications for the politics of race and national belonging.

KEYWORDS: genetics, genealogy, ethnicity, race, gender, origins

Theres DNA and there are probabilities of sharing some, but no tangible genetic stuff divisible among kin and distinguishing or bounding them from non-kin. There is no genetic test for kinship Kinship is not a genetic property.

(Marks 2002, p. 251)

The corporate logo that features on the website of Relative Genetics, a company offering genetic tests for reconstructing global and family genealogies, twins two key icons of Western culture; the roots and branches of the family tree and the double helix of molecular genetics. This is one of several companies in the USA and UK eager to build on the market for genetic paternity tests and the popularity of genealogy to create consumer interest in new genetic products that purport to answer questions about immediate, historic and prehistoric relatedness and geographical origins. The findings of population geneticists tracing the history and geography of the origins, movement and interactions of prehistoric populations are being converted into genetic commodities that offer to situate individuals within global patterns of human genetic diversity as well as sort out true biological relatedness from practised kinship. Potential customers of Family Genetics can buy genetic testing kits to establish biological relatedness amongst known or suspected relatives, or can send DNA samples that can be analysed to locate them within the community of the worlds largest genetically based genealogy database. As Haraway observes: Epistemophilia, the lusty search for knowledge of origins, is everywhere (1997, p. 255).