archytas's review
4.0
Like many academic social science books, the intro for Mestizo Genomics hits hard with intellectually engaging ideas, relevant and challenging questions and a promise of exploration. And then, while solid, interesting and enlightening, the content of the book never delves as deep as my newly-whetted appetite demands. Having said that, this was a fantastically accessible introduction to the genetic and racial intersections in Latin America.
And look, I really enjoyed it, and felt closer to understanding stuff when I came out.
To clarify, I know almost nothing about Latin American racial politics. The book's approach of taking case studies from three countries - Brazil (where the case study is also very regional in character), Colombia and Mexico - brought me up to speed with the differing national identities built around the concept of racial mixture, and the short historical introductions to the background in each country were very well done, transmitting a great deal in a short space. This approach, assisted by the case studies also tackling differently sized, funded and ethically motivated labs and projects, gave a sense of the complexity and variety of racial assumptions and culture.
Each case-study deals with different issues - the Brazilian study, focused on a project to detirmine with an one iconic cultural group had genetic connections to another "extinct" group, looked very much at changing sense of regional identity, and the complexity of genetic research where the outcomes are so clearly loaded. The Colombian study focuses very much on the culture of geneticists themselves, looking at how the small and passionate lab navigate both their own understandings of the limitations and dangers of embedded assumptions (in this case, manifested through discussion of how to label the racial identity of DNA "donors"), and then how to keep this integrity intact and still get published. The Mexican case study, looking at the natinally funded, "authoratative" INMEGEN project, examines how the conception of an ideal Mexican is constructed through these projects, and how genetics engages with changing concepts of the Mestizo, and how this sits uneasily with inclusion of blackness.
One of the exciting bits from the intro that wasn't really realised was the promise to engage with gender. The idea of the mestizaje is bound up with gender - a nation descended from European men and Indigenous women - and the heavy use of autosomnal and mitocondrial DNA allows for the ongoing construction of this narrative. But while the implications were touched on, it wasn't explored, and I'd be very interested to chase up something more in depth looking at this concept.
Fundamentally, though, the book overwhelmingly succeeds at showing how our base assumptions shape the data that is collected, analysed and understood. Pointing out how measured admixture of similar amounts can lead to narratives of "mostly indigenous" or "mostly european" in different contexts, for example, or scientists, worried that racism causes people to identify with lighter skin toned categories, rejig the categorisation to skew back the other way. Or simply the question that, in choosing (as so many genetic projects do) only to collect samples from those with all four grandparents born in the same area, creates an idea of who we are that is fixed in time and space, and erases much of human experience.
Great stuff, and not entirely fair to feel a bit let down by hitting conclusions when it felt the book was just hitting its stride.
And look, I really enjoyed it, and felt closer to understanding stuff when I came out.
To clarify, I know almost nothing about Latin American racial politics. The book's approach of taking case studies from three countries - Brazil (where the case study is also very regional in character), Colombia and Mexico - brought me up to speed with the differing national identities built around the concept of racial mixture, and the short historical introductions to the background in each country were very well done, transmitting a great deal in a short space. This approach, assisted by the case studies also tackling differently sized, funded and ethically motivated labs and projects, gave a sense of the complexity and variety of racial assumptions and culture.
Each case-study deals with different issues - the Brazilian study, focused on a project to detirmine with an one iconic cultural group had genetic connections to another "extinct" group, looked very much at changing sense of regional identity, and the complexity of genetic research where the outcomes are so clearly loaded. The Colombian study focuses very much on the culture of geneticists themselves, looking at how the small and passionate lab navigate both their own understandings of the limitations and dangers of embedded assumptions (in this case, manifested through discussion of how to label the racial identity of DNA "donors"), and then how to keep this integrity intact and still get published. The Mexican case study, looking at the natinally funded, "authoratative" INMEGEN project, examines how the conception of an ideal Mexican is constructed through these projects, and how genetics engages with changing concepts of the Mestizo, and how this sits uneasily with inclusion of blackness.
One of the exciting bits from the intro that wasn't really realised was the promise to engage with gender. The idea of the mestizaje is bound up with gender - a nation descended from European men and Indigenous women - and the heavy use of autosomnal and mitocondrial DNA allows for the ongoing construction of this narrative. But while the implications were touched on, it wasn't explored, and I'd be very interested to chase up something more in depth looking at this concept.
Fundamentally, though, the book overwhelmingly succeeds at showing how our base assumptions shape the data that is collected, analysed and understood. Pointing out how measured admixture of similar amounts can lead to narratives of "mostly indigenous" or "mostly european" in different contexts, for example, or scientists, worried that racism causes people to identify with lighter skin toned categories, rejig the categorisation to skew back the other way. Or simply the question that, in choosing (as so many genetic projects do) only to collect samples from those with all four grandparents born in the same area, creates an idea of who we are that is fixed in time and space, and erases much of human experience.
Great stuff, and not entirely fair to feel a bit let down by hitting conclusions when it felt the book was just hitting its stride.
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