Provincializing Science: mapping & marketing ethnoracial difference in the genomic age http://www.thehindu.com/health/medicine-and-research/article63948.ece Ruha Benjamin Boston University / Harvard Kennedy School ACLS Fellows Panel May 10th, 2013

Intervention #1: Binaries

Lingua Franca Lingua Democratica ways of seeing map “prophylactic Gene-centric metaphors Epigenetic metaphors map “prophylactic against reification” Network Blueprint Recipe Holy grail of biology Servant of proteins “…the ability to see the point, the value, and the advantage of other limited ways to look at the world, even if we don’t agree. This ability is an important aid not only to safeguard us from the reification of our own views, but also for fruitful frictions in debate.” Book of life Jazz orchestra Lingua Franca Lingua Democratica “Roads towards a Lingua Democratica on genomics” (2009)

mapping difference

“Some historians have argued that ‘caste’ in modern India is an invention’ of colonialism…However, our results indicate that many current distinctions among groups are ancient and that strong endogamy must have shaped marriage patterns in Indian for thousands of years” (Reich 2009).

“The upper caste Indian male population is genetically closer to Europeans than the lower castes, which are more “Asian,” according to a potentially more controversial new study…”

Intervention #2: Business as Usual

Ethnic Drug Markets

Genomic Sovereignty

Intervention #3: Boogiemen

“We believe that if we do not carry out studies to understand our genomic patrimony that we possess, well, no one else will because they will be interested in their own populations. Secondly, should the interest exist and they [other countries] come to get this information, they make us dependent on this information and then it will cost us. We have to develop our own genomic information.’” (INMEGEN Official, c.f.Abdullah, et.al.,2005)

in the field? Thank you ACLS!