Article
ID: CBB663776469

Bloodworlds: A Hematology of the 1952 Indo-Australian Genetical Survey of the Chenchus (2020)

unapi
Magic Science and race Imperialism Decolonization Human population genetics 20th century, late India

In 1952, a joint Indo-Australian team undertook one of the first genetic studies of the Chenchu people of southern India. Long thought of as one of the oldest populations on the subcontinent and a potential link between South Asian and Aboriginal Australian populations, the study hoped to illuminate the deeper demographic histories of both India and Australia. Coming as it did immediately on the heels of decolonization, it also signaled a new era of scientific collaborations after empire. But what exactly does “collaboration” entail? How far do agendas and imaginations actually cohere in such a “collaboration”? The various collaborating actors in the Chenchu project held very distinctive ideas and agendas. Keeping blood at the center, this article explores those distinctive “bloodworlds” that were mobilized in the course of the Chenchu study. The published text of the study was a potpourri of these different bloodworlds; equally important, however, was the bloodworld this potpourri could not accommodate: the bloodworlds of Chenchu wizards. Not a world engendered in some pure or isolated “tribal culture,” but a magical bloodworld created through historical interactions with Shaivism and Shi’ism. This was a bloodworld eminently recognizable by the Chenchu themselves, but incapable of accommodation in the published study on them.This essay is part of a special issue entitled Pacific Biologies: How Humans Become Genetic, edited by Warwick Anderson and M. Susan Lindee.

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Authors & Contributors
Venegas, Cristina
Detlev Quintern
Tyler David Morgenstern
Barbosa, Thiago P.
Aja M. Lans
Nielsen, Rasmus
Journals
Studies in History and Philosophy of Science Part C: Studies in History and Philosophy of Biological and Biomedical Sciences
Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences
Perspectives on Science
Isis: International Review Devoted to the History of Science and Its Cultural Influences
Erdem
Publishers
Cornell University Press
University of California, Santa Barbara
Temple University
Duquesne University
Oxford University Press
MIT Press
Concepts
Science and race
Decolonization
Human population genetics
Historical method
Imperialism
Colonialism
People
Cabral, Amílcar
Karve, Irawati
Young, Roger Arliner
Wu, Chien-Shiung
Sezgin, Fuat
Polo, Marco
Time Periods
21st century
20th century, late
20th century
19th century
20th century, early
Medieval
Places
India
United States
Guinea-Bissau
Nile River
Sudan
Egypt
Institutions
UNESCO
United Nations
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