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Abstract
Donna Haraway’s theorization of natureculture webs has enormous potential for reading collective biographies (prosopography) that involve genetic ‘roots’ and ‘routes’. This essay examines the genetic prosopographic narratives revolving around caste identity in India and their imbrication of genetic ‘testimony’ and contemporary cultural identities. Genetically informed prosopography in the Indian media emphasises genetic roots, cultural codes (of caste identities), genetic and cultural routes (of migrations) and social stratification. This is cultural genomics where genetic data seeks to explain cultural boundaries or practices, and instances natureculture. Then, such prosopographies, while tracing ancestry, make projections founded on biochemical stories and cultural genomics. Questions of social justice need to frame debates on genetic inevitability, and genetic variations must be seen within the cultural contexts of social hierarchization.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1 Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto, 16.
2 Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto, 29.
3 Malone and Ovenden, “Natureculture,” 1.
4 For example, Haraway, Primate Visions and Simians, Cyborgs, and Women.
5 Heath, Rapp, and Taussig, “Genetic Citizenship.”
6 Haraway, When Species Meet, 128.
7 Haraway, Primate Visions, 4.
8 Couser, Vulnerable Subjects, 167.
9 Haraway, Primate Visions, 4.
10 Couser, Vulnerable Subjects, 167.
11 Nayar, “The Biogenographic Imagination” and “Autobiogenography.”
12 Novas and Rose, “Genetic Risk.”
13 Wald, “Blood and Stories”; Tallbear, “Narratives of Race” and Native American DNA; Nayar, “The Double (H)elixir”; Nash, “Genetics, Race, and Relatedness”; Kent, “Importance of Being Uros.” Genetic discoveries have produced claims where a gene associated with a phenotype is presented as (and believed to be) the root cause of personality or behavior in both individuals and communities and races. See Lewontin, Rose, and Kamin, Not in Our Genes and Wailoo, Nelson, and Lee, Genetics.
14 Haraway, Primate Visions, 8.
15 Haraway, Primate Visions, 198.
16 Haraway, Primate Visions, 99.
17 Haraway, Primate Visions, 199.
18 Kedmey, “What DNA Testing Reveals.”
19 Nelson, “European Roma.”
20 Mudur, “When the Caste Die”; Ramachandran, “The Genetics of Caste”; and Kivisild et al., “An Indian Ancestry.”
21 Chakravarti, “Tracing India’s Invisible Threads,” 488. See also Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 1 and Basu, Sarkar-Roy, and Majumder, “Genomic Reconstruction,” 1594, 1597.
22 Tamang and Tangaraj, “Genomic View,” 4. See also Basu, Sarkar-Roy, and Majumder, “Genomic Reconstruction,” 1598.
23 Haraway, The Companion Species Manifesto, 13.
24 On symbol-based inheritance and evolution, see Wheeler, The Whole Creature.
25 Thomas, Jackl, and Crowley. “‘Family? … Not Just Blood.’”
26 Haraway, Simians, Cyborgs, and Women, 42.
27 Moorjani et al., “Genetic Evidence,” 423.
28 For a critique, see Tallbear, Native American DNA and Sleeboom-Faulkner, “How to Define.”
29 Egorova, “Castes of Genes?” 41. See Reich et al., “Reconstructing Indian Population History” and also Sabir, “Chimerical Categories.”
30 Basu, Sarkar-Roy, and Majumder, “Genomic Reconstruction,” 1597.
31 Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 1. See also Kivisild et al., “An Indian Ancestry,” 268.
32 Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 4.
33 Basu, Sarkar-Roy, and Majumder, “Genomic Reconstruction,” 1598.
34 Kedmey, “What DNA Testing Reveals.”
35 Moorjani et al, “Genetic Evidence,” 422.
36 Zerjal, “Y-Chromosomal Insights,” 142–3.
37 Moorjani et al, “Genetic Evidence,” 422. See also Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 5 and Zerjal, “Y-Chromosomal Insights,” 137.
38 Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 1.
39 Egorova, “De/geneticizing Caste,” 427.
40 Egorova, “Castes of Genes?”
41 The imminent vanishing of such isolates occupies a place of considerable importance in genetic studies. See Thangaraj et al., “Genetic Affinities.” Whether vanishing tribes and therefore gene pools represent an about-to-be-missing link in human evolutionary history is a moot point, of course. Tallbear speaks of this simplification where “scientists worry about indigenous peoples vanishing because they view them as storehouses of unique genetic diversity.” See Tallbear, “Narratives of Race and Indigeneity”, 416. Tallbear, Native American DNA. On the geographical dispersion of races read through the lens of genetics, see Stanley Wells’ film Journey of Man. For a critique, see Nayar, “The Biogenographic Imagination.”
42 Indian Genome Variation Consortium, “Indian Genome Variation Database.”
43 Chakravarti, “Tracing India’s Invisible Threads,” 488.
44 Chakravarti, “Tracing India’s Invisible Threads,” 488. See also Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 6.
45 Bharadwaj, Atkinson, and Clarke, “Medical Classification,” 120.
46 Nash, “Mapping Origins,” 85.
47 One of the most recognized of epigenetic mutations involves DNA methylation. The attachment of a methyl group to a DNA base inhibits gene transcription. Methylation is regulated by nutritional and environmental factors in early development. Meloni, “Epigenetics,” 127. Another instance from epigenetics that demonstrates the power of cultural contexts would be recent research that shows how adult metabolic and immunological function depends on nutrient availability during prenatal or neonatal development. Poor families, in other words, or those circumscribed by caste and other social identities in terms of income, professions, and livelihoods, will experience alterations not only in gene expression but also in long-term genetic inheritances. For a critique of epigenetic determinism, see Waggoner and Uller, “Epigenetic Determinism.”
48 Meloni, “Epigenetics,” 133.
49 Meloni, “Epigenetics,” 135.
50 Tamang and Thangaraj, “Genomic View,” 2.
51 Bowker and Star, Sorting Things Out, 190.
52 For an example of such a Bowker-Star torque, see Helmreich, “Torquing Things Out,” 437.
53 Haraway, When Species Meet, 135.
54 Butler, Precarious Life.