Presented By:

Alondra Nelson, PhD

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology

Institute for Research on Women and Gender

Columbia University

Abstract

Drawing on ethnographic research, this presentation explores how claims about race and ancestry are marshaled together with genetic analysis in a range of ventures, including the formation of individual and collective identity; social justice campaigns; economic development initiatives; and the construction of public memory. In doing so, it examines how the logics of genetic science circulate between and beyond expected social institutions and practices constituting, in the process, a much broader “social life of DNA.”