Book Reviews

Risky Relations: Family, Kinship and the New Genetics

Katie Featherstone, Paul Atkinson, Aditya Bharadwaj & Angus Clarke Oxford, Berg, 2006. 176 pp. ISBN 10 1 84520 1795 (paperback)

Risky Relations is, as its authors tell us, an in-depth excursion with accounts of individuals and families reflecting on their experiences of inherited medical conditions. It is a product of a long outstanding collaboration of sociologists and specialists in genetic medicine: a research monograph based on conversations with some 41 people in 19 families and ethnographic work in the genetic clinics they attended. After a general account of sociological issues about kinship, family and biological relatedness, the authors discuss the genetic clinic, the associated practices of genetic counselling and the genetic laboratory as sites where ‘the facts of kinship and everyday family life are bought together with the facts of genetics’ of the rare conditions which ran, or were suspected of running, in those families. Thereafter the monograph deals with a series of themes for family members: their beliefs about inheritance, their mutual surveillance and beliefs about those who may be at risk of developing the family condition, and communication about the condition within the family and the practical everyday ethics of this. These are bought together in a chapter which is a case history of the everyday realities of practical kinship in a family that carries a degenerative mitochondrial disorder.

The book is an insightful—and very readable—account of the lived impact for families of the new knowledge and new uncertainties that have come with the development of some of the new genetic technologies. It is notable for the rich (‘thick’) accounts it provides of family members' experiences. It touches on the broader theoretical issues of the new genetics but there are none of the overblown claims of geneticisation or of the rewriting of kinship in the face of new genetic technologies that have characterised some work in the field. Rather, this is a study grounded in the empirical and indeed messy details of family life. From that detail, it provides a descriptive account of the generalities of the experience of genetics disease and genetic clinics illustrated with many quotations of what family members said. Necessarily perhaps, some issues are not engaged. For instance, the authors did not explore how the extraordinarily varied nature of different genetic conditions may influence and shape family experience. Much is said about the complexities and difficulties that family members have in communicating within their families about their genetic conditions and the risks and consequences. One might suggest that some of these complications relate to particular perceptions and characteristics of the diseases concerned and that a somewhat different picture might have emerged had a different choice of genetic conditions been made for the study. Thinking more generally about kinship, it is important to bear in mind that the discussion here is limited to the lived experience of genetic disease. While the authors do refer to the body of work concerning that other clinic that has attracted social scientists—the fertility clinic—no mention at all is made of those other new genetic technologies, paternity and ancestor relationship testing, which may be a potent force for changing some of our ideas of everyday kinship. I find it rather odd that discussions of new genetic technologies, biological relatedness and kinship so often ignore these widely used DNA tests (Freeman & Richards, 2006). Perhaps I may be permitted a personal aside here: I wrote this review while staying in rural France. While visiting the local paper shop I looked through the large display of greeting cards for family occasions. No sign of any French DNA among the images of babies, puppies, kittens or the ribboned bunches of flowers. But there was an image of paternity. A picture of a pack of sperm racing towards an egg at the top of the card, with the greeting, ‘Félicitations! Tu as toujours été le meilleur’.

But perhaps I am being a little ungrateful in pointing out such silences in the analysis. This is a very detailed study of a relatively small group of families and monographs are necessarily monographic. What is offered enhances our understanding of the engagement of families with genetic disease and genetic clinics. It has important insights to offer practitioners in the field as well as social scientists. Indeed, I would suggest the book would be particularly valuable as an engaging and stimulating introduction for social science students new to this area of work and it should find a place on both undergraduate and postgraduate reading lists as well as a wider readership.

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Martin Richards

© Martin Richards