Post by Admin on Apr 16, 2021 4:15:04 GMT
Genetic ancestry tests
Today, a plethora of direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies markets personalized GATs. Customers can normally choose from three kinds of tests: an “autosomal test” where DNA is analyzed from all 46 nuclear chromosomes; a “mtDNA test” which analyzes the mitochondrial DNA that is passed down unchanged through the maternal lineage; and—for men—a “Y-DNA test” which analyzes the Y-chromosome DNA which is passed down from father to son.
The test results typically include two or three elements. First, potential “matches”—that is, other customers with a high proportion of shared genetic markers. Second, if the customer has taken mtDNA or Y-chromosome tests, a list of “haplogroups.” Haplogroups, or haplotypes, are sections of DNA that remain intact through generations and can be identified in an individual’s genome. Designated with coded names such as “I-253,” haplogroups are found either in the mitochondrial DNA or in a particular section of the Y-chromosome which are passed down from mother to daughter, and father to son respectively (Bolnick et al. 2007; Jobling, Rasteiro, and Wetton 2016). 3 And third, a chart of how the customer’s DNA relates to different geographic areas or ethnic groups. While many DTC companies hold that these ethnicity charts reveal a person’s “unique genetic origins” (Ancestry.com 2015) or “ethnic and geographic background” (FamilytreeDNA.com 2016), they are actually based on a comparison between the customer’s DNA and the samples of other, now-living individuals in the companies’ reference databases. In this way, contemporary individuals are used as “proxies for ancient populations” (Hogan 2019, 89). In spite of the fact that the ethnicity charts reveal genetic relations to present-day customers of the same DTC company rather than persons in the remote past, however, their attraction seem to lie in their ostensible power to reveal an individual’s “ancestry from 80,000 years ago until recent times,” as claimed by one genetic genealogy company (LivingDNA.com 2020). In a similar way, the DTC company 23andMe promises customers to “trace your paths back thousands of years” and “[t]ravel back in time to gain a clearer picture of where you came from” (23andMe 2020).
GATs and geneticized identities
As observed by several researchers, the breakthrough of the DTC industry has had profound implications for popular notions of identity, race, origin and belonging (Carlson 2020; Greely 2008; Nash 2004, 2015; Phelan et al. 2014; Roth and Ivemark 2018; Scodari 2017; Scully, Brown, and King 2016). With the growth of companies selling GATs where the genetic composition of an individual is represented as percentages of pre-existing racial, ethnic or national categories, the question has arisen whether such tests reify notions of ethnicity and race as a biological reality. Some scholars (Greely 2008; Hogan 2019; Nash 2004; Phelan et al. 2014; Scodari 2017) argue that this is the case, and that GATs essentialize notions of distinct human races. By ascribing racial or ethnic categories to the physical bodies of individuals, race is comprehended as a corporeal substance which can be discovered through scientific analysis. Genetic genealogy thereby promotes a “genetic essentialism” (Arribas-Ayllon 2016; Bliss 2013; Nordgren and Juengst 2009; Roth et al. 2020) which renders the individual as biologically bound to a racial group. As Scodari puts it:
In utilizing “ethnic ancestry” and similar terminology, constructing ancestry classifications consistent with culturally constituted racial categories, basing their entire enterprise on unquestioned assumptions of ethnicity and race as essential and decipherable from an individual’s DNA, […] genetic ancestry firms are complicit not only in the processes of racialization but in racist misappropriations of genetic science. (Scodari 2017, 12)
The claim that genetic genealogy automatically leads to a biological reification of race has been challenged by other studies (Hofmann 2016; Rose 2007; Roth and Ivemark 2018; Scully, Brown, and King 2016; Shim, Rab Alam, and Aouizerat 2018). Concluding their interviews with British genealogists tracing their “Viking ancestry,” Scully, Brown, and King (2016) emphasize that GATs do not supply individuals with definite ethnic identities, but provide material which can be incorporated into more complex narratives of identity. In a similar vein, Rose argues that today’s “biopolitics of identity” is “linked to the development of novel ‘life strategies’ for individuals and their families, involving choice, enterprise, self-actualization, and prudence in relation to one’s genetic makeup” (2007, 177). And in opposition to what they call the “genetic determinism theory,” Roth and Ivemark suggest that GAT consumers always enjoy different “genetic options”:
[D]espite the “scientific” nature of genetic ancestry information, consumers do not simply accept the tests’ results as given. Instead they choose selectively from the estimates, embracing or ignoring particular genetic ancestries […]. Depending on how they assess their ancestry results […], this practice leads to a selective geneticization, with consumers picking and choosing the genetic ancestries they want to embrace. (Roth and Ivemark 2018, 152)
In line with Nelson (2008, 761), we suggest that research on genetic genealogy should seek to transcend this binary debate. Our interviews indicate that the construction of identity through GATs is a complex process of negotiation and interpretation which draws both on a constructivist and a primordial understanding of identity. A dominant perspective in contemporary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences (cf. Morning 2018), the constructivist definition of identity holds that ethnic or racial identity relies on discourse and is acquired through interaction. According to this perspective, ethnic identity is malleable, situational and contingent (Jiménez 2010), and co-constituted by factors like age, sexuality, class and gender. Researchers in social science and the humanities have demonstrated how race and ethnicity are articulated and ascribed through processes of “othering” which involve elements of strategy, power and politics (Hall 1996; Hylland Eriksen and Jakoubek 2018). The constructivist understanding of identity is often framed in opposition to a primordial definition, in which ethnic identity is an objective, essential and substantial quality acquired at birth (Hofmann 2016, 103–106; Morning 2018, 51–52; Smith, Kohl, and Vermeersch 2004).
The breakthrough of the DTC industry and its claim to provide customers with a “unique identity” or “unique ethnicity” (African Ancestry 2020; Ancestry.com 2016) have resulted in an amalgamation of the constructivist and primordial understandings of identity. Our interviews show that the “geneticized identities” (Bliss 2013; Nelson 2008; Novas and Rose 2000) facilitated by genetic genealogy are both based on what are presented as immutable genetic facts, and on subjective interpretations of these facts. While DTC companies might foster the idea that selfhood is not “a matter of existential choice but one of empirical discovery” (Nordgren and Juengst 2009, 162), the open-endedness of genetics—i.e. the fact that GATs enable multiple paths of identification—leaves a great deal of agency for the individual consumer. Test takers use the genetic data provided by the DTC companies in a selective and productive manner, synthesizing a primordial and constructivist understanding of identity in a form of “affiliative self-fashioning” (Nelson 2008). As Nelson argues, consumers appropriate their results with “a complex of alternative identificatory resources” which reflect their personal aspirations and desires (2008, 771). She stresses, however, that the individual test taker’s agency is ultimately circumscribed by existing power hierarchies and, more specifically, legacies of colonialism, slavery and racialization. In a similar vein, Roth and Ivemark (2018) argue that the genetic options enjoyed by GAT consumers depend on the social appraisal of their fellows, and that individuals already racialized as non-white tend to be more reluctant to change their identities on the basis of genetic data. With these observations in mind, it seems important to stress that the genetic options provided by GATs, and the processes of (re)-racialization they might instigate, are always embedded in existing discourses of identity and systems of racialization.
Today, a plethora of direct-to-consumer (DTC) companies markets personalized GATs. Customers can normally choose from three kinds of tests: an “autosomal test” where DNA is analyzed from all 46 nuclear chromosomes; a “mtDNA test” which analyzes the mitochondrial DNA that is passed down unchanged through the maternal lineage; and—for men—a “Y-DNA test” which analyzes the Y-chromosome DNA which is passed down from father to son.
The test results typically include two or three elements. First, potential “matches”—that is, other customers with a high proportion of shared genetic markers. Second, if the customer has taken mtDNA or Y-chromosome tests, a list of “haplogroups.” Haplogroups, or haplotypes, are sections of DNA that remain intact through generations and can be identified in an individual’s genome. Designated with coded names such as “I-253,” haplogroups are found either in the mitochondrial DNA or in a particular section of the Y-chromosome which are passed down from mother to daughter, and father to son respectively (Bolnick et al. 2007; Jobling, Rasteiro, and Wetton 2016). 3 And third, a chart of how the customer’s DNA relates to different geographic areas or ethnic groups. While many DTC companies hold that these ethnicity charts reveal a person’s “unique genetic origins” (Ancestry.com 2015) or “ethnic and geographic background” (FamilytreeDNA.com 2016), they are actually based on a comparison between the customer’s DNA and the samples of other, now-living individuals in the companies’ reference databases. In this way, contemporary individuals are used as “proxies for ancient populations” (Hogan 2019, 89). In spite of the fact that the ethnicity charts reveal genetic relations to present-day customers of the same DTC company rather than persons in the remote past, however, their attraction seem to lie in their ostensible power to reveal an individual’s “ancestry from 80,000 years ago until recent times,” as claimed by one genetic genealogy company (LivingDNA.com 2020). In a similar way, the DTC company 23andMe promises customers to “trace your paths back thousands of years” and “[t]ravel back in time to gain a clearer picture of where you came from” (23andMe 2020).
GATs and geneticized identities
As observed by several researchers, the breakthrough of the DTC industry has had profound implications for popular notions of identity, race, origin and belonging (Carlson 2020; Greely 2008; Nash 2004, 2015; Phelan et al. 2014; Roth and Ivemark 2018; Scodari 2017; Scully, Brown, and King 2016). With the growth of companies selling GATs where the genetic composition of an individual is represented as percentages of pre-existing racial, ethnic or national categories, the question has arisen whether such tests reify notions of ethnicity and race as a biological reality. Some scholars (Greely 2008; Hogan 2019; Nash 2004; Phelan et al. 2014; Scodari 2017) argue that this is the case, and that GATs essentialize notions of distinct human races. By ascribing racial or ethnic categories to the physical bodies of individuals, race is comprehended as a corporeal substance which can be discovered through scientific analysis. Genetic genealogy thereby promotes a “genetic essentialism” (Arribas-Ayllon 2016; Bliss 2013; Nordgren and Juengst 2009; Roth et al. 2020) which renders the individual as biologically bound to a racial group. As Scodari puts it:
In utilizing “ethnic ancestry” and similar terminology, constructing ancestry classifications consistent with culturally constituted racial categories, basing their entire enterprise on unquestioned assumptions of ethnicity and race as essential and decipherable from an individual’s DNA, […] genetic ancestry firms are complicit not only in the processes of racialization but in racist misappropriations of genetic science. (Scodari 2017, 12)
The claim that genetic genealogy automatically leads to a biological reification of race has been challenged by other studies (Hofmann 2016; Rose 2007; Roth and Ivemark 2018; Scully, Brown, and King 2016; Shim, Rab Alam, and Aouizerat 2018). Concluding their interviews with British genealogists tracing their “Viking ancestry,” Scully, Brown, and King (2016) emphasize that GATs do not supply individuals with definite ethnic identities, but provide material which can be incorporated into more complex narratives of identity. In a similar vein, Rose argues that today’s “biopolitics of identity” is “linked to the development of novel ‘life strategies’ for individuals and their families, involving choice, enterprise, self-actualization, and prudence in relation to one’s genetic makeup” (2007, 177). And in opposition to what they call the “genetic determinism theory,” Roth and Ivemark suggest that GAT consumers always enjoy different “genetic options”:
[D]espite the “scientific” nature of genetic ancestry information, consumers do not simply accept the tests’ results as given. Instead they choose selectively from the estimates, embracing or ignoring particular genetic ancestries […]. Depending on how they assess their ancestry results […], this practice leads to a selective geneticization, with consumers picking and choosing the genetic ancestries they want to embrace. (Roth and Ivemark 2018, 152)
In line with Nelson (2008, 761), we suggest that research on genetic genealogy should seek to transcend this binary debate. Our interviews indicate that the construction of identity through GATs is a complex process of negotiation and interpretation which draws both on a constructivist and a primordial understanding of identity. A dominant perspective in contemporary scholarship in the humanities and social sciences (cf. Morning 2018), the constructivist definition of identity holds that ethnic or racial identity relies on discourse and is acquired through interaction. According to this perspective, ethnic identity is malleable, situational and contingent (Jiménez 2010), and co-constituted by factors like age, sexuality, class and gender. Researchers in social science and the humanities have demonstrated how race and ethnicity are articulated and ascribed through processes of “othering” which involve elements of strategy, power and politics (Hall 1996; Hylland Eriksen and Jakoubek 2018). The constructivist understanding of identity is often framed in opposition to a primordial definition, in which ethnic identity is an objective, essential and substantial quality acquired at birth (Hofmann 2016, 103–106; Morning 2018, 51–52; Smith, Kohl, and Vermeersch 2004).
The breakthrough of the DTC industry and its claim to provide customers with a “unique identity” or “unique ethnicity” (African Ancestry 2020; Ancestry.com 2016) have resulted in an amalgamation of the constructivist and primordial understandings of identity. Our interviews show that the “geneticized identities” (Bliss 2013; Nelson 2008; Novas and Rose 2000) facilitated by genetic genealogy are both based on what are presented as immutable genetic facts, and on subjective interpretations of these facts. While DTC companies might foster the idea that selfhood is not “a matter of existential choice but one of empirical discovery” (Nordgren and Juengst 2009, 162), the open-endedness of genetics—i.e. the fact that GATs enable multiple paths of identification—leaves a great deal of agency for the individual consumer. Test takers use the genetic data provided by the DTC companies in a selective and productive manner, synthesizing a primordial and constructivist understanding of identity in a form of “affiliative self-fashioning” (Nelson 2008). As Nelson argues, consumers appropriate their results with “a complex of alternative identificatory resources” which reflect their personal aspirations and desires (2008, 771). She stresses, however, that the individual test taker’s agency is ultimately circumscribed by existing power hierarchies and, more specifically, legacies of colonialism, slavery and racialization. In a similar vein, Roth and Ivemark (2018) argue that the genetic options enjoyed by GAT consumers depend on the social appraisal of their fellows, and that individuals already racialized as non-white tend to be more reluctant to change their identities on the basis of genetic data. With these observations in mind, it seems important to stress that the genetic options provided by GATs, and the processes of (re)-racialization they might instigate, are always embedded in existing discourses of identity and systems of racialization.