by Catherine Nash (Author)
What might be wrong with genetic accounts of personal or shared
ancestry and origins? Genetic studies are often presented as valuable
ways of understanding where we come from and how people are related. In Genetic Geographies, Catherine Nash pursues their troubling implications for our perception of sexual and national, as well as racial, difference.
Bringing
an incisive geographical focus to bear on new genetic histories and
genetic genealogy, Nash explores the making of ideas of genetic
ancestry, indigeneity, and origins; the global human family; and
national genetic heritage. In particular, she engages with the science,
culture, and commerce of ancestry in the United States and the United
Kingdom, including National Geographic’s Genographic Project and the
People of the British Isles project. Tracing the tensions and
contradictions between the emphasis on human genetic similarity and
shared ancestry, and the attention given to distinctive patterns of
relatedness and different ancestral origins, Nash challenges the
assumption that the concepts of shared ancestry are necessarily
progressive. She extends this scrutiny to claims about the “natural”
differences between the sexes and the “nature” of reproduction in
studies of the geography of human genetic variation.
Through its focus on sex, nation, and race, and its novel spatial lens, Genetic Geographies provides a timely critical guide to what happens when genetic science maps relatedness.
