Technoscientific Musings at WUSTL

Bolnick and Bardill continued the conversation from last week’s Fullwiley article, reinforcing the technical ambiguity of genetic ancestry results and methodology. Bolnick also points out that although “it is unlikely that companies deliberately choose to mislead consumers or misrepresent science” it would be naïve and irresponsible to ignore the motivations of consumers purchasing these tests when thinking about the tests’ social implications. Bolnick begins to talk about scientists having financial stake in certain scientific pronouncements that carry immense cultural weight but doesn’t get into it any further. So far the implications of the process of scientific research funding, and the changing distribution of public and private funds, has mostly been ignored. These articles talk about how science can be weaponized to delegitimize social experiences and understandings of race but we haven't really discussed the military and nationalist motivations for funding research in the first place. And how especially now, at least in the United States, scientific research is increasingly falling under the domain of the "free market." 

Tallbear looks at how DNA testing for genetic ancestry poses a different and potentially more potent threat to tribal sovereignty than blood quantum. All three readings left me feeling pretty skeptical of the ability of genetic ancestry testing to be deployed in ways that don’t reproduce existing power structures or undermine collective and individual understandings of identity and community. 

We get a less gloomy perspective in Wagner. In the aftermath of the Bosnian genocide, DNA testing played (and continues to play) a critical role in healing and rebuilding postwar Srebrenica. The “success” of DNA testing in Bosnia, however, affirms the concerns in the other three articles which warned about genetic ancestry “[reproducing] a particular power structure that puts the scientists on top of the recreated colonial chain” (Bardill 163) and “[giving] priority to techno-scientific knowledge of certain kinship relations over other types of knowledge and relationships.” (Tallbear 72) Wagner shows that DNA testing is able to play such a productive role in Srebrenica because the Bosniaks have power over the use and out outcomes of the technology. The DNA testing doesn’t just provide solace for the survivors of the war but is used as an instrument of social repair, and this is because Bosniaks are able to build multiple layers of institutions around both the process and outcomes of the technology. Rather than the samples being sent to a US laboratory, for example, the Women of Srebrenica “demanded to know the results, the costs of the project, and why local resources could not be developed for such testing” and were able to insert themselves as key players in post-war politics. (Wagner 80) Wagner also notes that Bosnian Serbs and Bosniaks worked side by side in testing the DNA. It isn’t just the tangible results of the DNA testing but those results in combination with the ways in which Bosniaks involve themselves in the process of the technology that facilitates social repair.