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Racism and Human Genome Diversity Research: The Ethical Limits of “Population Thinking”

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 April 2022

Lisa Gannett
Lisa Gannett*
Affiliation:
California State University, Chico
*
†Send requests for reprints to the author, Department of Philosophy, California State University, Chico, Chico, CA 95929–0730; email: lgannett@csuchico.edu.
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Abstract

This paper questions the prevailing historical understanding that scientific racism “retreated” in the 1950s when anthropology adopted the concepts and methods of population genetics and race was recognized to be a social construct and replaced by the concept of population. More accurately, a “populational” concept of race was substituted for a “typological one”—this is demonstrated by looking at the work of Theodosius Dobzhansky circa 1950. The potential for contemporary research in human population genetics to contribute to racism needs to be considered with respect to the ability of the typological-population distinction to arbitrate boundaries between racist society and nonracist, even anti-racist, science. I point out some ethical limits of “population thinking” in doing so.

Type
Science and Values
Information
Philosophy of Science , Volume 68 , Issue S3: No. 3 Supplement: Proceedings of the 2000 Biennial Meeting of the Philosophy of Science Association. Part I: Contributed Papers Sep., 2001 , 2001 , pp. S479 - S492
Copyright
Copyright © Philosophy of Science Association 2001

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Footnotes

‡

This research was supported by a post-doctoral fellowship from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. My thanks to all those who made possible enjoyable and stimulating stays at the Minnesota Center for Philosophy of Science (1998–1999) and the Program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of California, Davis (1999–2000). I received helpful comments on various aspects of this work from John Beatty, Jim Griesemer, Jenny Reardon, and John Spriggs, as well as audiences at the University of Toronto and PSA 2000. Thanks especially to Jenny Reardon for reading a version of this paper at 4-S 2000.

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