Geography, Genealogy and Genetics: Dialectical Substance in Newspaper Coverage of Research on Race and Genetics

Abstract

Genetics always had a genealogical component, but discussions of genetics and race add a geographic component to our understanding of genes. In newspaper accounts of genetics and race, genealogy and geography, along with nature and nurture, are the Burkean substances shaping the coverage. Newspaper coverage often favors a view of race as genetic and geographical, and this view is exacerbated by the use of “map” metaphors. The metaphor of “migration” offers a corrective that merges the dialectical substances in newspaper coverage, allowing a vision of racial and ethnic groups as the result of people moving from place to place.

Keywords:

• Dialectic
• Genetics
• Race
• Science Journalism
• Substance

Acknowledgments

This research was partially supported by Grant #5 R01 HG02191-02 from the National Institutes of Health.

Notes

See also Wade, 2002b, 2003; another scientist offering this perspective is Noah Rosenberg (Seebach, 2003).

The metaphor of the map appears in many discussions of genetics that do not mention race, but the use of the “map” metaphor in these cases is unique in that the map is isomorphic with a map of the entire Earth, with genes being tied to unique locations or continents. For more on general uses of the map metaphor in genetics, see Nelkin, 2001, and Nelkin and Lindee, 1995.

The HapMap project's purpose is to identify large-scale patterns in the human genome consisting of blocks of genes that are inherited together as a group (The International HapMap Consortium, 2003). Scientific (Jorgenson & Witte, 2006) and ethical-social (Haga & Willard, 2006) concerns have been raised about the project.

Rhetorical studies of materiality began with the inaugural essay by Michael Calvin McGee (1982). A history of key works in the field appears in Greene (1998). Recent work in materialist rhetoric includes essays by Johnson (2007) and Stormer (2004).