Ambiguity and Scientific Authority: Population Classification In
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ASRXXX10.1177/0003122416685812American Sociological ReviewPanofsky and Bliss 6858122017 American Sociological Review 2017, Vol. 82(1) 59 –87 Ambiguity and Scientific © American Sociological Association 2017 DOI: 10.1177/0003122416685812 Authority: Population journals.sagepub.com/home/asr Classification in Genomic Science Aaron Panofskya and Catherine Blissb Abstract The molecularization of race thesis suggests geneticists are gaining greater authority to define human populations and differences, and they are doing so by increasingly defining them in terms of U.S. racial categories. Using a mixed methodology of a content analysis of articles published in Nature Genetics (in 1993, 2001, and 2009) and interviews, we explore geneticists’ population labeling practices. Geneticists use eight classification systems that follow racial, geographic, and ethnic logics of definition. We find limited support for racialization of classification. Use of quasi-racial “continental” terms has grown over time, but more surprising is the persistent and indiscriminate blending of classification schemes at the field level, the article level, and within-population labels. This blending has led the practical definition of “population” to become more ambiguous rather than standardized over time. Classificatory ambiguity serves several functions: it helps geneticists negotiate collaborations among researchers with competing demands, resist bureaucratic oversight, and build accountability with study populations. Far from being dysfunctional, we show the ambiguity of population definition is linked to geneticists’ efforts to build scientific authority. Our findings revise the long-standing theoretical link between scientific authority and standardization and social order. We find that scientific ambiguity can function to produce scientific authority. Keywords genetics, race, ethnicity, geography, standardization, ambiguity, authority One of the most commented upon puzzles of genetics shows race not to be a scientific con- the postgenomic era is the paradox of race. cept, and that “precise racial boundaries” can- When President Clinton held a press confer- not be legitimated scientifically. Yet this appar- ence on June 26, 2000, to announce the ent consensus was soon broken. Geneticists completion of the first draft of the sequence of the human genome, the main message he and scientific leaders Francis Collins and aUniversity of California, Los Angeles Craig Venter chose to emphasize was that of bUniversity of California, San Francisco universal human similarity: “in genetic terms, all human beings, regardless of race, are more Corresponding Author: Aaron Panofsky, UCLA Institute for Society and than 99.9 percent the same” (quoted in Bliss Genetics, 3360 Life Sciences Building, 2012:1). Venter, Collins, and other leading Los Angeles, CA 90095-7221 scientists strongly stated that contemporary E-mail: [email protected] 60 American Sociological Review 82(1) Neil Risch, Noah Rosenberg, and others linguistic group (such as Bantu) contrasted argued that genetic data could map global against a political state (French) and an eth- genetic variation in ways that closely approx- nic label (Druze) in the same genetic study, imate common sense ideas of race, that without any awareness that they refer to genetic data could accurately assign most entirely different kinds of belonging. When individuals to a racial group, and that racial geneticists have queried the construction of differences would be important to account for their samples, they tend to place an uncom- in genetic studies of diseases (Risch et al. fortable emphasis on ‘purity of ancestry’, 2002; Rosenberg et al. 2002). Debate contin- denying the realities of human history, with ues to rage about these various claims and all its murky interbreeding and complexity. also whether race is indeed a genetically valid Looking for admixture, after all, presup- concept, and thus whether race can legiti- poses a primordial state without it. mately inform the application of genetics to medicine, pharmacology, and forensics. Marks notes that genetics researchers seem to The postgenomic resurgence of racial uncritically compare population categories debate has spawned two lines of social sci- that are apples and oranges and make unwar- ence commentary that are in tension with ranted assumptions about the origins and each other. The first notes the simultaneous composition of those populations. Studies of racialization of biomedical science and the geneticists note that when asked plainly to molecularization of race. Race-based knowl- define what they mean by “race,” geneticists edge has gained salience in genetics and bio- often find themselves surprised to be unable medicine, due to movements to foster greater to provide a clear answer (Bliss 2012; inclusion of women and minorities in medical Fujimura and Rajagopalan 2011; Fullwiley research (Epstein 2007), scientists’ own 2008; Lee et al. 2008). justice-oriented political commitments (Bliss Both perspectives are mobilized to criticize 2012; Fullwiley 2008), and markets for race- the potential reification of race, the former targeted genealogical and pharmaceutical from the perspective of essentialism, and the products (Kahn 2012; Pollock 2012). The latter from the fear that lack of a coherent race concept is being reconceived in molecu- concept of race will enable folk-thinking lar terms, and again appearing as a biological about racial purity, essentialism, and differ- human essence, even as geneticists reframe ence to persist. However, the critical attention racial classification in terms of varying bio- to racial reification in genetics has led to the geographic ancestry and admixture (Duster underappreciation of two issues upon which 2006; Fujimura and Rajagopalan 2011; Gan- this article focuses. First, the focus on race has nett 2014). And even neutrally presented diverted attention from the diversity of ways genetic findings encourage essentialist under- that geneticists classify human populations. standings of race among the lay public Second, the concern with reification has led to (Phelan, Link, and Feldman 2013). the neglect of the symbolic functions of the While the first line of research emphasizes incoherence of geneticists’ classifications. the biogenetic “hardening” of race, a second, This article explores the ambiguous and less prominent line emphasizes conceptual flexible ways that geneticists classify human incoherence, or “softening,” in the ways populations and differences. We document geneticists and biomedical researchers define the scope of classificatory ambiguity with a race and classify populations in their studies. content analysis of articles from Nature As Jonathan Marks (2012) has said, Genetics, the field’s leading journal. We find that (1) over time, population labeling has Geneticists tend to take their populations as increased to near ubiquity in human genetics, ‘natural’ units in a way that troubles anthro- (2) the use of geographic, and especially con- pologists. That is why you can find a tinental, classification to label populations Panofsky and Bliss 61 has increased most, but continental classifica- Race is socially constructed and racial tion ambiguously blends racial and geo- categories are historically variable (Omi and graphic ways of conceiving populations, and Winant 1994; Smedley 1999). Calling race a (3) no standard way of classifying popula- “floating signifier,” Hall (1997) links its tions is emerging; rather, geneticists blend enduring social power to its cultural flexibil- population classification systems at the field, ity. But this has produced practical difficulties paper, and sample levels. These trends com- for geneticists. Interviews and laboratory eth- bine to increase classificatory ambiguity. We nographies reveal that geneticists are typi- then use contextual information and interview cally embarrassed that they have considerable data to make sense of these trends, showing difficulty articulating coherent definitions of (1) the “populationification” of human genet- race or racial classification, even though both ics has established connections between are deployed in their research (Bliss 2012; geneticists and their extra-scientific contexts; Fujimura and Rajagopalan 2011; Fullwiley (2) continental labeling is often a way that 2008; Lee et al. 2008). geneticists with different types of connections The science studies literature has long can collaborate and compromise with each emphasized the positive functions of stand- other; and (3) geneticists link classificatory ardization for the production of scientific polyvocality to their efforts to resist regula- authority and the coordination of scientific tion of their research by journals and funders action (Bowker and Star 1999; Mackenzie and to their desires to project accountability et al. 2013; Timmermans and Berg 2003; Tim- to study populations. We thus conclude that mermans and Epstein 2010). Indeed, much the resulting classificatory ambiguity helps research on geneticists’ recent efforts to grap- geneticists bolster their scientific authority ple with race focuses broadly on standardiza- and preserve their practical room for maneu- tion dynamics. Epstein (2007) shows how the ver in a context rife with potential pitfalls. “categorical alignment” of U.S. Census racial categories with biomedical research has helped geneticists and others connect their sci- BACKGROUND AND ence to the interests of multiple stakeholders, LITERATURE thus bringing together