Genetic Nature/Culture: Anthropology and Science beyond the Two-Culture Divide

The so-called science wars pit science against culture, and nowhere is the struggle more contentious–or more fraught with paradox–than in the burgeoning realm of genetics. A constructive response, and a welcome intervention, this volume brings together biological and cultural anthropologists to conduct an interdisciplinary dialogue that provokes and instructs even as it bridges the science/culture divide.
Individual essays address issues raised by the science, politics, and history of race, evolution, and identity; genetically modified organisms and genetic diseases; gene work and ethics; and the boundary between humans and animals. The result is an entree to the complicated nexus of questions prompted by the power and importance of genetics and genetic thinking, and the dynamic connections linking culture, biology, nature, and technoscience. The volume offers critical perspectives on science and culture, with contributions that span disciplinary divisions and arguments grounded in both biological perspectives and cultural analysis. An invaluable resource and a provocative introduction to new research and thinking on the uses and study of genetics, Genetic Nature/Culture is a model of fruitful dialogue, presenting the quandaries faced by scholars on both sides of the two-cultures debate.

"Genetic Nature/Culture presents an engaging, intelligent, and, above all, necessary conversation within and beyond anthropology. These essays, diverse yet always mutually engaged, move past often-assumed intellectual boundaries in innovative and principled ways. They simultaneously shape, map, and challenge our understandings of the complex common ground on which genetics, culture, and history intersect–and, in so doing, help point toward a critical role for anthropology, now and in the future." – Don Brenneis, Professor of Anthropology, University of California, Santa Cruz
"The editors have carefully and coherently organized the book to shed light on the complex interplay of biology, culture, ideology and myth–on the 'tangled politics' of nature and culture in the increasingly contentious age of genetics." – Dorothy Nelkin, author (with Suzanne Anker) of The Molecular Gaze: Art in the Genetic Age