Article ID: CBB001421071

Making Blood “Melanesian”: Fieldwork and Isolating Techniques in Genetic Epidemiology (1963--1976) (2014)

unapi

Widmer, Alexandra (Author)


Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Volume: 47, Part A
Issue: Part A
Pages: 118-129


Publication Date: 2014
Edition Details: Article in a special section: “Heredity and The Study of Human Populations After 1945”
Language: English

`Isolated' populations did not exist unproblematically for life scientists to study. This article examines the practical and conceptual labour, and the historical contingencies that rendered populations legible as `isolates' for population geneticists. Though a standard historiographical narrative tells us that population geneticists were moving from typological understandings of biological variation to processual ones, cultural variation was understood as vulnerable to homogenisation. I chart the importance that D. Carleton Gajdusek placed on isolates from his promotion of genetic epidemiology in WHO technical reports and at a Cold Spring Harbour symposium to his fieldwork routines and collection practices in a group of South Pacific islands. His fieldwork techniques combined social, cultural and historical knowledge of the research subjects in order to isolate biological descent using genealogies. Having isolated a population, Gajdusek incorporated biological materials derived from that population into broad categories of `Melanesian' and `race' to generate statements about the genetics of abnormal haemoglobins and malaria. Alongside an analysis of Gajdusek's practices, I present different narratives of descent, kinship and identities learned during my ethnographic work in Vanuatu. These alternatives show tacit decisions made pertaining to scale in the production of `isolates'.

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Article Bangham, Jenny; Chadarevian, Soraya de (2014) Human Heredity after 1945: Moving Populations Centre Stage. Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences (pp. 45-49). unapi

Citation URI
https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB001421071/

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Authors & Contributors
Suárez-Díaz, Edna
Hochman, Gilberto
Bangham, Jenny
Lee, S. H.
Webb, James L. A., Jr.
Radin, Joanna M.
Concepts
Public health
Human genetics
Science and race
Epidemiology
Blood
Malaria
Time Periods
20th century
21st century
19th century
20th century, late
20th century, early
18th century
Places
Brazil
Mexico
Africa
Republic of Liberia
Bangladesh
Singapore
Institutions
World Health Organization (WHO)
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