Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA
Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA

Author: Daniel Strand

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2024-07-02

Total Pages: 233

ISBN-13: 0262378779

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The first comprehensive critical analysis of the practices and consequences of ancient DNA research. This edited collection, Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA, presents a critical enquiry into the much-hyped “ancient DNA revolution” in archaeology. Offering the first comprehensive and in-depth scholarly analysis of the practices and effects of archaeogenetics, editors Daniel Strand, Anna Källén, and Charlotte Mulcare, along with other renowned scholars from Europe and the United States, address a host of questions, such as: What happens with our understanding of the past when archaeology is married to genetic science? What cultural forms and historical narratives are generated by ancient DNA (aDNA) research, and what energies could they unleash? Taking a multidisciplinary and multisite approach to the topic, these essays offer important insights into the epistemological, ethical, and political consequences around and beyond the scientific analysis of aDNA. As such, Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA provides a timely and much-needed critical engagement with the rapidly growing field of aDNA research—a field that, while already having a notable impact on how we view the past in research, museums, and popular media—had not yet been subject to thorough critical scrutiny. Contributors Ruth Amstutz, Chip Colwell, Magnus Fiskesjö, K. Ann Horsburgh, Anna Källén, Stewart B. Koyiyumptewa, Amade M’charek, Charlotte Mulcare, Andreas Nyblom, Venla Oikkonen, Mélanie Pruvost, Marianne Sommer, Daniel Strand

Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA
Critical Perspectives on Ancient DNA

Author: Daniel Strand

Publisher:

Published: 2024

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780262378765

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"This book offers the first comprehensive critical analysis of the practices and consequences of ancient DNA research"--

Blueprint
Blueprint

Author: Robert Plomin

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2019-07-16

Total Pages: 294

ISBN-13: 0262357763

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A top behavioral geneticist argues DNA inherited from our parents at conception can predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses. This “modern classic” on genetics and nature vs. nurture is “one of the most direct and unapologetic takes on the topic ever written” (Boston Review). In Blueprint, behavioral geneticist Robert Plomin describes how the DNA revolution has made DNA personal by giving us the power to predict our psychological strengths and weaknesses from birth. A century of genetic research shows that DNA differences inherited from our parents are the consistent lifelong sources of our psychological individuality—the blueprint that makes us who we are. Plomin reports that genetics explains more about the psychological differences among people than all other factors combined. Nature, not nurture, is what makes us who we are. Plomin explores the implications of these findings, drawing some provocative conclusions—among them that parenting styles don't really affect children's outcomes once genetics is taken into effect. This book offers readers a unique insider’s view of the exciting synergies that came from combining genetics and psychology.

Inequality
Inequality

Author: Carles Lalueza-Fox

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-02-08

Total Pages: 187

ISBN-13: 0262369168

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How genomics reveals deep histories of inequality, going back many thousands of years. Inequality is an urgent global concern, with pundits, politicians, academics, and best-selling books all taking up its causes and consequences. In Inequality, Carles Lalueza-Fox offers an entirely new perspective on the subject, examining the genetic marks left by inequality on humans throughout history. Lalueza-Fox describes genetic studies, made possible by novel DNA sequencing technologies, that reveal layers of inequality in past societies, manifested in patterns of migration, social structures, and funerary practices. Through their DNA, ancient skeletons have much to tell us, yielding anonymous stories of inequality, bias, and suffering. Lalueza-Fox, a leader in paleogenomics, offers the deep history of inequality. He explores the ancestral shifts associated with migration and describes the gender bias unearthed in these migrations—the brutal sexual asymmetries, for example, between male European explorers and the women of Latin America that are revealed by DNA analysis. He considers social structures, and the evidence that high social standing was inherited—the ancient world was not a meritocracy. He untangles social and genetic factors to consider whether wealth is an advantage in reproduction, showing why we are more likely to be descended from a king than a peasant. And he explores the effects of ancient inequality on the human gene pool. Marshaling a range of evidence, Lalueza-Fox shows that understanding past inequalities is key to understanding present ones.

Genomic Citizenship
Genomic Citizenship

Author: Ian McGonigle

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2021-08-24

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0262542943

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An anthropological study based on ethnographic work in Israel and Qatar explores the relationship between science, particularly genetics, and national identity. Based on ethnographic work in Israel and Qatar, two small Middle Eastern ethnonations with significant biomedical resources, Genomic Citizenship explores the relationship between science and identity. Ian McGonigle, originally trained as a biochemist, draws on anthropological theory, STS, intellectual history, critical theory, Middle Eastern studies, cultural studies, and critical legal studies. He connects biomedical research on ethnic populations to the political, economic, legal, and historical context of the state; to global trends in genetic medicine; and to the politics of identity in the context of global biomedical research. Genomic Citizenship is more an anthropology of scientific objects than an anthropology of scientists or an ethnography of the laboratory. McGonigle bases his untraditional project on traditional anthropological methods, including participant observation. Some of the most persuasive data in the book are from public records, legal and historical sources, published scientific papers, institutional reports, websites, and brochures. McGonigle discusses biological understandings of Jewishness, especially in relation to the intellectual history of Zionism and Jewish political thought, and considers the possibility of a novel application of genetics in assigning Israeli citizenship. He also describes developments in genetic medicine in Qatar and analyzes the Qatari Biobank in the context of Qatari nationalism and state-building projects. Considering possible consequences of findings on the diverse origins of the Qatari population for tribal identities, he argues that the nation cannot be defined as either a purely natural or biological entity. Rather, it is reified, reinscribed, and refracted through genomic research and discourse.

Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage
Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage

Author: Veysel Apaydin i

Publisher: UCL Press

Published: 2020-02-18

Total Pages: 335

ISBN-13: 1787354849

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Critical Perspectives on Cultural Memory and Heritage focuses on the importance of memory and heritage for individual and group identity, and for their sense of belonging. It aims to expose the motives and discourses related to the destruction of memory and heritage during times of war, terror, sectarian conflict and through capitalist policies. It is within these affected spheres of cultural heritage where groups and communities ascribe values, develop memories, and shape their collective identity.

The Global Genome
The Global Genome

Author: Eugene Thacker

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2006-09-08

Total Pages: 450

ISBN-13: 9780262250306

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How global biotechnology is redefining "life itself." In the age of global biotechnology, DNA can exist as biological material in a test tube, as a sequence in a computer database, and as economically valuable information in a patent. In The Global Genome, Eugene Thacker asks us to consider the relationship of these three entities and argues that—by their existence and their interrelationships—they are fundamentally redefining the notion of biological life itself. Biological science and the biotech industry are increasingly organized at a global level, in large part because of the use of the Internet in exchanging biological data. International genome sequencing efforts, genomic databases, the development of World Intellectual Property policies, and the "borderless" business of biotech are all evidence of the global intersections of biology and informatics—of genetic codes and computer codes. Thacker points out the internal tension in the very concept of biotechnology: the products are more "tech" than "bio," but the technology itself is fully biological, composed of the biomaterial labor of genes, proteins, cells, and tissues. Is biotechnology a technology at all, he asks, or is it a notion of "life itself" that is inseparable from its use in the biotech industry? The three sections of the book cover the three primary activities of biotechnology today: the encoding of biological materials into digital form—as in bioinformatics and genomics; its recoding in various ways—including the "biocolonialism" of mapping genetically isolated ethnic populations and the newly pervasive concern over "biological security"; and its decoding back into biological materiality—as in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. Thacker moves easily from science to philosophy to political economics, enlivening his account with ideas from such thinkers as Georges Bataille, Georges Canguilhem, Michel Foucault, Antonio Negri, and Paul Virilio. The "global genome," says Thacker, makes it impossible to consider biotechnology without the context of globalism.

Double Helix History
Double Helix History

Author: Jerome De Groot

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2022-08-29

Total Pages: 170

ISBN-13: 1000643034

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Double Helix History examines the interface between genetics and history in order to investigate the plausibility of ‘new’ knowledge derived from scientific methods and to reflect upon what it might mean for the practice of history. Since the mapping of the human genome in 2001, there has been an expansion in the use of genetic information for historical investigation. Geneticists are confident that this has changed the way we know the past. This book considers the practicalities and implications of this seemingly new way of understanding the human past using genetics. It provides the first sustained engagement with these so-called ‘genomic histories’. The book investigates the ways that genetic awareness and practice is seemingly changing historical practice and conceptualisation. Linking six concepts – ‘Public’, ‘Practice’, ‘Ethics’, ‘Politics’, ‘Self’, and ‘Imagination – Double Helix History outlines the ways that genetic information, being postgenomic, the public life of DNA, and the genetic historical imaginary work on the body, on collective memory, on the historical imagination, on the ethics of historical investigation, on the articulation of history, and on the collection and interpretation of data regarding the ‘past’. This book will appeal to researchers and students alike interested in DNA, genetics, and historiography.

The Diagrammatics of ‘Race’
The Diagrammatics of ‘Race’

Author: Marianne Sommer

Publisher: Open Book Publishers

Published: 2024-07-30

Total Pages: 330

ISBN-13: 1805112635

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This is the first book that engages with the history of diagrams in physical, evolutionary, and genetic anthropology. Since their establishment as scientific tools for classification in the eighteenth century, diagrams have been used to determine but also to deny kinship between human groups. In nineteenth-century craniometry, they were omnipresent in attempts to standardize measurements on skulls for hierarchical categorization. In particular the ’human family tree’ was central for evolutionary understandings of human diversity, being used on both sides of debates about whether humans constitute different species well into the twentieth century. With recent advances in (ancient) DNA analyses, the tree diagram has become more contested than ever―does human relatedness take the shape of a network? Are human individual genomes mosaics made up of different ancestries? Sommer examines the epistemic and political role of these visual representations in the history of ‘race’ as an anthropological category. How do such diagrams relate to imperial and (post-)colonial practices and ideologies but also to liberal and humanist concerns? The Diagrammatics of 'Race' concentrates on Western projects from the late 1700s into the present to diagrammatically define humanity, subdividing and ordering it, including the concomitant endeavors to acquire representative samples―bones, blood, or DNA―from all over the world. Contributing to the ‘diagrammatic turn’ in the humanities and social sciences, it reveals connections between diagrams in anthropology and other visual traditions, including in religion, linguistics, biology, genealogy, breeding, and eugenics.

The Next 500 Years
The Next 500 Years

Author: Christopher E. Mason

Publisher: MIT Press

Published: 2022-04-12

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 0262543842

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An argument that we have a moral duty to explore other planets and solar systems--because human life on Earth has an expiration date. Inevitably, life on Earth will come to an end, whether by climate disaster, cataclysmic war, or the death of the sun in a few billion years. To avoid extinction, we will have to find a new home planet, perhaps even a new solar system, to inhabit. In this provocative and fascinating book, Christopher Mason argues that we have a moral duty to do just that. As the only species aware that life on Earth has an expiration date, we have a responsibility to act as the shepherd of life-forms--not only for our species but for all species on which we depend and for those still to come (by accidental or designed evolution). Mason argues that the same capacity for ingenuity that has enabled us to build rockets and land on other planets can be applied to redesigning biology so that we can sustainably inhabit those planets. And he lays out a 500-year plan for undertaking the massively ambitious project of reengineering human genetics for life on other worlds. As they are today, our frail human bodies could never survive travel to another habitable planet. Mason describes the toll that long-term space travel took on astronaut Scott Kelly, who returned from a year on the International Space Station with changes to his blood, bones, and genes. Mason proposes a ten-phase, 500-year program that would engineer the genome so that humans can tolerate the extreme environments of outer space--with the ultimate goal of achieving human settlement of new solar systems. He lays out a roadmap of which solar systems to visit first, and merges biotechnology, philosophy, and genetics to offer an unparalleled vision of the universe to come.