5. The Anthropology of Genetic Science

Convenor:

Angela Procoli, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale

procoli@ehess.fr

 

The workshop aims to focus on the contemporary developments in the scientific understanding of genetics and the ways these developments are transforming the possible relations between humans and their natural environnement. Recent advances in the applications of genetic science raise important sociological and ethical issues (patentability of the living, reductionism and biological determinism, social discrimination based on biology) and have significant implications in the way of representing the “living”. To what extent does the remarkable progress of biotechnology makes the concept of “personhood” to evolve?

To draw out these issues, contributions will discuss, on the one hand, examples on the making of scientific knowledge (community of geneticists, bio-database programs) and, on the other hand, examples in applied human genetics (genetic testing, antenatal screening, genetic therapy).

 

The making of knowledge in genomics : a new field for anthropology

Angela Procoli, Laboratoire d’Anthropologie Sociale

procoli@ehess.fr

The premature birth of a biobank: Abortion or miscarriage?

Gísli Pálsson, University of Iceland

gpals@hi.is

Nurturing women and the BRCA genes; emerGhent bio-socialities of predictive medicine.

Sahra Gibbon, University College London

s.gibbon@ucl.ac.uk

Predispositions:  contemporary life in biotechnology and biography

Hannah Landecker, Rice University

hll@rice.edu

Individualisation of Women's lives

Bernhard Wieser, Wilhelm Berger and Sandra Karner, IFF-TEWI

wieser@ifz.tu-graz.ac.at

Reflections upon a racialised reprogenetic media event: the birth of ‘black’ twins to a white IVF mother

Katharine Tyler, University of Surrey

katharine.j.tyler@man.ac.uk

The Laboratory in Society. Symbolic discrouse and socio-genetic boundaries in East Asia and European contexts

Margaret Sleeboom, International Institute for Asian Studies

m.sleeboom@let.leidenuniv.nl

The case of the genetic disease: Thalassaemia, in the era of the new genetics

Aglaia Chatjouli, Aegean University

achatjouli@yahoo.com