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DTSTAMP:20161007T160000Z
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CATEGORIES:Conferences / Seminars / Lectures
DTSTART:20161007T160000Z
DTEND:20161007T173000Z
SUMMARY:Big Biology, Infrastructures, and Race - Dr. Joan H. Fujimura
DESCRIPTION:
 Dr. Joan H. Fujimura\n
 Professor of Sociology\n
 University of Wisconsin-Madison\n
 Winner, 2013 
 David Edge Prize from the\n
 Society for Social 
 Studies of Science (4S)\n
 \n
 "Big Biology, 
 Infrastructures, and Race:\n
 How genomics became 
 imbricated in representations of race and 
 how race representations became imbricated 
 in genomics"\n
 Berkey Hall 457\n
 Friday, 
 October 7, 12:00-1:30pm\n
 \n
 Do the new genomics 
 undo our understandings of races as social 
 constructions? This talk analyzes biomedical 
 statistical genomics technologies and data to 
 demonstrate that genetic differences are clinal 
 and therefore do not map onto racial categories. 
 Why then are some geneticists, sociologists, 
 and news media interpreting the new genomic 
 data to say that race categories are biological 
 and genetic categories?  In the 1990s, 
 geneticists began to build ad hoc infrastructures 
 as "short-cuts" to quickly 
 find genomic markers that would lead them to 
 the many genes they suspected were involved 
 in common complex diseases.  But each infrastructure 
 was not enough, so they built another. 
  At this time, we have layers of infrastructures, 
 each supporting the other, each based 
 on the previous.  Genetics is now in a time of 
 "big science," "big data." 
  But infrastructures are not innocent.  They 
 carry with them practices based on assumptions 
 of "genome geography," some of 
 which have become embedded in the infrastructure. 
  The Hapmap is one such infrastructure 
 that incorporated notions of population differences 
 that some have read as ancestral differences 
 that some downstream users have read 
 as racial differences. In a situation of uncertainty, 
 ambiguity, and many folk assumptions 
 about social differences, some geneticists, 
 sociologists, media members, and members of various 
 publics have read race into the differences 
 that were constructed using algorithmic 
 technologies of difference.  We conduct an archaeology 
 of the assumptions and practices built 
 into the layers of infrastructure, which 
 we use to argue against the reading of race 
 into DNA clusters.\n\n
 Price: free\n
 Sponsor: public\n
 Contact name: Logan Williams\n
 Contact phone: 517-353-4855\n
 Contact email: will2734@msu.edu\n
LOCATION:Berkey Hall 457
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