The project
Recent genetic research has rekindled debates about the existence of race and ethnicity as useful biological and medical categories. Concern has centred on the possibility that human differences in appearance, genetics and health characteristics may be over-simplified into catch-all racial categories that generate social exclusion from full citizenship.
This project involves a comparative analysis of the way ideas of race and ethnicity interact with genomic research in three Latin American countries - Mexico, Colombia and Brazil. In all three countries in the last few years, laboratories of molecular genetics have been mapping the genomes of local populations, with the overarching objective of advancing the fight against diseases thought to have a genetic component. Populations with genetic "admixture" are thought to be useful for gene mapping purposes and Latin American mestizo or mixed-race peoples, the product of centuries of mixture between European, African and Amerindian people, have been of particular interest. As part of this, the labs have been tracing the racial and ethnic ancestry of these populations, using DNA sequencing techniques. The scientists often link their findings explicitly to questions of national identity, racial-ethnic difference and racism, capturing the attention of the media and stimulating public debate on these issues. At the same time, Latin American mixture is being held up by some as the antidote to racism, and racial mixture is gaining popularity as a way forward elsewhere. Yet ideas of racial difference can be reinforced through mixture and genetic studies of mixture.
The project aims to explore how racial and ethnic thinking enters into these scientific endeavours and whether it is reproduced, challenged and/or reformulated by them. The potential for linking race/ethnicity and disease, via genetics, is one area for attention. Phase 1 of the project (January 2010 to July 2011, funded by the ESRC) also examined in a preliminary fashion the way the results of the research enter the public domain - mainly through scientists' statements and media coverage - and interact with existing ideologies around race, ethnicity and national identity.
Phase 2 of the project (July 2011 to March 2013, funded by the Leverhulme Trust) focuses more attention on this aspect, especially in the context of changes in all three nations, which in the last two decades have moved towards official multiculturalism and the institutionalisation of racial-ethnic differences in legislation and citizenship. The way genetics creates new imagined genetic communities, which fragment and/or unite along racial-ethnic lines, has important implications for citizenship and social inclusion/exclusion, especially in the context of multiculturalism.
The comparative aspect of the project is rooted in the need to advance the increasing recognition among scholars that "Latin America" is internally heterogeneous in terms of its racial-ethnic orders. The region (usually via the proxy of Brazil) has traditionally been contrasted with the USA in terms of race relations, but there is huge variation within Latin America. The notion of race mixture (mestizaje in Spanish) as the basis for national identity is a transnational ideology in the region, but Mexico, Colombia and Brazil have different histories of deploying mestizaje as a nation-building ideology and the concept has distinct resonances in each country; the way multiculturalism is institutionalised also varies between the three nations. The development of scientific investigation and, within that, of genetic research are necessarily set on a global stage, but each country also has a particular social history of developing science and genomics. Comparative analysis will explore how national variation in mestizaje and in the institutionalisation of scientific research shape the way genomic research interacts with ideas about race/ethnicity, race mixture and national identity.