From “Races” to “Isolates” and “Endogamous Communities”: Human Genetics and the Notion of Human Diversity in the 1950s (2013)
For good reason, research into the history of human genetics has concentrated on medical genetics, eugenics and radiation genetics. The entanglement of research into heritable pathologies with discriminatory political and social practices has rendered human genetics a deeply problematic scientific field. Thus, when addressing the post-war era, historians have focused on the repercussions and continuities of human geneticists' interest in pathological conditions. By the same token, however, human geneticists' interest in the inheritance and variation of normal traits has largely been neglected. To be sure, the community of human geneticists cannot easily be divided up into medical geneticists on the one hand and population geneticists on the other. Often, one and the same research team investigated both pathological conditions and normal traits within a population (however defined). From one field site, it was possible to contribute to both medical genetics and population genetics. For those more interested in population genetics, it was necessary to draw on the help of already established health care systems, primarily to secure access to their test subjects. Yet for some, the primary aim was to assess human genetic variation in general -- what would become known as `human diversity' -- to make it epistemologically productive for the investigation of genetic characters and to establish the evolutionary history of mankind.[ Extract]
...MoreBook Gausemeier, Bernd; Müller-Wille, Staffan; Ramsden, Edmund (2013) Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century.
Similar Citations
Book
Rushton, Alan R.;
(2009)
Genetics in Medicine in Great Britain 1600 to 1939
Chapter
Gausemeier, Bernd;
(2013)
Borderlands of Heredity: The Debate about the Hereditary Susceptibility to Tuberculosis, 1882--1945
Thesis
Friedman, Judith Ellen;
(2008)
Coming Full Circle: The Development, Rise, Fall, and Return of the Concept of Anticipation in Hereditary Disease
Book
Hirszfeld, Ludwick;
Balinska, Marta A.;
Schneider, William H.;
(2010)
Ludwik Hirszfeld: The Story of One Life
Book
Gausemeier, Bernd;
Müller-Wille, Staffan;
Ramsden, Edmund;
(2013)
Human Heredity in the Twentieth Century
Article
Leeming, William;
(2005)
Ideas about Heredity, Genetics, and “Medical Genetics” in Britain, 1900--1982
Article
Bauer, Susanne;
(2014)
Mutations in Soviet Public Health Science: Post-Lysenko Medical Genetics, 1969--1991
Article
Löwy, Ilana;
(2014)
How Genetics Came to the Unborn: 1960--2000
Article
Chadarevian, Soraya de;
(2014)
Chromosome Surveys of Human Populations: Between Epidemiology and Anthropology
Article
Löwy, Ilana;
(2013)
Prenatal Diagnosis and the Transformation of the Epistemic Space of Human Heredity
Article
Guido Barbujani;
(2017)
What Genetics Has to Say about Racial Categorization of Humans
Article
Valles, Sean A.;
(2012)
Lionel Penrose and the Concept of Normal Variation in Human Intelligence
Article
Lipphardt, Veronika;
(2013)
Isolates and Crosses in Human Population Genetics; Or, A Contextualization of German Race Science
Article
Bangham, Jenny;
Chadarevian, Soraya de;
(2014)
Human Heredity after 1945: Moving Populations Centre Stage
Article
Oldroyd, Benjamin P.;
Mayo, Oliver;
(2011)
Rossiter Henry Crozier 1943--2009
Article
M'charek, Amâde;
(2000)
Technologies of Population: Forensic DNA Testing Practices and the Making of Differences and Similarities
Chapter
Germann, Pascal;
(2013)
The Abandonment of Race: Researching Human Diversity in Switzerland, 1944--1956
Book
Friedlaender, Jonathan;
Radin, Joanna;
(2009)
From Anthropology to Genomics: Reflections of a Pacific Fieldworker
Book
Angela Saini;
(2019)
Superior: The Return of Race Science
Article
Irma Dianzani;
(2017)
La malattia genetica come eccezione alla regola
Mefisto: Rivista di medicina, filosofia, storia
Configurations: A Journal of Literature, Science, and Technology
Current Anthropology
Historical Records of Australian Science
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences
Be the first to comment!