Genomic Citizenship: Peoplehood and State in Israel and Qatar
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Genomic Citizenship: Peoplehood and State in Israel and Qatar The Harvard community has made this article openly available. Please share how this access benefits you. Your story matters Citable link http://nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:40049986 Terms of Use This article was downloaded from Harvard University’s DASH repository, and is made available under the terms and conditions applicable to Other Posted Material, as set forth at http:// nrs.harvard.edu/urn-3:HUL.InstRepos:dash.current.terms-of- use#LAA Genomic Citizenship: Peoplehood and State in Israel and Qatar A dissertation presented by Ian Vincent McGonigle to The Committee on Middle Eastern Studies in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the subject of Anthropology and Middle Eastern Studies Harvard University Cambridge, Massachusetts March 2018 © 2018 Ian Vincent McGonigle All rights reserved. Jean Comaroff and Steve Caton Ian Vincent McGonigle Genomic Citizenship: Peoplehood and State in Israel and Qatar Abstract This dissertation describes basic genetic research and biobanking of ethnic populations in Israel and Qatar. I track how biomedical research on ethnic populations relates to the political, economic, legal, and historical context of the states; to global trends in genetic medicine; and to the politics of identity in the context of global biomedical research. I describe the ways biology is becoming a site for negotiating identity in ethnic genetics, in discourse over rights to citizenship, in rare disease genetics, and in personalized medicine. The core focus of this work is the way the molecular realm is an emergent site for articulations of ethnonational identities in the contemporary Middle East. This is thus a study of Middle Eastern ethnonationalism and state building through the lens of biology, specifically genetics and biobanking. In revealing the complex interdigitations of genomic technologies and articulations of ethnonational identity, this scholarship informs the biopolitics of the contemporary Middle East. I find that societal conditions (emerging national identities, immigration, demographic pressures, enskillment of citizens, biomedical capacity building, and globalization of the economy), and technological affordances (such advances in the speed and power of genomic sequencing technologies, and the entailed promises of biomedical progress), collide to overdetermine biological iterations of ethnic identity, and I show that iii biobanking projects serve, to varying degrees, to inculcate an imagination of shared history; a collective community; and a healthy utopian future. I argue that the Israeli and Qatari national biobanks imagine participation in ‘global science’ while at the same time they reinforce local ethnic identities. The Israeli biobank reflects pre-existing ethnic identities in Israeli society, while the Qatari biobank preferentially emphasizes the emergent national character of the Qatari population. As a comparative study of genetics and ethnic identity in the contemporary Middle East, this research, therefore, speaks both to the social theory of the co-production of science and society and to the anthropology of nation and state building. iv Table of Contents Page Title page ............................................................................................................................. i Copyright Notice ................................................................................................................. ii Abstract .............................................................................................................................. iii Table of Contents ................................................................................................................ v Author’s Note .................................................................................................................... vii List of Tables and Figures ................................................................................................ viii Acknowledgments .............................................................................................................. ix Preface .............................................................................................................................. xiii Epigraph ......................................................................................................................... xxiii Chapter 1. Introduction .................................................................................................... 1 • Identities Matter .......................................................................................... 2 • Biopolitical Futures and Personalized Medicine ....................................... 6 • Genetic Selves ........................................................................................... 14 • The Interface of Anthropology and STS .................................................... 19 • The Molecularization of Ethnicity ............................................................ 26 • Imagining the Nation ................................................................................ 31 • Biopolitics and Citizenship ....................................................................... 39 • Dissertation Aims ...................................................................................... 41 • Methodology ............................................................................................. 43 • Overview of Chapters ............................................................................... 44 Chapter 2. The ‘Nature’ of Israeli Citizenship ............................................................ 46 • Gene Talk .................................................................................................. 47 • Jewish Ethnicity ........................................................................................ 51 • Zionism and Jewish Identity ...................................................................... 56 • Israeli Society ............................................................................................ 65 • Jewish Aliyah (Immigration) .................................................................... 67 • Secular and Religious Jewishness in Israel .............................................. 71 • Genetic Birthright ..................................................................................... 73 • ‘Jewish Genetics’ ...................................................................................... 75 • The Relationship between Science and Society ........................................ 81 Chapter 3. The Israeli Biobank: A National Project? ................................................. 89 • The National Laboratory? ........................................................................ 90 • Biological Nation? .................................................................................... 94 • “Medical implications from investigation of the Jewish exome” ........... 100 • Origins of the Biobank ............................................................................ 103 • The Materiality of the Biobank ............................................................... 105 • Collecting of Samples ............................................................................. 109 • Use of Biobank Samples .......................................................................... 111 v • Regimes of Value and Commodification ................................................. 116 • Personalized Medicine ............................................................................ 120 • Biobanks and Nation-Building ................................................................ 125 • Science as Ideology ................................................................................. 128 • A National Resource? ............................................................................. 143 Chapter 4. Biobanking and “Qatarization” ............................................................... 149 • Genetic Meliorism ................................................................................... 151 • From Pearls to Oil .................................................................................. 152 • Political Precarity, or Diplomatic Advantage? ...................................... 155 • Tribe or Nation? ...................................................................................... 158 • A Nation Imagined ................................................................................... 161 • Sidra Medical and Research Center ....................................................... 167 • Sidra’s Imagined Future ......................................................................... 170 • The Qatar Genome Project ..................................................................... 179 • The Qatar Biobank .................................................................................. 182 • Moral Community and Qatarization ....................................................... 191 • Islamic Concerns .................................................................................... 193 • Identity Formation: the Imagination of the Nation ................................. 196 • Comparing Biobanks .............................................................................. 200 Chapter 5. Concluding Words ....................................................................................