Commentary and Reflections: The Lure of the Gene
How can one … dream of power in any other terms than in the symbols of power?
James Baldwin, The Fire Next Time (1963)
Genes are seductive things. They hold the promise of increasing both our understanding of nature and our power to control it. We use genes to explain a dizzying array of personal, medical, social, biological and political phenomena. Sometimes these explanations are quite modest, as in accounts of individual variation in physical traits such as height or eye color. On other occasions, they are much more ambitious, as with complex and politically fraught questions of racial or ethnic identity. And not infrequently, genetic research carries significant, practical consequences. This is perhaps most directly true in the health sector, as genes are important to medical research and patient care. But policy matters often turn on genetic questions as well. The early twenty-first-century successes of gay rights activism in the USA, for example, owe much to an emergent understanding of homosexuality as inborn rather than acquired. Genes are frequently wrapped up in cultural conceptions of what is natural or inevitable (Nelkin and Lindee 2004[1995]). They can be invoked implicitly or explicitly, and as either total or partial explanations. They have become part of our shared cultural heritage: a conceptual apparatus that we can accept, reject or modify – but not ignore.
Accounting for the proliferation of genetic explanations is not a straightforward task. In part, of course, their ubiquity stems from biological reality: they can provide us with accurate and useful information about ourselves. But this is not sufficient explanation for the widespread popularity of genetic stories. Just because something is true does not mean that people will believe it. In fact – as the contemporary politics surrounding climate change and evolution make clear – audiences are quite capable of resisting science that they find uncomfortable or unsettling. The task of understanding the persistent appeal of genes and genetic explanations, therefore, begins but does not end with science. It involves the full range of the humanities and social sciences, because it is ultimately a human story, and a historical one. As explanatory accounts – whether about health, identity or politics – genes proliferate because they conform to audience expectations and desires. Rather than assume inevitability, we might ask about some of the contexts in which genetic explanations have been deemed viable and useful. Who has done so – and why? How have they told their stories, and what have been the consequences of their choices? These are complicated matters, and there is no single answer. But one of the most striking patterns is that genes provide easy basis for reductionist accounts. Genetic stories focus on causal elements that can be reliably isolated, defined and measured. This gives them disproportionate visibility, and tends to obscure other sorts of causal factors. In some cases, this can be politically motivated. But it also stems from the need to provide clear, comprehensible explanations for phenomena whose real origins are too complex to capture fully and easily.
This is not a new phenomenon. Even before the term itself was coined – in 1909, by Wilhelm Johannsen – scientists (and others) had recognized the practical as well as intellectual value of studying genes (Nelkin and Lindee 2004[1995]:3). The eugenicists of the early twentieth century tried to use their limited knowledge of heredity to manage population growth and to cure societal ills (Kevles 1995[1985]; Lombardo 2011). Many of their attempted innovations were discriminatory and elitist, and their most enduring legacy lies in giving this particular brand of social engineering a bad name. And the more extreme policies adopted by the Nazis made the potential dangers of combining biology and ideology clearer still. Every subsequent advocate of genetics’ applicability to social policy has had to face this legacy, and they have often been able to move past it. There is much scholarly support for the idea that, as Ruha Benjamin writes, “the relationship between biological knowledge and political power is decoupled” in the modern era (Benjamin 2015:198, Chapter 10, this volume). But the reality here is a complex one, as she also points out the fact that “attempts to ‘intervene’ in the name of the dispossessed may sediment longstanding inequalities in unexpected ways” (2015:199). Both sorts of interventions are visible in the early twenty-first century, as we find ourselves several decades into a new enthusiasm for genetic explanations that is pervasive if not completely unchallenged. Genes have become social as well as biological reality.
The three chapters in Part III offer an exploration of the social reality of genes. They cover a wide range of topics: race, pharmaceuticals, consumerism, national identity, medical research, expertise, activism. But there is – at least – one common pattern among them. Each chapter focuses on groups of people who seek to challenge the existing politics and practices of genetics, and who ultimately wind up reinforcing many of the things that they hoped to change. Catherine Bliss tells the story of business and government ventures that draw on scientific conceptions of race. Sara Shostak and Margot Moinester detail the efforts of scientists and social scientists to move past a gene–environment binary. Ruha Benjamin writes of national attempts to secure genomic information as country-specific resources. In each instance, the people in question are quite self-conscious about their attempts to redress political inequalities or to increase intellectual and technical sophistication. But the effects of their interventions have been complex, and often surprisingly limited. It has proved rather difficult to dislodge existing conceptualizations of genes. The more they have become our symbols of power, the harder it has become to dream – or to think, talk and conduct research – in any other terms.
Catherine Bliss tells a story in which a diverse range of people – scientists, activists and entrepreneurs – embrace the biomedicalization of race. This embrace is visible in the institutional structures that support genomics research, the development of race-based medicine and the burgeoning field of ancestry searches. Bliss argues that medicalization and racialization have gone hand-in-hand. She cites the words of Human Genome Project veteran Eric Lander: “if we shy away and don’t record the data for certain populations, we can’t be sure to serve those populations medically” (Bliss 2015:179, Chapter 9, this volume). In this formulation, there is a deep and necessary link between constructing race, doing science and improving health. And this sentiment is not limited to working scientists who may have professional predispositions to believe in the power of genetic explanations. So dominant has the biomedical paradigm become, Bliss writes, that “even racial advocates most known for their work on the sociological factors that contribute to inequality have come on board the genomics bandwagon” (2015:183). Henry Louis Gates, Jr is a prominent example, and Bliss discusses his commitment to mapping genealogies. Consumer interest in ancestry searches is another indication of widespread willingness to accept the authority of genetic information and the racial categories they frequently support. It is critical to understand the extent of the social change that this heralds. Throughout much of the twentieth century, social reformers acted out of a sense that environmental factors rather than genetic ones were the source of many of the inequalities and persistent problems facing modern societies. They thus tended to resist biological explanations for any sort of observed disparity between social groups. This impulse has not disappeared. But much of the present moment is characterized by an attempt to appropriate and modify genetic stories, rather than to reject them. “Exclusion from genomics research,” Bliss writes, “has become the new target of minority justice campaigns” (2015:183).
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