Genetics and the Unsettled Past: The Collision of DNA, Race, and History (Rutgers Studies on Race and Ethnicity)

Our genetic markers have come to be regarded as portals to the past Analysis of these markers is increasingly used to tell the story of human migration to investigate and judge issues of social membership and kinship to rewrite history and collective memory to right past wrongs and to arbitrate legal claims and human rights controversies and to open new thinking about health and well being At the same time in many societies genetic evidence is being called upon to perform a kind of racially charged cultural work to repair the racial past and to transform scholarly and popular opinion about the nature of identity in the present Genetics and the Unsettled Pastconsiders the alignment of genetic science with commercial genealogy with legal and forensic developments and with pharmaceutical innovation to examine how these trends lend renewed authority to biological understandings of race and history This unique collection brings together scholars from a wide range of disciplines biology history cultural studies law medicine anthropology ethnic studies sociology to explore the emerging and often contested connections among race DNA and history Written for a general audience the book s essays touch upon a variety of topics including the rise and implications of DNA in genealogy law and other fields the cultural and political uses and misuses of genetic information the way in which DNA testing is reshaping understandings of group identity for French Canadians Native Americans South Africans and many others within and across cultural and national boundaries and the sweeping implications of genetics for society today